[GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion

[Icy Shake]

Source

Welcome to the Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion Thread!
This is the place to discuss Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons, a Fallout/MLP:FiM crossover fic by Somber. Story discussion is on the left, group therapy to the right. Please try to schedule your emotional breakdowns when they don't conflict with anyone else's.

Rules
We have just a few simple rules here.

1. Don't put down Somber.
   
2. Project Horizons is a grimdark fic which deals with adult topics, so we might discuss subjects that some readers may find uncomfortable. Be mature about it.
   
3. If Somber or a member of the editing team says to end a discussion, please do so.
   
4. Spoilers abound. If you're not current on the fic, we recommend that you catch up before you read on.
   
5. Expect random discussions that may or may not have anything to do with the story.
   
6. Have fun!
   

People You Should Know
Somber: The author of Project Horizons, creator of Blackjack, maker of awesomeness, is a small gray mare who lives in the head of a guy named David. Ignore her claims of suckage.
Bronode, O. Hinds, swicked, and Heartshine: Your editing team. They make awesome writing look all shiny and pretty.
Snipehamster: Member of the editing team from Chapter 28 to Chapter 54. He made awesome writing look all shiny and pretty.
Kkat: The author of the original Fallout: Equestria. Not a participant in this discussion (yet), but you should be aware of her anyway. If you haven't read FOE, why are you even here? Go! Read!

Somber's Tip Jar
Thank-yous of the monetary variety may be made through PayPal. Simply click on Send Money, send it to  David13ushey@gmail.com and mark it as a personal gift.

Story Links
GoogleDocs chapter index - Links to every chapter, plus FOE and FOEPH resources, media, and story download formats.
.epub Format - Thanks to Scorch_Mechanic.
LaTeX ebook .pdf - Thanks to ThePowersGang.
Nallar's Fanfic Archive - An auto-updated collection of fics offered in a variety of formats including Kindle .mobi, .epub, and .html.

[Icy Shake]

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.

I'm pretty sure Psalm still has all of Lacunae's memories even though she isn't the amalgam that Lacunae was. It was her brain and those experiences wouldn't be lost with the thoughts and feelings others had placed in her.
So Lacunae is a part of what Psalm is now, too.

Yes, of course. I just meant that although Psalm retains those memories, Lacunae's actions, made as they were by a different but related person and under the external influence of the Goddess, are not necessarily very informative to what Psalm would have done, or wished to do.

[SilentCarto]

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.

I don't understand what you mean. Cogs was effectively Nightmare Moon Mark II. Not that she wanted to put out the sun or anything, but it's Luna's own worst impulses unbound by... well, sanity. She's been a monster before, so we know that's a part of her psyche.

The transformation is interesting, but I wouldn't ascribe it to a "better-fitting mind". Luna was skilled at shapeshifting, so explanations could range from fulfilling some subconscious desire of BJ's to her soul having more power available now that it's longer conflicted between "I'm a monster" and "that's wrong".

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.

Well, Psalm always hated killing. Shooting Big Mac broke her, and she took refuge in being a monster -- as she explained in this chapter, striving for a redemption she knew would never come.

[O. Hinds]

Icy Shake, sorry, but I've got another thing for you to look for. We appear to have over sixty uses of "EFS" vs. over one hundred and twenty uses of "E.F.S."
Thank you again and as usual for doing this sort of thing for us.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Unrelated to anything to anything, but I was thinking...

Given all the mind, soul and body fuckery Blackjack went through in the course of the story, I'm surprised there hasn't been such an exchange in PH already.

Well, unless you count the soul-meld scene with Luna. Or Happyhorn. But that's not quite the same thing, now, isn't it?

[Harmony Ltd.]

@wavemasterryx:

How to make your own Fancy Lads Snack Cake

(tried to tag it you so you would see it through the boo-project-horizons tumblr, but I wasn't sure you'd see it and your askbox is closed)

[WavemasterRyx]

@wavemasterryx:

How to make your own Fancy Lads Snack Cake

(tried to tag it you so you would see it through the boo-project-horizons tumblr, but I wasn't sure you'd see it and your askbox is closed)

Ah... long story short, it "shouldn't" be closed, but tumblr "is being tumblr" again...  Thank you for letting me know so I can try to fix it, or just make a post to let other people know...

And thank you for letting me know about the cakes too, it would be fun to try making them.

[O. Hinds]

Oh, actually, Icy Shake, regarding the E.F.S./EFS thing, you probably don't need to find every occurrence, just the chapter numbers. It would be easy to turn ever EFS in a chapter into an E.F.S. with an automated find and replace, and then I could run a second search for "E.F.S.." to take care of the extra periods left in sentence-ending usages. So that's (hopefully; I don't know your exact method) a bit less work for you!
(Sorry I didn't think of this earlier, if you've already done a lot of it.)

[Derpmind]

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.

I agree with much of what you said here. I've been commenting even less often than I normally do for the most recent chapters, and I think this is why. I really do still enjoy reading a new chapter of Project Horizons more than any other story. (And I can't believe that's still true after all this time.) But the most recent chapters just ask for too much emotion from me.

(Digression: I think the general limit for too much emotion might be much lower than the limit for too much scenery porn, or explosions, or hard decision thinking times, or character interaction dialogue stuff, or pretty much everything and anything else. What's up with emotions in stories anyways? Eh, brb a bunch of hours.)

I've only made 9 posts this entire year. How's that for depressing?

[O. Hinds]

Sorry, Derpmind.

[Icy Shake]

Sorry for the delay. I'll have something later tonight, tomorrow at the latest. It's in a lot of chapters, and I'm considering making a script to follow that would cover that and some other things (which together with the EFS issue, mean something for almost all chapters), and a few spot changes that would mess up the script.

[O. Hinds]

No problem. Thanks for doing all of this.
Will this pass just be for the EFS issue and those few other things, or would it be all of that in addition to a normal error spotting/chapter commentary post or post group?

[Icy Shake]

I'd just be dumping what I have as part of a separate post, which will also include a retread of 18 I've been sitting on since late last week and some miscellaneous other fixes.

[O. Hinds]

Ah. A long work session for me too then, probably. Well, it has to be done. Thanks!

[Icy Shake]

Right, here we go. I've tried to group things nicely, but since so many pages are involved, it might be better to just go in batches . . . I don't know.

Basically normal editing:

Now, footnote specific editing:

And the other find/replace stuff:

[O. Hinds]

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

but I suggest you check if -" works to find/replace it (-" finds -“ to replace with -”). I think it should based on using GDocs in view only, but if so, it will cut down on what would be searched for later (don't need -“, -”, –“, –”, or the start of quotation equivalents, just -" and –")

Sorry; I don't know how I'd go about doing that. Maybe paste copy and paste directional quotation marks from the chapter into the search box? None of us actually know how those work, I think; I just delete the old ones, put new ones in, and hope. It seems to work. Dashes are even worse; Bronode's the only one who seems to be able to do them, and he doesn't know why his computer does it. Whenever I actually want to put one in a chapter, instead of just using a double hyphen or waiting for Bronode, I find another dash somewhere and copy it.

I've tried to group things so, where applicable, you won't need to clear your clipboard

Thanks.

and they should either consistently have spaces between the notes (footnote, skill note, perks) or not.

Do you have a list of the chapters that still don't have such spaces? Sorry.

There's the footnote specific editing done (barring the above). Hopefully I didn't skip over anything. I don't think I did, though.

EFS… -> E.F.S.… (ellipsis to dot-ellipsis): 61

This does not actually appear to be in 61. I did find one in 62.1, though.

EFS -> E.F.S.…

I assume you meant "EFS -> E.F.S." (or "EFS. -> E.F.S." at the end of a period-terminated sentence) here? That's what I'm working with.

.... -> … (4 dots to ellipsis)

I didn't find this in 74, but I did find it in 75.1.

big string of hyphens (over 4 ----) -> nice line thing: everything up to 38

You listed that before, in the footnote specific editing section.

past here is pretty much adding things ignored before, but with a find/replace system and most chapters already open, there's less start-up cost, still, basically optional now though probably will be done if a printed book set is made:

Thank you for finding these, but thank you also for saying that they're optional; I think that I will indeed opt out of doing them now. As for the possibility of a printed book, well, we can deal with that when and if it arises.

Anyway, whew! That did indeed take a while, and yeah, appears to have affected most of the chapters. Thank you again very much for finding this stuff.

[ILM126]

Hey guys, how's it been going?

Just a quick thing here, I've used Project Horizons as part of my English Assignment. And while skimming some parts of the story, I've found a bit that I'm quite unsure of.

Ch49:

My comments:

[ILM126]

Ch49:

  And that part as well... Damn, going back to read old stuff hurts the heart :|

[SilentCarto]

I'm not sure if that the who Blackjack is referring to has been mentioned yet. When I first read it, I thought it was Princess Luna. But I'm now not so sure who it is after her encounter with Cognitium in the Core. Or it could be just some pony/creature that'll appear in the last chapter! :D

I'm absolutely positive it was Luna's soul. The green lightning was flashing in to strike at the person in the center, and when Cogs brought BJ to the center of the Tokomare, her Harbinger mages were zapping Luna's soul with green lightning in the middle of a swarm of motes to keep it contained.

[Icy Shake]

but I suggest you check if -" works to find/replace it (-" finds -“ to replace with -”). I think it should based on using GDocs in view only, but if so, it will cut down on what would be searched for later (don't need -“, -”, –“, –”, or the start of quotation equivalents, just -" and –")

Sorry; I don't know how I'd go about doing that.  Maybe paste copy and paste directional quotation marks from the chapter into the search box?  None of us actually know how those work, I think; I just delete the old ones, put new ones in, and hope.  It seems to work.  Dashes are even worse; Bronode's the only one who seems to be able to do them, and he doesn't know why his computer does it.  Whenever I actually want to put one in a chapter, instead of just using a double hyphen or waiting for Bronode, I find another dash somewhere and copy it.

Yes, copying in is about the only way I've figured out, but there may be key combinations that work. The way I've tended to deal with it is having a menu of characters I tend to use in a text editor—dashes, quotation marks, others. Got a fair amount of use out of é at my last job, where it was useful in differentiating between "cache" and "Caché," the programming language.

and they should either consistently have spaces between the notes (footnote, skill note, perks) or not.

Do you have a list of the chapters that still don't have such spaces?  Sorry.

All of the ones I'd have identified last night now look fine.

EFS -> E.F.S.…

I assume you meant "EFS -> E.F.S." (or "EFS. -> E.F.S." at the end of a period-terminated sentence) here?  That's what I'm working with.

Yes, that is correct.

[O. Hinds]

Yes, copying in is about the only way I've figured out, but there may be key combinations that work. The way I've tended to deal with it is having a menu of characters I tend to use in a text editor—dashes, quotation marks, others. Got a fair amount of use out of é at my last job, where it was useful in differentiating between "cache" and "Caché," the programming language.

I've got something like that for the line at the end of chapters, though I've not made a broader document of the sort you describe.

All of the ones I'd have identified last night now look fine.

Yes, that is correct.

Thanks!

[O. Hinds]

Just a quick thing here, I've used Project Horizons as part of my English Assignment.

Oh, neat! Any details you can and care to tell us?

[ILM126]

Yeah, I just handed it up today. Here's the GoogleDoc link, it looks totally different because Google just doesn't format all my fonts...

I couldn't get all of the timeline of Project Horizons down, but I did what I can with the time left ^^"

[O. Hinds]

...I wonder what your teacher will make of that. :)

(Oh, and trivia: I think I recall Blackjack's age coming up once in an out-of-story conversation as 21, but that may be inaccurate or out of date.)

[ILM126]

...I wonder what your teacher will make of that.  :)

(Oh, and trivia: I think I recall Blackjack's age coming up once in an out-of-story conversation as 21, but that may be inaccurate or out of date.)

Hmmmm, I'll just go with your estimate. But I'll raise it to 22.

[O. Hinds]

Ah, sorry, it seems I've been unclear; that's not an estimate of mine (unless I am misremembering the conversation even more than I previously thought within the realm of plausibility).

[ILM126]

Also, someone did a review on Chapter 76. Wow... Wish I could do that :P

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf30Az5Y2oY

[O. Hinds]

...I was going to watch it now, and then I saw the duration.  :)
Still, thanks for linking it.  I'll watch at least a bit, I think.

[Icy Shake]

Yikes, that's long. Well, might check out the audio this weekend, I do have a few hours of driving to do.

Over on Reddit Somber once said he saw Blackjack as 17, but I don't think anything to tack down her age with precision was ever put in the story. And he could have changed his mind since then.

[Icy Shake]

Putting her as older does have its advantages, and if nothing else that's sure who she seemed likely to become. Having her be a fair amount older than Glory would reinforce the impressions she made on her (to go with the strength, protection, generally finding Glory hiding in the floor). Makes the understanding gained outside the stable a more shocking departure, and how much she missed or didn't think about in the stable more meaningful, than if she'd been so young as well.

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