Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion

[O. Hinds]

Ah, thank you.

[Somber]

Thanks for reading, folks.  I'm sorry the scene was so hard, Ryx, but in a funny way, you shaped it.  Boo was going to die saving Blackjack from Cognitum, but she was so loved, particularly by you, that she was spared and I had Cog's menagerie save Blackjack... and get back her body... and yeah... everything.  After that, I really didn't have a use for her... until that very end with Blackjack.  So thank you for that.  You saved Boo's life.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

I'm glad to hear that.

[ILM126]

I had no idea why I was thinking about the Falcon 9...

Ch76 Quote:

[ILM126]

And another amazing chapter from the number one writer of anything fallout :D

[decumos]

I don't think that Blackjack will take Psalm with her (she have to stay alive for Brood), and I doubt she'll risk Scotch Tape's life (she promised P-21, after all), and also Bastard needs to stay as well to protect her. Moreover, I don't think she'll take any faction leader (e.g. Storm Chaser or Brutus), because they need to organise survivors.
Not sure about members of Littlepip's party. I think they all will stay behind as well, it's not their story, after all, they've already played their part.
I am convinced there's certainly gonna be one of Glory's relatives (Sky Striker or Dusk, but most likely the former) and Lancer (because Amadi is still alive). And probably Rover, because he knows the layout of the Tokomare, if I remember correctly. As for another one, I'm clueless

[Harmony Ltd.]

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

I'm glad to hear that.

Yeah, so, who do you expect to see and why?
I'm curious.

First, if I understood it right, she can take 6 people with her.

Whisper already occupies one slot.

I'd guess Pythia is going to come, if only because her previous help proved decisive (divination on the battlefield is a powerful weapon), and also because of her knowledge of the Eater. She has also proved to be more than able to defend herself, so she isn't going to be dead weight.

Four other slots...

My guess is that LP's crew is out from this one. I also have a feeling the Cyber Crusaders are out of this equation.

I suppose Rover is a must, given his knowledge of the Tokomare. I just hope he doesn't die, I have plans for that mutt...

Lancer, maybe? Cleaning up after the mess his dad left.

As for the twi remaining ones... It's probable one of Glory's family is going to force themselves in. Sky Striker? Hope he doesn't die either, 'cause he's a big political symbol and probably key in the future of Hoofington.

As for the last one, I'm not sure. My irony-sense tells me it should be Nails, because, well... Redemption is pretty much one of the main themes of PH, isn't it?

[decumos]

First, if I understood it right, she can take 6 people with her.

I may be wrong, but I think that she can take only 5 people with her, she herself is the sixth.

[WavemasterRyx]

Thanks for reading, folks.  I'm sorry the scene was so hard, Ryx, but in a funny way, you shaped it.  Boo was going to die saving Blackjack from Cognitum, but she was so loved, particularly by you, that she was spared and I had Cog's menagerie save Blackjack... and get back her body... and yeah... everything.  After that, I really didn't have a use for her... until that very end with Blackjack.  So thank you for that.  You saved Boo's life.

*hugs slowly* I'm very sorry for causing you so much trouble with her, sir... It is nice you were able at least to find a good reason for having kept her around... and I did think how the menagerie's counterattack turned out was a strong scene... Still, I'm sorry...

And I feel worse, because there's something I really want to point out, but it would be entirely too selfish of me to bring up more than I already have...

[O. Hinds]

*hugs slowly* I'm very sorry for causing you so much trouble with her, sir... It is nice you were able at least to find a good reason for having kept her around... and I did think how the menagerie's counterattack turned out was a strong scene... Still, I'm sorry...

Somber was thanking you for that thing you're apologizing for, you know. :)

And I feel worse, because there's something I really want to point out, but it would be entirely too selfish of me to bring up more than I already have...

Sorry about that. What sort of thing is it? Something you'd like to happen?

[WavemasterRyx]

Somber was thanking you for that thing you're apologizing for, you know.  :)

I know... and I am grateful... I just feel incredibly guilty for being responsible for such a major change... especially with how badly I misrepresent her...

Sorry about that.  What sort of thing is it?  Something you'd like to happen?

Well there's certainly plenty of things I might wish could happen (and shouldn't), but no, not quite...  I'll email you about it tomorrow, if that's alright, sir...

[O. Hinds]

I know... and I am grateful... I just feel incredibly guilty for being responsible for such a major change... especially with how badly I misrepresent her...

Your Boo may not be our Boo, but she doesn't seem like a bad Boo.

I'll email you about it tomorrow, if that's alright, sir...

I'm not sure just when I'll be able to get to it, but that's fine.

[Icy Shake]

Ugh, busy, out of town until yesterday, didn't get to reading it until last night. But hey, that's a bright side to this not being the last chapter, right?

Chapter Seventy Six Running Thoughts:

Chapter Seventy Seven Overall Thoughts:

Chapter Seventy Six Editing:

Other Editing:

Now to catch up with comments.

[hawkeye92]

Well, it's been a very long time- years probably. I haven't stopped reading and I am still looking forwards to the resolution. However, there's a one big niggling thing about this final part of the story that's bugged me pretty badly.
 

Spoiler:

 
It shouldn't really be taken as discouragement, it's intended as constructive criticism, even if the issue is more or less impossible to fix. I suppose it's more a recommendation for other people planning on writing a story, not to fall into that trap.

[O. Hinds]

@Icy Shake:
Ah, thank you.

Color mismatch between 60 and here

I've gone with 60, the dove-gray.

"everafter" has only been capitalized once out of 25 times ("Or maybe it thinks it’s protecting us from the Everafter." in 65)

I'll change both of those.

. . . Soon to collapse in an epileptic fit. Instead of going with Glory's advice and sticking to ranged weapons. Maybe it's a reaction to Glory's death.

I brought that up. Apparently it's a combination of not being skilled with a ranged weapon yet and having gotten some medical aid from the Collegiate.

See, this strikes me as pushing the dumb too far. Mere hours ago, Blackjack saw the Tempest, which she had heard about before, and weaponizing the S.P.P. was Luna's idea.

Sorry.

[SilentCarto]

Chapter 76 Commentary:

Editing:

[Icy Shake]

   

Your mother tasted like... apples...

This is... not a quote I recall or can find via document search. What? Is this the Eater speaking directly to her mind?

She's not remembering it perfectly. You're looking for Chapter 72:

“You really think of me as your mom?” I asked when we pulled ourselves together.

She rolled her eyes.  “Well, yeah.  I didn’t want to have sex with her either, and she was one of the few mares that made me feel that way.  Well, Rivets, but more ‘cause she was a million years old and her hoo-hah probably tasted like licking the mouth of a rusty gray water pipe.”

“More like a bag of stale grass chips,” P-21 interjected casually.

Scotch Tape and I both froze, staring at him, and I couldn’t help but shudder.  Scotch scrunched up her face.  “Daddy!  Ew!  I did not need to…”  She clutched her head.  “Ah!  Stupid brain!  Stop thinking about Rivets’s hoochie!”

“What?  It did.  With a slight tang of…” P-21 said as if he were recalling a old vintage of wine he didn’t particularly care too much for.

“Daddy!  Noooo!  There is no tang!  No tang!  Ah, stop thinking, dumb brain!” Scotch wailed.  She covered her ears with her hooves, chanting loudly, “La la la, not thinking about Rivets’s tangy hoochie...”  She paused and cried out, “It’s not working!”

“Ha!  It takes years of practice to master the art of not thinking about it, Scotch Tape,” I said with an amused smile.  Then P-21 looked at me, his eyes narrowed.  “What?” I asked him, arching a brow.  His lips curled in a small smile, and I felt a little nervous sweat run down the back of my neck.  “What?” I repeated nervously, flushing.

“Your mom tasted like… apples,” he said with such certainty that I knew, from that point on, I would never be able to eat Sugar Apple Bombs without thinking about the part of my mom I wanted to think about least.

“Oh…” I closed my eyes.  “I… didn’t want to know that.  Why did I have to know that?”

“You’re evil, Daddy,” Scotch Tape said with a pout.

You might not recall it because it wasn't the original version: this was added in as part of the replacement for (trying to think of how to put this in a way acceptable on this forum . . .) Scotch's "not in my eye!" moment, which had drawn complaints.


Oh, unrelated, but Charity's part of the chapter, and something I heard today, made me think of another way she could introduce herself (in addition to “Welcome to Charity’s, where we ain’t”): "I'm Charity, as in 'all proceeds go to.'"

[O. Hinds]

@SilentCarto:
Ah, thank you.

Eh? When did Lightning Dancer die? She was at the party in 70, but I can't find a mention of her death since then.

It's not explicit, but see this bit:

The dead look on Dusk’s face as she hugged an Enclave helmet to her chest, eyes staring past me.

I seriously have no idea what she's talking about.

Sitting in front of the Eater's big soul beam gun thing.

I found your commentary amusing. :)

Oh, unrelated, but Charity's part of the chapter, and something I heard today, made me think of another way she could introduce herself (in addition to “Welcome to Charity’s, where we ain’t”): "I'm Charity, as in 'all proceeds go to.'"

Hah!

[SilentCarto]

“Oh…” I closed my eyes.  “I… didn’t want to know that.  Why did I have to know that?”

“You’re evil, Daddy,” Scotch Tape said with a pout.

Ah, okay. Thanks. I do remember that now.

Oh, unrelated, but Charity's part of the chapter, and something I heard today, made me think of another way she could introduce herself (in addition to “Welcome to Charity’s, where we ain’t”): "I'm Charity, as in 'all proceeds go to.'"

That would be pretty funny!

Eh? When did Lightning Dancer die? She was at the party in 70, but I can't find a mention of her death since then.

It's not explicit, but see this bit:

The dead look on Dusk’s face as she hugged an Enclave helmet to her chest, eyes staring past me.

Ohhh. I thought that was her own helmet and she was broken up over Glory's imminent death, just like the rest of the family.

I seriously have no idea what she's talking about.

Sitting in front of the Eater's big soul beam gun thing.

I guess I didn't get the impression she was anywhere close to the line of fire, since it fired once already without hitting her.

I found your commentary amusing. :)

Why thank you!

[O. Hinds]

Ohhh. I thought that was her own helmet and she was broken up over Glory's imminent death, just like the rest of the family.

Ah, sorry.

I guess I didn't get the impression she was anywhere close to the line of fire, since it fired once already without hitting her.

Then it turned to aim at her, though.

[SilentCarto]

I guess I didn't get the impression she was anywhere close to the line of fire, since it fired once already without hitting her.

Then it turned to aim at her, though.

Oh, okay. I see now. I guess I wasn't following that bit very well. I didn't really get the impression that BJ was trying to kill herself so much as just not recognizing the danger.

Scotch Tape gave Sweetie Bot a slightly uneasy half smile. “Um.... nice. Have you always had that artillery in your horn?”
“What can I say,” Sweetie Bot replied with a carefree shrug. “My little Horsie always loved mares of a... higher caliber.”
“...That was terrible,” Scotch replied.
“Indeed,” Sweetie Bot said, annoyed. “My mandatory praise protocol escaped the purge command when Horse set me free.”

I... uh... I want to laugh, but most of my brain is just going, "Wut?"

...so, uh, bad joke?

Nah! Well, yes, but I enjoyed it. I'm mostly just sharing Scotch's reaction to the revelation that, as she says, Sweetie has artillery in her horn.

[SilentCarto]

I walked forward, and despite the crowding, they made way for me to pass. As I did, so many reached out to touch me in passing, not obscenely, but as if it make sure I was real.
“Princess,” I heard so many say over and over again. “She’s back. She’s going to save us.”

They're really attaching a lot to a cool mane, given the prevalence of various types of alicorn and cyber-alicorn around.

That actually makes a lot of sense. In the post-IMP world, the mane is what marks the difference between a mere alicorn and a Princess.

You can only have a soul that’s not yours for so long before it just squishes the mind into a new shape.

Well, Cognitum seemed to manage for a few days while basically retaining her old patterns of action. Maybe a little more nuts? Hard to tell off of such a high base. And difficult to say if her time applies to Blackjack's or not. Seems, also, likely though that the process would go faster with Blackjack, since she had more physical transformations than Cognitum as a result of the body-mind-soul combination.

Cogs was already Luna. Well, Luna plus 200 years of drift, but that's still pretty close. It's not a round hole filing off the edges of a square peg, at any rate.

See, this strikes me as pushing the dumb too far. Mere hours ago, Blackjack saw the Tempest, which she had heard about before, and weaponizing the S.P.P. was Luna's idea.

Well, there's kind of a difference between being able to deny the sky to your enemies or hit their camps with tornadoes, and being able to actually do something with it when you're "danger close" with the enemy. It could probably have been phrased better, though -- something like, "What's she going to do, tornado us all together?"

Well, better late than never, I suppose.
ETA: Or, maybe they did give it to her from the start. With a real stretch, the initial description might fit Psalm in addition to Velvet.

It was always in Psalm. That's why her chest was bandaged when she was shielding during the battle. Her pacifism is new, but she was explicitly staying out of the fight there -- I guess when she broke Penance, it was symbolic of more than just destroying her old gun.

[Icy Shake]

I walked forward, and despite the crowding, they made way for me to pass.  As I did, so many reached out to touch me in passing, not obscenely, but as if it make sure I was real.
  “Princess,” I heard so many say over and over again.  “She’s back.  She’s going to save us.”

They're really attaching a lot to a cool mane, given the prevalence of various types of alicorn and cyber-alicorn around.

That actually makes a lot of sense. In the post-IMP world, the mane is what marks the difference between a mere alicorn and a Princess.

In some respects yes, others no. Put better, it would have stressed how those other forms might encourage skepticism. Also, Cognitum had the mane and tail, but the admittedly limited view we saw of people's reaction to her (and it may have been the wrong cross-section of the population, consisting in large part of various higher-ups) did not, that I can recall, include anything like that.

You can only have a soul that’s not yours for so long before it just squishes the mind into a new shape.

Well, Cognitum seemed to manage for a few days while basically retaining her old patterns of action. Maybe a little more nuts? Hard to tell off of such a high base. And difficult to say if her time applies to Blackjack's or not. Seems, also, likely though that the process would go faster with Blackjack, since she had more physical transformations than Cognitum as a result of the body-mind-soul combination.

Cogs was already Luna. Well, Luna plus 200 years of drift, but that's still pretty close. It's not a round hole filing off the edges of a square peg, at any rate.

Again, I have some mixed feelings there. The memories and narrative certainly have a bigger gap for Blackjack, but along other axes I think we can infer that she was actually much closer than Cogs, based on things like the choice Luna's soul made during their confrontation and the more comprehensive transformation. That said, changes to memories, the subjects/sister/etc. things, do plausibly seem like they would be more immediately apparent, especially given an internal vantage point. But it still strikes me as notable that about the only real change I noticed in Cognitum was the stronger insistence that she was Luna, which with what I've tended to see as very large deviations from the original in the copy seems strange.

Well, better late than never, I suppose.
ETA: Or, maybe they did give it to her from the start. With a real stretch, the initial description might fit Psalm in addition to Velvet.

It was always in Psalm. That's why her chest was bandaged when she was shielding during the battle. Her pacifism is new, but she was explicitly staying out of the fight there -- I guess when she broke Penance, it was symbolic of more than just destroying her old gun.

I think I missed that because of all the heavy action she'd already seen. I thought it was just an injury from earlier, since I didn't go check. But also, "pacifism" makes a much stronger association to Velvet than Psalm to me. Difficulty there is that having that be an aspect of Psalm's soul that is getting in the way strikes me as troublesome, since it's either very new, and thus I'd question associating it with her soul, or has always been present but for most of her experience kept her from playing her part to serve Luna and fight for Equestria. (Then again, although it seemed the soul was likely important to its operation, the mind probably is too, especially for the actual direction part.) But of course at this point I may also be running into the problem of putting too much stock in the conjectures of an unreliable narrator.

[Icy Shake]

Well, better late than never, I suppose.
ETA: Or, maybe they did give it to her from the start. With a real stretch, the initial description might fit Psalm in addition to Velvet.

It was always in Psalm. That's why her chest was bandaged when she was shielding during the battle. Her pacifism is new, but she was explicitly staying out of the fight there -- I guess when she broke Penance, it was symbolic of more than just destroying her old gun.

I think I missed that because of all the heavy action she'd already seen. I thought it was just an injury from earlier, since I didn't go check. But also, "pacifism" makes a much stronger association to Velvet than Psalm to me. Difficulty there is that having that be an aspect of Psalm's soul that is getting in the way strikes me as troublesome, since it's either very new, and thus I'd question associating it with her soul, or has always been present but for most of her experience kept her from playing her part to serve Luna and fight for Equestria. (Then again, although it seemed the soul was likely important to its operation, the mind probably is too, especially for the actual direction part.) But of course at this point I may also be running into the problem of putting too much stock in the conjectures of an unreliable narrator.

My headcanon is that Psalm never liked fighting (though I think that's always been illustrated in the story). She never liked killing. It upset her every step of the way and her special talent was the only reason she could keep going, putting her faith that Luna and Goldenblood knew what was best for her. When she became Lacunae she was saddled with ever more fears, regrets and depression. She continued fighting because the Goddess forced her to.

It sounds like we're mostly on the same page, but weighting aspects differently. I took the obvious long-run discomfort with fighting and killing, but doing it anyway because she trusted that in the bigger picture it was the right thing to do, or at least what she had to do, even at the cost of great and long-lasting personal pain, to be suggestive of (at least in some respects) strength rather than weakness, a form of courage. Looking at it from a different perspective could of course yield the opposite, but one of the key points is that she wasn't subordinating her own discomfort to just anyone, but those she had faith in, so insofar as that goes I'm not sure it works as a particularly strong case that it would likewise apply with the still-violent Brood.

I wasn't considering Lacunae too much, due to the differences in circumstances and who they were, even if Psalm was a large part of her.

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