Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion

[geekladd]

Is it too late to suggest she name it after someone important to her or that she's lost? Like King Awesome, Gin Rummy, Boing, Gem, Mini, Taurus, that ghoul companion from Hightower, Dusty Trails or Scoodle. Lacunae...  Not card related, but I could see new mature Blackjack doing something like this.

[O. Hinds]

@Icy Shake:
Ah, thank you very much as always.

"spider web"

…I'm pretty sure that "spiderweb" is one word, sorry.

Something seems to be strange with the tabbing in a lot of places in 34.  It doesn't seem noticeable unless one is scanning for for it with highlighting or somesuch thing, though, and correcting it would be a lot of work.  Hopefully it isn't a problem.

Also some places in 36, it looks like.  Strange.

[CD]

Ante up is more her theme or catch phrase than something she should use for a gun. It would be, I don't know, tacky for it to be more than one thing.

Agreed, and it just doesn't sound good in a sentence. You have to be able to use it in an action sequence without it sounding tacky, like:

"I reloaded Ante Up."
"I reloaded Queen's Ace."

"I fired Ante Up in his face, making it explode like a blood sausage."
"I fired Queen's Ace in his face, making it explode like a blood sausage."

"It was time to ante up, so I drew Ante Up."
"It was time to ante up, so I drew Queen's Ace."

Especially the last one works very poorly with the other part of the sentence because almost seems to repeat and cause confusion in the reader, and this is a sentence that is not at all unlikely to appear, considering this is Blackjack we're talking about.

Also, guns that are named as verbs just don't work nearly as well as [whatever you English types would call Queen and Ace in a sentence according to language rules. I hate grammar, sue me]. All the great guns are named that way. Spitfire's Thunder. Little Macintosh. Penance.

[Shady]

Oh the possible gun and alcoholic puns are almost endless!
Like lead.
>Knock-knock!
<Who's there?
>Lead
<Lead who?
> Lead in your face! *BLAM*

Maximus DPS
The solution(If you've played the deadpool game you know what cutscene I mean )

SSS(Single barrel Super Sexy)

Bruiser

Ambassador of insertpun.

Plaster Blaster because you plaster the wall with pony parts

Salvo.

Mr. Pain

Fistful of Iron.

Sobershot

Lazarus.

Ok I'll stop now

[JadedPony]

The Whiskey Ransom  - Because if you have some, she might think about not using it?

[Icy Shake]

"Project Horizons Stallion"—because it fires hard and you don't need to wait between rounds.

[Borsuq]

Okay, I know that I am suuuuuuuuper late to this party, but regarding the name for the weapon how about... "Glory"?

I mean, there is a weapon in Fallout New Vegas called "Old Glory":


And although if somebody where to use a similar name for a weapon, it would probably be for something like this:


But I believe that it would also work as a name for a shutgun... maybe "Fallen Glory"...

And yeah, I am on team GloryJack (are there t-shirts?), to me this break up is almost as bad as what happened in the last episode of HIMYM (though it makes a bit more sense and is not out of character). I still hope that Glory will regain her senses, realize that love isn't logical, and that Blackjack loves her despite how big connection she has with P-21. She and Tenebra are cute, granted, but after over 50 chapters of Gloryjack it just ain't easy letting it go.


Not to mention that Glory still believed that Blackjack was alive while P had given up, but whatever...

[DaWarWolf]

/foe/ is talking about rewriting PH so they can "fix it" and some of them are asking if they need permission for it(not all of them are but want they are saying makes me want to bash my head into a wall but maybe thats just me) I don't know if they're serious or not and I could care less about the "rewrite" they give PH but if it got them to shut up about this debate(which is the most absurd and worthless argument i've seen since dub vs sub) then I'm all for it. Just letting people hear about it to get some input since they talked about it all day. And please if could refrain from talking about why they're wrong or whatever just that if you cared about the "rewrite" or not. I don't want to clog up this place with "/foe/ is bad" because all it is over there is "PH is bad" and I'm just...tired of it. Maybe I'm in the minority but don't hate much stuff and the most recent thing I've hated was the ME:3 ending(which I'm over with thanks to the Citadel DLC) and Call of Duty franchise just because it takes away all these other good games from being played. But whatever, Haters are just going to hate.

[Icy Shake]

I believe I speak for myself when I say "Who even gives a fuckcares?" Nobody needs anyone's permission to write a fanfic, and it's not like it'll be the first fix-fic the brony fandom will've put out . . . the day it's published. Probably the hour. Anyway, it's a constructive way of using whatever feelings they have about the story (though depending on the size, I question the wisdom of writing by committee), especially compared to some of the alternatives, and given the talent pool of the fandom, it's entirely plausible they'll turn out something good.

[decumos]

I honestly cannot understand how could anyone decide that PH is a bad thing that needs to be "fixed". PH is the best FoE sidefic, and in my opinion it is ten times better than the original story. I reckon all those people who consider PH bad just couldn't manage to read that whole lot of words.

[DaWarWolf]

I honestly cannot understand how could anyone decide that PH is a bad thing that needs to be "fixed". PH is the best FoE sidefic, and in my opinion it is ten times better than the original story. I reckon all those people who consider PH bad just couldn't manage to read that whole lot of words.

Yep, pretty much feel the same way. The best is MN7 because every chapter has me on edge of my seat. Granted the "best" is actually just "like a little more than".

[JadedPony]

I honestly cannot understand how could anyone decide that PH is a bad thing that needs to be "fixed". PH is the best FoE sidefic, and in my opinion it is ten times better than the original story. I reckon all those people who consider PH bad just couldn't manage to read that whole lot of words.

Agreed. I don't think it needs to be changed at all. In order:

FOE: Project Horizons
FOE: Heroes
FOE: MN7
FOE: Morality of Property
Anywhere But Here: Odds and Ends  (Not sure why they didn't put FOE in the name.)
FOE: Pink Eyes


On a side note: Did anyone read Fallout Equestria: Starlight? I tried but the main character was just SO VERY MARY SUE I couldn't take it. If anyone actually finished the book PM me and let me know if she shoe horned herself in as the element of magic. Just a yes or no in a PM would be great. I might finish reading it if she doesn't but it seems just so very, very much like some one just wrote themselves as the most powerful OC in existence and then spooged ego all over the pages. If it gets better I might finish it but.. just.. it hurts me how very poorly that story is constructed.

[decumos]

I honestly cannot understand how could anyone decide that PH is a bad thing that needs to be "fixed". PH is the best FoE sidefic, and in my opinion it is ten times better than the original story. I reckon all those people who consider PH bad just couldn't manage to read that whole lot of words.

Yep, pretty much feel the same way. The best is MN7 because every chapter has me on edge of my seat. Granted the "best" is actually just "like a little more than".

I started reading Murky just recently and have finished 11 chapters of it already. For now I give it the second place among FoE fics. Surely, it is a matter of personal preference. Just that feel of constant misery is really depressing sometimes, while Blackjack in PH has at least some moments of joy.

[JadedPony]

Did you ever watch the TV show Arrow? MN7 suffers from the same problem as Arrow. Everyone in the show was keeping secrets from each other and dragging out drama for no reason what-so-ever. MN7 is the same way. Horrible things just keep happening and keep happening and keep happening for no damn reason and half the problems could be fixed if they just stopped being depressing, whiny bitches about life.

The whole sub plot about the stuff under ground and the stuff that happened up on the mountain just felt contrived to me. The story really didn't NEED a giant magical evil MacGuffin for it to be good. It just seems like the whole thing is trying to hard to be epic when it was already amazing just from the great characters and setting.

Also that dick Chainy is so completely irredeemably evil he might as well have a mustache and train tracks to tie ponies to. What made Red-Eye such a great villain was that you could kinda see his point. His horrible, cruel, actions are kind of justified by the progress he has made.

It's not the ideal solution but it IS a solution to the problems of the wasteland and if he hasn't also fallen for a magical fix-everything-MacGuffin that would have made him into a God like being, he could very well have lived a long, mortal life and saved the waste land. He might have rebuilt Equestria on a foundation of slave corpses. In time ponies would have forgotten the horrible history and Equestria would actually be returned to almost it's former glory.  

Chainlink Shackles can make no such claims. He's just a asshole for the sake of being an asshole so he's not a very compelling villain. Hell, Red-Eye isn't even in most of MN7 and he's still a bigger, better villain than Shackles.

[DaWarWolf]

Did you ever watch the TV show Arrow? MN7 suffers from the same problem as Arrow. Everyone in the show was keeping secrets from each other and dragging out drama for no reason what-so-ever. MN7 is the same way. Horrible things just keep happening and keep happening and keep happening for no damn reason and half the problems could be fixed if they just stopped being depressing, whiny bitches about life.

The whole sub plot about the stuff under ground and the stuff that happened up on the mountain just felt contrived to me. The story really didn't NEED a giant magical evil MacGuffin for it to be good. It just seems like the whole thing is trying to hard to be epic when it was already amazing just from the great characters and setting.

Also that dick Chainy is so completely irredeemably evil he might as well have a mustache and train tracks to tie ponies to. What made Red-Eye such a great villain was that you could kinda see his point. His horrible, cruel, actions are kind of justified by the progress he has made.

It's not the ideal solution but it IS a solution to the problems of the wasteland and if he hasn't also fallen for a magical fix-everything-MacGuffin that would have made him into a God like being, he could very well have lived a long, mortal life and saved the waste land. He might have rebuilt Equestria on a foundation of slave corpses. In time ponies would have forgotten the horrible history and Equestria would actually be returned to almost it's former glory.  

Chainlink Shackles can make no such claims. He's just a asshole for the sake of being an asshole so he's not a very compelling villain. Hell, Red-Eye isn't even in most of MN7 and he's still a bigger, better villain than Shackles.

I got the impression that shackles was written that way for a reason. He really is a villain thats just there to be a asshole and doesn't have to be all that dynamic besides wanting murky to fail his fight for freedom. I always love a sympathetic or charismatic villain but sometimes its cool to have a villain you can hate that doesn't have a sob story to them. Plus we have protege whos not a villain but still on the opposing side of the protagonist that doesn't always have the same goal.

[Vinylshadow]

If Red Eye cared about his slaves at all, he would never let somepony like Shackles have free run in his city

In FoE, I felt that Red Eye at least cared enough about his workers to treat them somewhat fairly

Brimstone should have killed him by now - if he died, it wouldn't change a single thing in the story as it is now

[JadedPony]

Some times its cool to have a villain you can hate that doesn't have a sob story to them.

Think of one, any one, in history or in fiction who was just pure evil all the time and never, ever, had any single human moment. Can you? Can you really? Even Darth Vader had moments where he was shown to be capable of humanity. Lex Luthor actually thinks the world could be made better under his control if Superman would just get out of his way. The Changeling Queen is trying to feed her minions, the Cylons were on a mission to discover greater truth and fulfill the will of God in BSG.

It could even be said that Satan, the most famous villain in any story of all time, gave humanity the burden of choice instead of just letting them live out an eternity in the garden of Eden never knowing what they were missing.

Villains don't need to have a sob story, but they do need to have a personality. Shackles doesn't have a personality. He might as well be an Oppress-o-matic 9000 robot who's only goal, motivation, and activity in life is to oppress ponies.

He doesn't rape them, he doesn't steal from them, he doesn't care about them, he doesn't want a better life for himself, he doesn't even seem to care if he lives of died, he doesn't even hate them, he couldn't care less either way if they live or die as long as they are his slaves when they do it.

He is a function of the story not a character in the story. That makes him a poor villain.

If Red Eye cared about his slaves at all, he would never let somepony like Shackles have free run in his city...

Red-Eye took the city from the control of Shackles originally. He seized power from a pointlessly brutal warlord and made the city a better place but he couldn't get rid of Shackles all together because the crazy portion of the population still followed him. That is why he was relegated to the job that kept him out of the city and out of the general population as much as possible: cleaning out stables and doing battle for Red-Eye. I think Red-Eye kept hoping something would kill Shackles but he kept on surviving. But again, look at this example: The most interesting thing about Shackles is what is being done TO him not what he himself is.

Think of it like American politics. Right now there are republicans who want to shut down the government forever. They are in positions of power in Washington and across the country. They are radicals and extremists but we can't just kick them out of the government. (Unless they start requiring a basic understanding of science and math to qualify for the job... ) so Obama and the sane parts of the House/Senate in both parties are just making laws without them as best they can keeping them as far away from the workings of the government as possible.

Just like in the case of phili, the U.S. is getting better, but all it's people are having pretty shitty lives because these extremists control radical, dangerous factions of society and we have to spend so much time keeping the crazies from burning down the country that less gets done.

Brimstone should have killed him by now - if he died, it wouldn't change a single thing in the story as it is now...

I agree, he is almost as shallow a character as Shackles. He is a meat-shield. His special talent is being a meat-shield. He has a shield on his flank because of it. His "Search for redemption" is the single character trait he seems to have. There are times he shows what is almost a personality when he jokes with MN7 so I can't say he is completely without depth but he is pretty under-developed.

[Derpmind]

I don't have any objections to /foe/ basically writing a fanfic of PH. They certainly don't need permission for that. I don't even really mind that much if it's a fix-fic. My problem is that /foe/ has (for years by now) a huge lack of respect for Somber. They can write their own stuff and if what they write is what will make them happy, then more power to them. But if they try to use this to discredit Somber's work, to try and assert that Somber's version is the wrong one, then it becomes malicious. Project Horizons is and always will be Somber's creation.

As for the rest of it, Somber, I'd recommend you just not bother. Don't give permission or deny permission. They don't deserve the mark of legitimacy either response would give them.

[Derpmind]

On Red Eye: I think Kkat tried a little too hard to make him a sympathetic villain. (Still a fantastic character in most respects.) His plans had flaws, but in the story those flaws were often simplified into "bad because they're evil" instead of addressing the actual consequences of a slave-created state. I think that, without any Deux Ex Alicorn, if Red Eye's plans had continued the children he had raised would grow up to take control of a world where everything good was provided from the suffering of slaves. They wouldn't get rid of slavery to create a new and better society that didn't need slavery, they'd just expand the slavery and the armies to take over all of the Wasteland. And even if things didn't work out quite that way, you really can't erase the sins of the past. Kindness through cruelty, generosity through theft, these things would be remembered no matter how amazing and pure Red Eye's New Equestria became.

[Vinylshadow]

Would make for one heck of a faux pas at a party

"How was all of this possible?"

"Oh, it was built on the corpses of a thousands slaves..."

You can almost hear the record scratch...

[JadedPony]

They wouldn't get rid of slavery to create a new and better society that didn't need slavery, they'd just expand the slavery and the armies to take over all of the Wasteland. And even if things didn't work out quite that way, you really can't erase the sins of the past. Kindness through cruelty, generosity through theft, these things would be remembered no matter how amazing and pure Red Eye's New Equestria became.

Almost every civilized nation on earth started off with some form of slavery. America was only the most recent but most nations have used slaves in their early stages. Slavery is naturally phased out as technology advances to the point it is more cost effective to have a machine do it than a human do it. Whatever that task may be.

Slavery never really dies because of morality or because it's the right thing to do, slavery dies in a nation when that nation is ready to grow without it. England abolished slavery in 1833 and most people today don't even know they ever had slaves or realize that they moved from slavery to serfdom where the serfs owned no land and only lived because they farmed the land that the wealthy owned then payed a percentage to the land owner in the form of taxes.

If push came to shove, America is still a serfdom today. No one really owns land. You rent it from the government and if they want it back, they just take it. If you don't pay your taxes, they take it. Give it a few hundred more years and the horrors of slavery will be a foot note in America's history then we can make the same mistakes again when we colonize a new planet or something.

Yes, I am an optimist when it comes to humanity. :P

[Caoimhe]

Red Eye and Fillydephilia would have been better if instead of slave labour it was written to be a cult of personality with brainwashing (by magical means I suppose). 

The wasteland is horribly corrupt and someone as charismatic as Red Eye can by all means secure ponies willing to work in horrible conditions with no quality of life for any sense of hope and purpose. As a slave community it's just grimdark for grimdark or the excuse of nod to the game (which is a bad thing to do for an original work).

I'm curious what /foe/ wants to change about PH. The mere thought sounds like whining and lack of respect though.

E: I also started MNS for the first time because I never got around to it past the first chapter. I figured I've waited long enough. D: I still need to get around to Heroes as well

[pokeperson1000]

Well Caoimhe, i can defenitely say, at least in my opinion, that Heroes is a fun read.

[Silver136]

I loved Heroes (at least where it is now anyway) although I'm probably super biased. I practically share a name with the main character, and our personalities aren't that different either. I've loved Silver Storm since the beginning of the story, and the development of her past has only made me like her more.

[Guest]

I'm curious what /foe/ wants to change about PH. The mere thought sounds like whining and lack of respect though.

Isn't this the kind of complaint that's thrown at PH that's generally disregarded here? That Somber makes changes to FO:E, I don't think the changes he makes are fueled by disrespect. I don't know that community, so maybe it's the community that makes you think that. But on the surface it sound like hypocrisy.

[Meleagridis]

Almost every civilized nation on earth started off with some form of slavery. America was only the most recent but most nations have used slaves in their early stages. Slavery is naturally phased out as technology advances to the point it is more cost effective to have a machine do it than a human do it. Whatever that task may be.

While not the best research, a quick and dirty google search says that slavery lasted in America for 245 years- and, obviously, used at large for longer than that. While there is no reason to suspect that Red Eye's operation would use slavery for that long, there's also not a lot of reason to believe it wouldn't. With his little enhancements he might be able to live long enough to oversee this, but if someone with as much ambition and less self-righteousness took him out of the picture it's not a stretch of the imagination to see things staying the miserable course for a long time.

On that note, was there ever anything in the original FO:E to suggest cyborgs lived longer than unaugmented creatures? Because if that's the case, Calamity's little enhancement kind of makes his relationship a bit tragic.

[Guest]

Think it depends on the augment. If you get your heart replaced that part is potentially going to last longer, but the rest of your organs still I'd imagine would have a shelf life. Eventually your kidneys and liver will cease to function. To be immortal I'd think you'd have to have most if not all of your vitals replaced. I don't think Calamity did. Did he?

[Valikdu]

Some people keep saying that Somber has done dozens of retcons to FoE.
I haven't actually noticed any direct contradictions in the lore. He'd expanded and/or explained a lot of things, sure; like, how the Enclave aren't really *all* incompetent dicks.
It's like what Obsidian would do with a sequel to another company's game.

I know for a fact that some of these people haven't even bothered reading PH, so... yeah.

[Guest]

Isn't it all but stated that Spike does not leave his cave in FO:E until the final battle, but in PH he leaves it to save BJ? That would be a contradiction. What about Pinkie being killed by Psalm instead of the Balefire bomb? Sure it's not explicitly stated she died to it but it's heavily implied. What about Psalm again with Big Mac?

Not that I personally have a problem with those examples. I don't, they don't bother me. But you can't mock them for those complaints in one breath and in another say the mere thought of changes is disrespectful or implies a lack of respect.

If it's the people that have said they don't read PH that want to make changes to it, then fine. I can see where you'd say that's disrespectful.

[Somber]

It is, given that I wrote those scenes before then end of FoE.  Pinkie's dead WAS a contradiction.  I really... really really really... really didn't like the thought of her burning to death or dying slowly of radiation or committing suicide via pills.  So I wrote that scene.

There are little bits and pieces that are off, but very few of them are INTENTIONAL contradictions.  The closer you get to the ending, the more there are.  Mostly because things happen in the end of FoE that I simply can't agree with.  Like that the Enclave civil war was over in six months and no further raptors were lost.  I'm sorry, but that's not how civil wars end.  Also, I need raptors to destroy!  I would have thrown in a real Thunderhead too if Kkat hadn't explicitly said there were only four.

Also, you have to keep a eye out for Seraphem.  I tried to engage him several times on TvTropes and the IRC.  Sadly, we are never going to come to an accord.  Guy has serious issues when it comes to FoE, and since he utterly, adamantly refuses to read PH, I refuse to grant him an ounce of my respect.  He's the bulk of "PH changes and descrates FOE cause Somber's a no good so and so."  So yeah.  Nemeses.  Go figure.

[Sponsored content]