Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion

[Valikdu]

Ah yes, Seraphem.
Recently, he annoyed everyone so much that he'd been banned, and explicitly forbidden from speaking about PH anymore.

[Somber]

Wow.  I'm not sure if that is sad or incredibly funny.  (On reflection... yeah, I'm laughing.  I'm such a schmuck...)

I look forward to reading MN7, finishing Pink Eyes, and reading Heroes.  One thing I'm going to be keeping an eye open is 'does the story of MN7 change?'  From what I hear, the story goes from an 'obtaining freedom' story to a 'saving the city' story.  So I wonder if that's true or not.  Heroes I know nothing about.

As for people wanting to 'rewrite' Horizons?  They are welcome to... so long as they REWRITE it and don't simply edit out parts they don't like.

I suggest they aim on making it a smaller story.  4 years is a lot of life to spend on a fanfic unless you really care about it.

Also: Red Eye.  He was an idiot.  I dunno who it was, but some one said that the legion follows Caesar, not the ideas of Caesar.  I don't know how he imagined any of that would be sustainable after he left.  He was effectively creating a feudal aristocracy with steel mills rather than farms.  That clashed badly with his 'we're all equal' line.  His 'apothesis' was a let down for me too.  I would have respected him more if he was planning on being an actual leader rather than taking himself out of the picture.  And then there's the forgetting Littlepip's TK...

Sigh...

I will always have great respect for Kkat as a writer, for the Canterlot chapter alone if nothing else.  But everything from the death of the Goddess to the end of the second to last chapter just irks me...  But that's something I don't want to get into.

[Guest]

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.

Again, I don't have a problem with the changes. What I have a problem with is disregarding those complaints and then sugesting that thinking to make a change to PH would be disrespectful. (I know you didn't do that Somber but that seems to be the sentiment here.)

It's either one or the other. Either making changes to a story is disrespectful (In which case most fanfiction, abridging, fanart hell most fanworks in general to greater or lesser extents are disrespectful.) or it's not.

Again, if the person who wants to make changes hasn't even read the story to begin with and decided they like it better if things happen differently I understand where the view that a lack of respect is what's driving their actions come from. I could agree with that.

[Vinylshadow]

Imagine how short it would be if you applied common sense to every action...

[Downloaded Skill]

I really don't think there are a whole lot of contradictions in the first place. There are a lot of expansions which are plausible given the world and I think that should be just fine. I don't hold FO:E in the highest regard, I thought it was poorly written and overly video gamey, but the world Kkat gave us was a great gift. It deserves to be expanded on.

For example I really don't believe that Pinkie's death is a contradiction. Her eventual fate was still the same and the idea of a crazed chief of internal security being assassinated by a conspiracy is plausible considering how much conspiracy and ruthlessness defined Wartime Equestria.

[Vinylshadow]

I'm pretty sure Pinkie also wanted to die at that point, so Psalm was doing her a favor

Could you imagine if Pinkie was alive in the Wasteland?

[Guest]

I really don't think there are a whole lot of contradictions in the first place. There are a lot of expansions which are plausible given the world and I think that should be just fine. I don't hold FO:E in the highest regard, I thought it was poorly written and overly video gamey, but the world Kkat gave us was a great gift. It deserves to be expanded on.

For example I really don't believe that Pinkie's death is a contradiction. Her eventual fate was still the same and the idea of a crazed chief of internal security being assassinated by a conspiracy is plausible considering how much conspiracy and ruthlessness defined Wartime Equestria.

Contradiction

A person, thing, or situation in which inconsistent elements are present.

Pinkie's death is a contradiction by definition. In PH Pinkie dies by Psalm. In FO:E all evidence points to her being killed by the Balefire Bomb. In that instance PH is inconsistent with FO:E which makes Pinkie's death a contradiction.

[Downloaded Skill]

Not really. In Fo:E it was only implied, not out right stated. Pip didn't examine the bones enough to draw a definite conclusion / rule out other means of death. There is enough of a gray area here to call it an expansion in my opinion. A real contradiction would be that in PH Twilight had to hide books from Rarity's information control campaign while in Fo:E Rarity sent books to Twilight for safe keeping.

[Guest]

The story was not written with the knowledge that Psalm existed. Exactly how explicit does Kkat need to be? Those dots are so close together that any reader should be able to connect them. It is very, very clear how Kkat intended Pinkie to die.

Yes, it's not explicitly stated. But it is so heavily implied that I would definitely say it's still a contradiction a very real one.

[Downloaded Skill]

I think this is just going to come down to differences in our own writing philosophies at this point. We both agree that we shouldn't directly contradict the source material, but I'm more liberal with it while you are more conservative. Both have their pros and cons, but at this point we're just going to be arguing in circles for no reason whatsoever. Lets just drop it.

[Guest]

Fair enough, I'm fine with dropping it. But I'm a little confused, I don't care about the contradictions. I think that they are contradictions, but I don't think that makes PH bad or anything like that. I'm still reading after 70 chapters I clearly like it.

I know I sound like a broken record now, but I'm just bringing up the contradictions to illustrate the point that Somber has made changes to FO:E. If that's not disrespectful to Kkat then why would making changes to PH be disrespectful to Somber? Because you guys like PH more?

[Downloaded Skill]

Personally I don't care much about the whole rewriting thing. As much as I like PH it isn't perfect and there are problems with it. Some narrative, some characters, and some just come down to personal taste. If people want to "fix" it doesn't it show that PH has enough people intrigued that they want to essentially write recursive fanfiction about it? It's fully within their rights. I just wish they weren't such assholes about PH in general. It's perfectly okay not to like things, but there is no need to be a dick about it.

[Guest]

That I can agree with. Wish I had something to add but you've said it pretty much perfectly.

[Somber]

Thus far, the one person that asked me 'permission' to rewrite it wanted BJ to rape more males and have sex for her own enjoyment... you know, like she did in 99 before she realized it was institutionalized rape AND was raped herself.

[Caoimhe]

I don't understand why those that have a problem with it don't just write their own stories. If you want x to happen, just write a story with x happens. Make it original!

[Scienza]

Fair enough, I'm fine with dropping it. But I'm a little confused, I don't care about the contradictions. I think that they are contradictions, but I don't think that makes PH bad or anything like that. I'm still reading after 70 chapters I clearly like it.

I know I sound like a broken record now, but I'm just bringing up the contradictions to illustrate the point that Somber has made changes to FO:E. If that's not disrespectful to Kkat then why would making changes to PH be disrespectful to Somber? Because you guys like PH more?

No, it irks me because there's a difference between retconning and "fixing", and that's entirely in the attitude. One is not allowing the limitations of prior canon to hold you back, the other is asserting that you are better than the original content producer. It's arrogant as fuck. Sure, it's perfectly within their rights to do it, but that doesn't make it any less obnoxious. I guess this is just going to be one of those "ignore and try to forget" things for me.

Anywho, dropping the subject. What did we end up naming the shotgun?

[Icy Shake]

Thus far, the one person that asked me 'permission' to rewrite it wanted BJ to rape more males and have sex for her own enjoyment... you know, like she did in 99 before she realized it was institutionalized rape AND was raped herself.

Okay, I know that she wanted BJ to be more focused on her own pleasure during sex, but I don't remember her ever saying anything about more rape after leaving 99 (sorry if I'm wrong about that; I only intermittently follow the Chat Thread, and of course  wasn't privy to any conversations off Cloudsville); if that is in fact the case, I can't help but think that it's missing the point and the character by a wide margin. (Really, it's like a fascist Superman or parent-murdering Batman, outside of an Elseworlds context.) As for the other point I recall, having more top-level female characters (especially villains), I could see that working out fine without particularly major changes.

Oh, and I'll second Scienza that doing a rewrite is categorically different than a side story, but I think that as with any adaptation, it can be done with respect, whether major changes are made or not. But it'll depend on the attitude the team behind it approaches the project with.

[Caoimhe]

I don't know how anyone could read so many pages of PH and not understand the characters enough that the solution is more graphic rape. That's gross and there a better ways to show growth and empowerment (which I think PH has done properly).

Really if I were to improve on Somber's work in any way, it'd be to edit in post and simply isolate the "books" into clearer arcs for cohesion and add more reintroduction and conclusion at the end of each. Since it's not done yet you can't really tackle it head-on but that's the nature of a linear sequel like this published over a long period of time. 

Vanilla FoE's rush to make it into printed book form failed at this concept. They actually could have really made it into an interesting standalone tetralogy if KKat and co wanted to.

[Guest]

*snip*

If you're arguing that someone going into the changes with either malicious intent or the arrogance that their changes are objectively better is a bad thing then I'm not gonna disagree with you. But their is a massive difference between objectively better and subjectively better.

[Scienza]

*snip*

If you're arguing that someone going into the changes with either malicious intent or the arrogance that their changes are objectively better is a bad thing then I'm not gonna disagree with you. But their is a massive difference between objectively better and subjectively better.

I would agree were it not for the fact that thus far, it seems that most of the people involved seem to be presenting their subjectively better as objectively better.

[SilentCarto]

Kindness through cruelty, generosity through theft, these things would be remembered no matter how amazing and pure Red Eye's New Equestria became.

This. I refer to it as, "When the going gets tough, the tough enslave the weak."

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.

If that were true, there would be no need for abolition movements, and there would be no reason that abolition should have gone hand-in-hand with female sufferage movements. Furthermore, if technology was the bane of slavery, we should see slavery fading as technology took over those jobs. Instead, we see technologies such as the cotton gin fueling additional demand for slaves because it improved the efficiency of unpaid labor.

Slavery became unpopular (among wealthy white men) because a social sea change took place in Europe during the 1800s that revolved around the topics of freedom, human rights, and equality. It gave rise to not only the abolition movement, but also female sufferage, religious tolerance, and a string of new political ideas highlighted by the American (I know, I know, a little before 1800) and French Revolutions, Napoleon's rise to power, and so on through the advent of Marxist Communism. (History buffs, I'm sure there are any number of additional precursors, movements, and counter-movements that could be mentioned here. That could make up entire classes by itself, and I don't want to delve into the minutiae here.)

Point is, we definitely don't see cotton plantation owners saying, "Hey, this new steam tractor is working out great. Sorry about that whole 'buying you against your will' thing." Instead, we had a brutal war over it. I feel confident in proposing that Red Eye's society would continue to hold slaves until forced or shamed into releasing them.

In any case, I find it hard to believe that Red Eye would ever reach a point of "Hold, enough." There's always one more thing to build, one more project that needs the labor. It's like trying to find a good time to save when you're playing Civ or Alpha Centauri or Crusader Kings. It always seems like you have at least three or four things you need to remember to do in the next few turns, and by the time you get there, you have another six balls in the air and it's 2am and you forgot to study for that test tomorrow morning. Except the test is death and you forgot to teach your successor that slavery is bad, mm'kay?

True, he had proposed to let Pip take over and rearrange the society however she saw fit, but let's be honest -- he couldn't have expected to find a moral guardian of that magnitude when he put his plan together. That was purely a sop to overcome her objections to joining his apotheosis.

P.S. Littlepip, a moral guardian. HAH! (Seriously, the more I read of BJ's introspection, the more Pip scares me.)

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.

No, there wasn't, and I don't think that prosthetics themselves make someone long-lived. Project Steelpony is specifically a blueprint for near-total-conversion cyborgs, with all failure-prone organs replaced and what's left supported by integral repair and healing systems. That's what makes them practically immortal, not the fact that they simply have any augmentations at all. Neither Calamity nor Silver Storm has extensive enough replacements to affect their lifespans.

[Guest]

Anywho, dropping the subject. What did we end up naming the shotgun?

Per the current chapter rev., "[GUN NAME HERE]".

Temped to change my suggestion to "Nameless" just to be ironic.
The character reactions would be priceless.
Honestly, it almost works, in a way, given it's her first gun that didn't come with a name. It's just that such a name also shows a lack of passion for a gun she's been dreaming about since before she even left her stable, so I don't think it'd quite fit.

Honestly, as intense as Blackjack's gotta be to have the gun in her hooves, I feel it needs a strong name. One that reflects her enthusiasm and excitement at its use.

"The Gun With No Name"

[tylertoon2]

Kindness through cruelty, generosity through theft, these things would be remembered no matter how amazing and pure Red Eye's New Equestria became.

This. I refer to it as, "When the going gets tough, the tough enslave the weak."

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.

If that were true, there would be no need for abolition movements, and there would be no reason that abolition should have gone hand-in-hand with female sufferage movements. Furthermore, if technology was the bane of slavery, we should see slavery fading as technology took over those jobs. Instead, we see technologies such as the cotton gin fueling additional demand for slaves because it improved the efficiency of unpaid labor.

Slavery became unpopular (among wealthy white men) because a social sea change took place in Europe during the 1800s that revolved around the topics of freedom, human rights, and equality. It gave rise to not only the abolition movement, but also female sufferage, religious tolerance, and a string of new political ideas highlighted by the American (I know, I know, a little before 1800) and French Revolutions, Napoleon's rise to power, and so on through the advent of Marxist Communism. (History buffs, I'm sure there are any number of additional precursors, movements, and counter-movements that could be mentioned here. That could make up entire classes by itself, and I don't want to delve into the minutiae here.)

Point is, we definitely don't see cotton plantation owners saying, "Hey, this new steam tractor is working out great. Sorry about that whole 'buying you against your will' thing." Instead, we had a brutal war over it. I feel confident in proposing that Red Eye's society would continue to hold slaves until forced or shamed into releasing them.

In any case, I find it hard to believe that Red Eye would ever reach a point of "Hold, enough." There's always one more thing to build, one more project that needs the labor. It's like trying to find a good time to save when you're playing Civ or Alpha Centauri or Crusader Kings. It always seems like you have at least three or four things you need to remember to do in the next few turns, and by the time you get there, you have another six balls in the air and it's 2am and you forgot to study for that test tomorrow morning. Except the test is death and you forgot to teach your successor that slavery is bad, mm'kay?

True, he had proposed to let Pip take over and rearrange the society however she saw fit, but let's be honest -- he couldn't have expected to find a moral guardian of that magnitude when he put his plan together. That was purely a sop to overcome her objections to joining his apotheosis.

P.S. Littlepip, a moral guardian. HAH! (Seriously, the more I read of BJ's introspection, the more Pip scares me.)

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.

No, there wasn't, and I don't think that prosthetics themselves make someone long-lived. Project Steelpony is specifically a blueprint for near-total-conversion cyborgs, with all failure-prone organs replaced and what's left supported by integral repair and healing systems. That's what makes them practically immortal, not the fact that they simply have any augmentations at all. Neither Calamity nor Silver Storm has extensive enough replacements to affect their lifespans.

I'm gonna go with Silent's opinion on this matter. Red Eye, should he have lived or died would have created an engine of the makings of an aristocratic society topped by slavers and built upon the backs of a wasteland's worth of slaves. Once the troubled times ended all of his charisma and power would not have been enough to end the slavery in anything but maybe in name. Because it ain't about philosophy, it's about economics.

[Icy Shake]

Yeah, I'm gonna jump on this bandwagon and note that in the US case, the number of slaves was increasing over time, even as the importation of slaves was banned, and slaves as a portion of wealth in the slave states wasn't falling in the years leading up to the Civil War. Note, too, that you went from the assumption among the slaveholding states (or at least among their more distinguished representatives) around the time of the Constitutional Convention that slavery would die out on its own over time to Taneyism and rebellion over the election of Lincoln, who advocated ceasing the spread of slavery in the territories, but not abolition.

[Guest]

I would agree were it not for the fact that thus far, it seems that most of the people involved seem to be presenting their subjectively better as objectively better.

last post on this, promise:

[ARoundCorner]

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.

Why I enjoy murky: 

Yea, the starts of murky is pretty depressing and without many breaks. It got to the point where I didn't even want to read because it was suffocating. It really pounds in what it felt like to be a slave as you get a really nice picture of the slave mentality created by unrelenting oppression. It isn't something that can be changed over night. The lack of "main character win" enhanced the realism for me; it made murky feel like somebody who wasn't guaranteed to win.  In fact, at one point, I was even guessing the author might have murky (god bless) killed off in some pathetic insignificant way as an ending. Many times when reading murky I waited for the "main character wins because happy story" option, but it does not give its climax up prematurely. But when murky finally does have its "happy moments," it sends shivers down my spine, plasters a goofy grin on my face, and draws dark circles under my eyes (from being up all night). Those moments, when he manages to take another step out of slavery, make the chapters of gloom really worth it.

[O. Hinds]

Regarding Red Eye, I think that he would have been able to achieve phasing out slavery if he'd achieved his planned apotheosis, and I think he'd still stand a good chance of doing it even without apotheosis if circumstances and his cybernetics kept him alive for long enough.  With him dead, though, I agree with what seems to be the general opinion (well, mostly; there's an extra factor involved, but it's part of my headcanon and more created whole-cloth than based on something in FoE).

[Derpmind]

(well, mostly; there's an extra factor involved, but it's part of my headcanon and more created whole-cloth than based on something in FoE).

You've got some unlikely out-of-the-blue headcanon? Do tell!

Anywho, dropping the subject. What did we end up naming the shotgun?

Per the current chapter rev., "[GUN NAME HERE]".

Well then, let's take a look...

Chapter 71 - Ignition [Coming Soon]
“Darn it! Now you got me acting all sappy!”

[Vinylshadow]

Ignition?

Insert and twist to turn on

Take that how you will

[O. Hinds]

You've got some unlikely out-of-the-blue headcanon? Do tell!

Oh, well, there's a lot more of this in the headcanon thread, naturally, but I'll see what sort of quick summary I can make here. It deals with Red Eye's succession system. Protege is one of the bits of MN7 I have in my headcanon, but I think it likely that he'd, at best, manage a Gorbachev situation where he did succeed in ending slavery but broke the empire in the process. He might also just get killed.
The pony from my headcanon, using the name Red Rose during her time in Fillydelphia, was a fanatical follower of Red Eye and an ex-raider; she was, by the time of Fillydelphia's fall, in command of the Alpha-Omega guards. Red Eye also placed her after Protege in the line of succession, as he was aware that more or less the first thing she'd do upon taking power would be purging the empire of the insufficiently loyal; he thought that the purges probably wouldn't be strictly necessary and would quite possibly weaken the empire too much against external threats (instead, he was hoping that Protege would grow strong enough before anything took Red Eye out of the picture (not that he planned to die, but the mere existence of the succession is a contingency plan for that or similar circumstances), or at least that the threat of Red Rose taking over would keep Protege's rivals from simply killing him). As a fanatic leading a core group of fanatics who was aware that Red Eye's plan called for slavery to be abolished and smart enough to realize the same things you have about the likelihood of that in the future, she would have done it if at all possible. After becoming one of the remnant Red Eye warlords, she actually started blaming LittlePip and the NCR for prolonging slavery, since Red Eye, had he not been betrayed by LittlePip, would have made it obsolete and then imposed effectively harsh measures on anyone trying to perpetuate it.

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