Sister forum[GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
+39
Somber
RoboRed
CD
SilentCarto
Valikdu
Icy Shake
neoaustin
Frost
Rayndalf
nallar
Gadget Steamhoof
MSCA
Elden Andel
joltius
Tacoman587
DotRook
Vexd
Scootayay
Admiral Stoic Rum
TB3
FoolNeim
Defrak
Bootleg
tylertoon2
Katarn
Epsilon
Scienza
The Truth
Borsuq
PeppyJoe
decumos
Evilgidgit
JadedPony
atikin
FeatherDust
ILM126
Derpmind
WavemasterRyx
Harmony Ltd.
43 posters
Page 11 of 16
Page 11 of 16 • 
1 ... 7 ... 10, 11, 12 ... 16
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by O. Hinds Thu Nov 05, 2015 2:32 am
Well, I still haven't been able to get NV running again; I'm not especially optimistic about my chances of making 4 work in the near future.
O. Hinds- Zebra Engineer
- Posts : 4863
Brohoof! : 383
Join date : 2012-05-09
Character List:
Name: Ris Haends Aeronauticus
Sex: Male
Species: Zebra
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by SilentCarto Thu Nov 05, 2015 11:13 pm
Thanks for the warning!
SilentCarto- Alicorn
- Posts : 1585
Brohoof! : 393
Join date : 2012-05-08
Age : 45
Location : Texas
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by Icy Shake Sat Nov 07, 2015 9:34 pm
Whew. Finally got around to a second read/writeup for seventy seven. I hope I'll be able to get to the Epilogue before Somber gets it on Fimfiction, but at this rate . . . 
- Chapter Seventy Seven Running Thoughts:
- We were nine. Nine going into the deeps beneath Hoofington, facing monsters and abominations from the pits of madness and horror. Nine with one goal: to stop the Eater of Souls from destroying the world... inside thirty minutes.
On the prose side, love the open. Simple and dramatic, though it probably functions better in the context of a serialized novel than one published all at once since it has a feeling of getting the reader caught back up. Plus side, it raises questions about the number being inconsistent with what had previously been said about how many could be taken, which is dealt with.
Someone had hastily welded a cowcatcher of sorts to the front and sheet metal to the safety railing around the side of the car to offer some protection to those ponies who now dove down into the heart of darkness.
Besides the literary reference, I enjoy the irony that this "heart of darkness" is associated with the brightest of stars, which had as its goal pushing back the darkness on the edges of the universe.
The world around us screamed, kept at bay by only the tiny little singing shards of hope most of us wore.
And this reminds me of the same thing.
9: Blackjack, Whisper, Dusk, Crumpets, Pythia, Psalm, Lancer, X, X
“See? Aren’t you glad you brought me along?” Pythia said cheerfully.
“I didn’t bring you! You stowed away! I specifically said ‘no fillies or colts allowed’!” It had pained me to use that to deny Scotch Tape, but I couldn’t take her down here. Not after what I’d promised.
It was a good way of handling the tension between the problems of taking Scotch and how Pythia clearly belonged on the team. Having Blackjack feel bad about how she went about it is important for consistency with her believing Scotch isn't actually a child, but using that purported principle gave her a way to protect Scotch from both the dangers of the mission and knowledge of the promise. Amounts to Blackjack taking on the burden of Scotch's resentment over this to keep her from blaming herself for Blackjack leaving P-21.
I held out a wing. “You’re supposed to be this tall to stop the apocalypse!”
There's always time for a one-liner. :D
9: Blackjack, Whisper, Dusk, Crumpets, Pythia, Psalm, Lancer, Aries, X
“Fortunately, the layout hasn’t changed much. We’re almost to the medial transfer ring. After that, we’ll go into the inner...”
Still find this hilarious.
Magic reached out and caught the limb before it fell off the car, immediately returning it to the injured mare. “Shhh,” Psalm said as she touched her horn to the wound. “Hold still. It’s a clean cut. If I’m quick enough...” The glow of magic flickered briefly.
Though there are some ways around it (as discussed in the past, the very clean cut etc.), this strikes me as a strange new power for Psalm to have now compared to needing healing spells from the Goddess previously. Hydra strikes me as a less obtrusive way of getting the same result.
“Use math,” Lancer growled. “You’re probably delivering us straight into its maw.”
“Eh. That would be boring. And stereotypical. Bigot,” the filly said casually. He started to retort when she shouted, “Switch coming up now!”
Pythia was one of the best things to come out of the last several chapters of PH, and I look forward to more of her in Homelands. Should also note the nice contrast between her here and in the rough draft of the first chapter there, where in the more mundane situation of being surrounded by a bunch of other zebras, she acts more vulnerable than she does here. Context matters, and this is an example of using that well.
“You nearly bury everypony alive once, and nopony lets you hear the end of it,” she said sulkily.
I'm pretty sure Blackjack's done that at some point. The key there is to then do other things which nearly get everyone killed, so they don't just focus on the one. Also get boats dropped on you.
“One more!” Pythia said. “Then we transit to the inner ring. We should be able to get to the Eater’s shaft from there!”
First the "medial ring" thing and now this. :P
You can't stop me from reading these things in!
Except for the predictable gaps for the switches that let the turret fire through, things were looking up.
Then bright yellow lights glared brightly behind us, and I turned...
The monsters had trains of their own.
Three of them.
And they had mouths.
Nice use of syntax for emphasis.
And Sweetie Bot makes nine.
“Gladly,” Sweetie Bot said. “Recharging. One percent...” She paused for several seconds. “Two percent...” We stared at her, and she flushed, “Oh, no one complains when stallions have to take a few minutes afterwards!”
That was just plain a great line.
But he’d taken his eyes off the hounds. One of them sprang through a gap in the pillars, bounded once, and snatched him up whole in his maw like a dog with a bone, only his head and hindhooves sticking out from the sides as it began to thrash wildly about. I leapt at it, silver sword slicing neatly through its head, but the instant Lancer was freed, the dozen or more holes left in him began to gush blood. The halves of the hound I’d severed were busy pulling themselves back into new and deadly forms.
Looking like the first death of the mission.
But he couldn’t. His eyes were glazed and unfocused as he crumpled in on himself.
One, a dusty voice chuckled.
Yep.
The mare nodded, and her grenade machine gun turned the tracks behind us into an impassable tangle. Unless the train grew legs or something... which wasn’t all that impossible.
Ugh... I fucking hated this place...
Might as well keep up the refrain right until the end.
“What do you want, Maiden?”
I didn’t answer for a moment. “I want people to stop dying,” I answered as I stared at his body.
Oh, with the added context of the conversation with the Dealer later, this is just delicious.
He screamed like a thousand backed up sewer pipes bursting all at once and rammed his hoof at us.
That's a nice simile.
“Goat music... Ramsomething or other.”
“Perfect,” Whisper said as she launched herself into the air. The Legate’s immense hoof streaked down towards us, but she skimmed its surface, drawing a dotted line of power hoof detonations, carnage fountaining behind her and twisting the hoof’s trajectory to send it smashing against the wall of the shaft above us. I couldn’t understand the song’s lyrics, but I didn’t need to. The sentiment was clear enough.
The move back to talking about the song seems like a bit of a non-sequitur to me without relating it to the action being described.
“If there’s any star out there that will help me, I’ll take it. Whatever games they want to play, I don’t care. I need to win here.”
And this looks like the second times she's called upon the stars, maybe the third if anything in 34 might have counted.
I gave the sword a swish through the air beside me and disappeared, reappearing before the gaping, grotesque hole in his chest. Hot, wet air and the stench of a slaughterhouse hit me like a wall, but there, in front of me, lay a quarter of his heart, no bigger than my hoof.
. . . “And while I’d love for you to watch more of your friends die, I think you’ve experienced enough of that.” I smelled bile. “Time for lunch.”
That detail of it being the idea of her friends dying raising a physical reaction from her where the stench and sight and sound of the Legate's form did nothing is nice.
“Do not mistake this for compassion. I have buried legions of my children, and my children’s children. One learns not to get attached.” That cunning grin returned. “As you likely know by now.”
Maybe, but he had still been attached enough to hesitate. I had no illusions about saving the Legate, but he wasn’t the Eater. The Legate had been a person. A horrible person who needed to die, but a person. “Maybe,” I yelled back, “but I’m a slow learner.”
Kind of connecting the old "not-smart" thing, greatly lessened in various respects over time, with the faith, hope, and love that have kept her from becoming her antagonists.
As one, blade and jaws fell, the latter snapping shut on her wings with a wet crunch even as the former cleaved right through the stone. . . .
As I pulled, though, she gave a screech of pain, and I saw that the tatters of her wings had gotten stuck between two of the immense teeth. We shared a moment, just one, and then without hesitation I brought the sword around and severed her wings in one smooth slice.
Now, having another case of a friend losing her wings on an underground trip is interesting, the more so with Blackjack having to sever them herself. Too bad there wasn't much time for a flash of guilt or pain over the reminder of Glory.
“Fuck. Fuck,” Whisper muttered over and over again, taking the potion and drinking it down. When Pythia offered a syringe of Hydra, though, she immediately waved it off with a furious glare.
I like the point about Whisper valuing her and Stygius's baby over her wings, but them having Hydra there does make the part with Dusk earlier stand out more since it didn't need Psalm.
I started towards it but stopped as a knifing pain blossomed in my side. I looked back at the sight of a length of steel bar punched clean through me. And another. And another. Lifting the sword, I carefully sliced through them all, then pulled out the lengths. After each, I chugged a healing potion as I felt my insides spilling out. “If only I’d had you on the moon...” I muttered as the dust settled around me.
Know it's bad when the person with the healing talisman needs potions.
“Recharging,” Sweetie Bot said with a definite buzz and crackle in her voice. “Diverting energy from repair systems to main pool. Mr. Horse is awesome–” Her green eyes flared. “Ugh... stop it!” We looked at her in bafflement. “I am in danger of losing my patience with that dumb protocol.”
Like both the Horse thing, and the more stilted speech afterward. Nice way of backing up the power issue. And of course there's the diverting power from repairs.
“Get ready to hit the stone in his gut,” she said to me, then turned at Pythia. “Tell me where to aim.”
“What are you doing?” I asked as she yanked out two sparking cables.
“Voiding my warranty. No time for a shielded interface...”
And now she's speaking normally again, as she's about to make the more dangerous personal contribution.
She stood there a moment, mane on fire, eyes aglow, the music freezing in a feedback screech, and sparking cables in her ears, and then, with a stuttering groan of “N-n-not tt-onight-t-t Horsiiiiie-e I h-have a h-h-headac-c-c-che…” from her speakers, her eyes popped like flashbulbs and left her still and silent.
It's no HAL-9000 and "Daisy Bell," but it's reminicent of it, what with returning to something related to the very earliest part of her programming. Also of course sad because it's bringing back the "fuckbot" part, but not being laughed off. On the plus side, it's showing, like Glory, where she came from, and how much she's changed. Would be interesting to see some of the offscreen development that happened after the transfer of Cognitum to Blackjack's body in the Core, since she ended up being pretty different between then and next showing up at the party in 69.
From the hole in the Legate slithered a torrent of guts larger than my body, but I ignored that foulness and focused on the crackling ball of dark magic that came with them.
Merely "larger than my body" could still be really small compared to a person the size of a skyscraper. Not really helping get a sense of relative scale there.
I carried her out of the pool to where Psalm had two healing potions and the Hydra waiting, and she eagerly sucked the potions down as the more potent drug regrew her epidermis. “That was the worst...” she started to say, then spotted Whisper’s truncated wings and looked back at her own featherless but still present ones. “Huh...”
“Yeah, fuck you. At least I don’t smell like barf,” Whisper retorted.
Whisper just gets so many good lines. And the attitude is great.
“I told you. I cannot die,” he said calmly, lips curled in sublime confidence.
The interaction of the different meanings and connotations of "sublime" here is nice.
On the one hand, the manner of the Legate's death is nice, playing the hubris of the two remaining antagonists against each other. On the other, there's not all that much connection to Blackjack/Luna as Maiden here, so some of that prophesy buildup is a little flat. But then I guess it was just that the Maiden would, not that it needed to be anything in particular making that happen.
The games and stakes stars play for... well... let’s just say all the higher powers interested have put their chips in the pot. Just need someone to deal the cards and see who hits, who stays, and who goes bust.”
Kind of mixing your poker and blackjack metaphors there, Pythia.
“Yeah.” I paused, then pulled out Vigilance and turned to Psalm. “Hey. Make sure this gets to Grace. I dunno which of them is going to use it, but they should have it,” I said as I passed the weapon to her. “You know... just in case...”
Classic move there.
“Oh, fuck that,” Whisper snapped. She trotted right up to me and brought her hoof across my muzzle. “None of that ‘giving your shit up before you die’ shit. You’re going to live, understand?” she demanded as she glared at me. “Rampage isn’t here to smack that shit out of you, so I’ll do it. And when you’re back, I’m going to kick your cybernetic ass to show everypony who’s the baddest momma in the Hoof. Got it?”
Kinda in denial there, but someone's gotta try. Also . . .
“Wait.” I gaped at her. “You’re pregnant?!” I never would have--
Me: "Oh my god, you fucking moron." I'd forgotten about that. I suppose she never did explicitly hear that (maybe, but the "and my grandbabies too" was pretty close), but wow is that some epic-level dense.
The beam lanced up, and the ceiling shattered. Girders, pipes, wires, wagons, trains, and concrete came cascading down in a deluge of ruin, filling the pit beneath me with the corpse of the city. Folly had cleared a path through the falling remains, though, and as they fell around me, none fell on me. I floated there in a void, the edges of the cavern invisible in dust, darkness, and rubble, green light surrounding me in a column descending from a hole like a great baleful eye. The junk overhead had resettled, but there was a way clear. It was just going to be a bit of a climb.
Great imagery here, and the local peace there as she prepares to ascend through the column of light, but not into the light, but her heart of darkness, her equivalent to the icy center circle of hell, is some nice inversion.
You’re just a hallucination. Proof I really am crazy.”
“Or proof that, even toting that goddess around, you’re still Blackjack,” the Dealer retorted. “Come on. Tell me. Who else are you going to confess your sins to?”
Okay, on the first read I did catch that she is her god and arguably an intercessor thereto, and thus so is he. But what I didn't notice was that, bringing up sins specifically as related to her cutie mark story, we implicitly see already what she's been hiding here, that she sees her cutie mark story as one of personal sin on her part.
“I won a round and got my cutie mark. End of story.” . . . “Even Cognitum said so. Victory was my special talent.”
Oh, she's trying so hard to believe that. It's kind of adorable, but also so, so sad.
Ah, but death now... that’s been a bit more consistent around it, hasn’t it?”
I froze, remembering that stupid card game with ponies I’d wanted as my friends. Maybe Marmalade could have been... or Daisy... if I’d just... done... something. “It was an accident.”
“Of course. Accidental deaths at card games. Happens all the time.”
Nice, punchy dialog here, and with those latter two not using speach tags was the right call.
“How many enemies have you had who haven’t died horrible deaths?”
There were some . . .
And she did try to keep many of them alive. Harder than almost anyone, possibly even including Glory later on in the story.
“It was just a card game. Just an accident...” I whimpered, clenching my eyes shut. Don’t think about it. She’d gotten up to go pee. Simple as that.
It wouldn't have been right to go the last chapter without including a "don't think about it."
“Woe to those poor fools who saw your flank and thought it was nothing more than playing cards. Even Cognitum’s assumption it was victory was dreadfully naïve. If anypony with a bit of sense had seen your flank, they would have run the other way and never stopped.”
Still disagree with the dreadfully naive thing, but he's making a point, not an argument.
Getting picked up after curfew was three days locked in rehabilitation cells, or flogging. So Hatches and I had one more round to see who’d leave first. I lost.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Then I was such a whiny baby about it that she agreed to leave first anyway. Nice about it, though. Claimed she had to pee,”
See, whining started working out well for Blackjack right from the start. So of course she'd keep doing it. :D It's her real talent.
She walked through, and it closed on her. Killed her… but I didn’t get in trouble or have to tattle on the others at the game,” I said lowly.
“So you won,” the Dealer chuckled. “And all it cost you was a life.”
“I didn’t kill Hatches,” I muttered. “I didn’t want her dead. She was nice to me. Closest thing I had to a friend!” I insisted as I resumed my ascent.
Ah, but it's not like she was the only friend who died around you, working for your goals, or as collateral damage. Scoodle. Glory, P-21. So many others. In fact, one of the first core friends for the story to die was one of the only ones where that wasn't quite the case: Lacunae.
“No? Well, who can tell for sure?” The Dealer took his hat off. “If I were anything... and I’m not saying I am... I’d call me the Wasteland.” And he gave me a little bow.
“The Wasteland?” I echoed as I stared at him.
“The desolation. The loss. The pain and sacrifice. I take you... all of you... and I make your lives living, bloody hell. I twist you. I tear you. I see what you’re all made of. How far you can go. Where, exactly, you break.” He showed cards of me after the Seahorse. Of me outside Maripony right before the bomb went off. Of Shadowbolt Tower dying. “And you... Blackjack... you’re a pony who should have fallen a hundred times over. I try, and I try, and I try... but I can’t quite get you.”
Still consistent of course with him being her crazy. But one of the things to love about this interpretation is that it's so, so easy to replace "the Wasteland" with "the author." Making, from a certain point of view, this at long last, or at any rate finally revealed as, an author-insert story. :D
“I get everyone sooner or later, though. Everyone. You think I’m some desolate landscape? I’m everywhere.
Well, the thing there is, she didn't think that. If she ever did, it was over by the trip to Thunderhead at the latest. So unfortunately this comes off a bit as talking more to the reader than to Blackjack.
“I am so generous, like you. I give people what they crave! What they yearn for more than anything!”
And what they want . . . is me. That's why time and again, they create me, large and small.
Six walls of magic surrounded the nest, radiating up towards the heavens.
This just made me think of Pythia's thing about chakras, and them being lucky the Legate had not seven but four heart shards. Makes me think that an interesting detail, of the magically significant numbers being different for the different species: seven for the zebras (Eschatic, anyway), six for the ponies. Maybe others, too. But a thought.
I spread my wings and flew around it, readying on my left the shotgun that held the moonstone rounds and on my right the riot shotgun, both now sporting glossy black finishes decorated with stars and moons.
I do love that little aspect of the great souls, and wonder if there was ever anything we could think of as consistent with it in the show.
I landed on a spine and felt my insides lurch. Though gravity still pulled me down, it felt as if an inexplicable force were tugging me sideways as well.
Oh! That is awesome, and of course I did not realize that first time around. Pulling on the souls in her moonstone heart, isn't it? Could also be related to it starting to be turned, or at any rate a signal that the field is strong enough, close enough to begin that process.
Then new towers sprang up around it, and a dome formed over the machine. More towers grew out radially, not just replacing the Core but crossing the river and growing across the land like a giant crystal. It was all very symmetrical and neat. There were parks marked on the display. Schools. Commercial centers.
First temptation. Like the highly symmetrical aspect.
I didn’t leave fate to chance: I pulled the trigger again.
That's an unusual way of putting things. I think I get it though: I didn't leave the fate of the world to chance. In shorthand.
“Duct Tape?” I asked thickly, sitting up in my bed, in my dirty, messy room. And she wasn’t alone, either. Scotch Tape stood behind her, watching me shyly. “Scotch?”
“Scotch Tape,” Duct Tape corrected, flushing a little. “Honestly, ponies are going to think I’m an alcoholic...”
So, recently, one of my new roommates (both Europeans) asked if we had any scotch. He was confused when I turned around and got out a bottle of whiskey. I was confused when that wasn't what he wanted. Turns out they don't use the full "scotch tape" so much where he was from. Something similar happened with "rubber," but there I was able to determine from context from the start he wasn't asking for a condom. Turns out that one was "pencil eraser."
~The More You Know~
I raced through the halls.
And a pair of hoofcuffs appeared around my forelegs. I tripped and went sprawling across the floor, rolling in the direction of the fall to raise myself to my hooves. “Hey, nice recovery,” Daisy said with a grin, Marmalade smiling behind her. “Guess being out for three months helped you keep on your hooves.”
Don't think that letting Blackjack keep her skills was a good call here, on the Eater's part. I mean, sure, if it's just going for the nicest world for her, fine, but believability? Not a selling point.
“I can come back later,” P-21 said evenly to the doctor, looking back at the dots and male mark on his flank. “I’ve lived with it for my whole life. I can wait a little longer.”
She immediately flushed. “I’m sorry you had to wait at all. Now that we’ve got a sane Overmare, hopefully things can get better.”
“Sane... Overmare?” I asked weakly.
“Oh, right. You missed a lot,”
Yeah . . . everyone going along with it no problem? Yet harder to see (still a nice idea, though). Acting like they were for emancipation all along, and it was all the Overmare's fault? Could totally see that.
Overmare Gin Rummy had learned of the Overmare’s plot to kill Duct Tape with the terminal and sell us out to raiders, deposed her, and then, a few weeks later, risked opening up the stable to trade with the Wasteland.
This has some logical problems . . .
Would she have freed the stallions?
Not in a million years.
My mom had been a good mare, but she’d believed in 99. She’d never shown the slightest concern or consideration for their well-being beyond what was needed for them to service the mares. She liked stallions based on how they’d performed sexually, not for the people they were. She’d never hesitated to retire one, even my father. As much as I hated to admit it, Mom had been complicit in their abuse.
All very plausible, and consistent with what we've seen, but probably sold at a level above what's really been established, or at least what I remember. Tough spot, since it would have had to have been all in chapter one, or flashbacks. And only so much you could get there, especially without it coming off as a strange focus. Now, the difference I suppose is whether it's prompted or not, and whether anyone from outside would have raised much of a stink. I'd absolutely believe that if nobody brought it up, she wouldn't. On the plus side, there aren't many who would go out of their way to take issue with it. Bottlecap would probably keep it to herself or complain, but not do anything. The VC might have a real problem with it, though. Priest. Not that they could force a change, but they probably wouldn't hang out enough with 99 as-is to really make it into the stories that much if they knew about 99.
If I just killed myself, I might be offing my ability to fight back. I had to reject this dream.
There was one way...
And with merely the inclusion of "just", and the use of "one" instead of "a", and an ellipsis in place of a period . . . the whole feeling changes dramatically. Because at that point there really is only one thing it could mean.
1. I loved the second dream.
2. Finally getting some Luna this chapter!
Books decorated the walls, though many of them were my own notebooks on various ponies I kept tabs on. Ponies who needed my help when they were alone and sleeping.
I kinda like this here, where it seems like it'll be more about watching them in more of a counter-espionage/law-enforcement way. And it's defused just like that. It's already starting to play to Luna also being more like the pony she seems to wish she were.
“Peace treaty?” I set the pad down. “How? That’s not possible.”
“I used to think so too,” Celestia sighed. “I just couldn’t bear it. But you persevered where I failed, and the Caesar has finally admitted that continued war will simply result in megaspell annihilation.”
Wow, Celestia thinking it impossible, and from, it sounds like, the zebras' side?
“I haven’t been very helpful. I thought abdication would ease my conscience and let me focus on the school, leaving you to sort out my mess. My... meddling... at Shattered Hoof didn’t help.”
Well, I'm ready to agree with all of that, at least. With Celestia realizing all of it? Maybe.
“This is a dream,” I murmured.
“A dream come true,” Celestia corrected in that vaguely annoying way she had. She probably didn’t even know she did it. “Come. Everypony is waiting.”
Princess-splaining? 'Cause Celestia, between the two of you, one is by all indications a unique and unparalleled expert concerning, practically an incarnation of, dreams. And it ain't you.
Goldenblood lingered back behind and to the right of my throne, wearing only formal castle livery like the rest of my servants.
Now that's potentially interesting, given the apparent still-existence of the O.I.A. in this dream.
Ah. Still seems to be him, or very similar role.
“The zebras admit fault in instigating and prosecuting the war. For this, the zebras beg forgiveness,” the stallion read out, his voice ringing; the zebra’s jaw worked, his eyes staring straight ahead. “The Equestrian people accept and give it, in exchange for economic restitution for the damages of the war.”
Okay. So far, so good.
“The zebra people admit fault in misappropriating ancient superstition for propaganda purpose. The zebras formally recognize that Princess Luna is not the entity known as Nightmare Moon, and beg forgiveness for their insult.”
Yeah, I'd buy this.
“The Equestrian people give forgiveness for this insult, provided the zebra people allow pony moderators to ensure this lie is stripped forever from zebra lore.”
And now we're moving into Crazytown. Seriously have trouble seeing this as something Luna would want, even/especially this Luna, depending on how you look at it. Maybe the one from right near the end of the war. But this is where it really seems to start with the Eater's projection of his desires and motivations onto her.
“Let history remember them for their crime for all time. Let them surrender a number of their own foals for re-education by the Equestrian people, each year, as restitution for this atrocity.”
Wat.
Then I rose to my hooves, thundering in the old voice for addressing my subjects, “You think this meager offering sufficient!? You will never have peace! Not while a single one of you accursed zebra walk free! You shall have war! You shall have slaughter! You shall not have forgiveness, but annihilation!”
So it seems that the rule is partly about rejection . . . and partly about wrecking shit in style.
To my right, Duty and Sacrifice blew meaty holes in the faces of the faceless.
Nice sentence.
In desperation, I threw together my bullet spell with the shield thingy I’d attempted earlier, and a sphere of brilliant white energy exploded out from me. The bubble swelled, pushing the rising, abominable tide back long enough for me to take to the air.
Like the Cadence/Shining thing from "A Canterlot Wedding" . . . only much more destructive (if local).
The fighting style after this dream, seeming to incorporate more aspects of Luna, is pretty sweet.
Opening the back, I plugged the wires from my PipBuck into it. I could already hear the swarm, a curious rustling accompanied by a slimy sucking noise. I just had to use the program... take control...
Just like Cognitum.
Yeah, that's always going to be a wake-up call. You've got to think, every time, this means I need to stop. It could be you're doing something fiendishly or cartoonishly evil, but just as likely you're are (possibly also) doing something ludicrously stupid. Remember, kids, even if you're going down the path of evil, Cognitum is a terrible, terrible role model.
Sweetie Bot had said that the program would link me to the Eater. It sounded so simple to assume that everything would go my way. That I could be hooked up to this colossal thing and be the one in control. But I’d been flesh and blood once, and blissfully reminded of that state for a moment in my blank body.
Also you just experienced, twice, the fact that the Eater is able to exert a great deal of control over your mind. That's not something that suggests it's wise to try to control it.
“Oh, good, the drugs are working. We finally have lucidity,” he said calmly. “Welcome back, Go Fish.”
Heh.
you have to ritualistically self-inflict horrible injuries to make the world a greater place. To save it.
Wow, that gets . . . really, really literally true.
“For a time, I hoped we were going to make a breakthrough, but it seemed your delusions magnified. Trying to stop a war in the sky? Going to the moon to stop a superweapon? Fighting some ‘Eater of Souls’ for the world? Does any of that sound even close to reality?”
The war in the sky wasn't that farfetched compared to the cannibal raiders or the war on the ground. Or coming back to life as a cyborg.
a dishwater-gray unicorn surrounded by heaps of paper, scribbling words furiously,
And okay, there was the real one.
Oh, the fun of the mental ward again. And this time, with real, direct expertise!
The interior of the Seahorse, with my legs nailed to the floor as stallions sweated and grunted against me.
Surface plausible, but seriously, not what I think she'd mentally escape to in that case. Even before that point, she was looking forward to death. And if life, why not one of her fantasies?
Now I was standing in a restored Core, wearing the most ridiculous princess garb as thousands of Wastelanders all shouted their love and praise. Cognitum would have eaten it up. My friends were all alive, of course.
Heh. That's not how this story works. I don't think that was ever in the cards, even if you discount the restored Core and princess part. Blackjack and her friends all living? Nah. That got blown with Lacunae. And to be honest, even with the end of 62, I was still expecting her to die by the end of the story, just not to specifically seek it.
Like a colossal serpent, the silvery snake rose up, the spines now merging to form both bony ribs and batlike wings.
I'm sure someone else brought it up, but, well, this never helps.
The sword slashed across a massive palm, sparking with silver fire when it clashed on the starmetal bones within.
Now it seems possible that it's just, well, sparking due to metal contacting. But it could also be a reaction like the moonstone/starmetal one, only less pronounced due to lesser opposition between different kinds of starmetal than Eater metal and moonstone.
“ADMIT YOUR FAILINGS. YOU REGRET THE SUFFERING YOU’VE INFLICTED ON THOSE YOU LOVE.”
Okay, now this was getting annoying.
Not sure if it's what she's talking about, but kind of true. The Eater is just way too blunt to break her resolve if the much stronger work done in the dreams or by the Dealer came to nothing.
“YOU THINK YOU CAN DEFEAT ME ALONE, LITTLE PONY?” the Eater asked as it gazed hungrily at me.
“I am not alone!” I shouted as I flapped furiously towards one of the platforms. The Eater struck, mouth wide, but this time, I didn’t dodge. I turned and struck, flying straight into his face. My riot shotgun blasts seemed imbued with a silver moonlight as I fired straight into those widespread eyes. “Everyone I’ve made friends with and who helped me is here with me now!”
There was a small amount of drama on the FimFic page about the ending and how one reader thought that Blackjack ending everything "alone" undermined everything that came before. I hadn't remembered that it was specifically brought up and dismissed within the chapter itself.
Duty and Sacrifice barked, the shots burrowing deep in its scaly flesh before exploding like grenades.
Huh? Did she have some kind of moonstone ammo for them as well? Or are those shots exploding for some other reason?
“I WAS GREATEST! BRIGHTEST! I WILL BE SO AGAIN, EVEN IF I HAVE TO SNUFF OUT EVERY OTHER WRETCHED, TREACHEROUS SPARK IN THE SKIES!”
Might be some shades of Luna/Nightmare there. If nothing else, massively missing the point and the way that's probably counterproductive on most metrics.
Then my wings disappeared.
The claw ripped through them so quickly and cleanly that I was transformed from a flying body into a ballistic one without being knocked off target.
Second loss of wings this chapter, and I'd say it seems like a way of bringing Blackjack back to who she started as, since the wings were one of the most salient signifiers of her union with Luna.
“WITH MY LAST MOMENTS, I WILL DEFY YOU!” Tom cried out as the Eater’s disembodied hands ripped away more flaming gobbits.
“YOUR LAST MOMENTS ARE DELICIOUS,” the Eater cackled as he feasted on the still-living star.
That's surprisingly funny for what's going on now.
You have a heart of moonstone. That was what Glory had said. I stared a second longer, and then I lifted my sword in my other hand. Carefully, I cut the end off the drum.
There, nestled in a bed of gemstones, was a hunk of moonstone. I’d been told she’d been lucky to find an ‘appropriate gem’ to power my body, and as I stared at it, I realized that I’d seen it before: in Horizon Labs and the disassembled silver bullet. It was larger than the slivers in the slugs I’d used before. It hadn’t been corrupted yet.
I wasn’t beaten yet...
I yanked the stone free, and instantly my vision filled with “CRITICAL ERROR” in bright red letters and “SWITCHING TO RESERVE POWER” with a percentage that was ticking down.
I love it, but I do feel like I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was that this would end with Blackjack TEARING OUT HER OWN HEART AS PART OF A SACRIFICE TO SAVE THE WORLD. Should have seen it coming on first read. I mean, what else would she do, you know? :D
I might not actually be Princess Luna, but I had her soul. And while I couldn’t raise or lower the whole moon...
...I could raise a small piece of it.
Yes! And such a great way of incorporating Luna's other (originally main, actually) big attribute into the finale, and of course allowing her final atonement/correction for her mistakes.
“YOU ARE FINISHED!” he boomed, rearing back and smashing the Eater in its blazing face. “YOU ARE ENDED!” he thundered as he blazed, the heat baking me even with my augmentation.
And radiation. Can't forget that. Not that either will really matter for long.
“NO!” the Eater whinged. “I CANNOT DIE! EXISTENCE NEEDS ME!” But he was silenced by an azure hoof smashing him in the maw.
Off topic, but this reminded me of reading an interview with Mike Tyson about his "everybody has a plan until he gets punched in the mouth" quotation recently.
I reached into the generator casing, pulled out the darkened diamond, and reconnected the wires to the talisman. A flickering sphere appeared around the platform.
Okay, I'm not really sure what the idea was there, or why that happened. The outer ring was already going to do the heavy lifting of directing everything up and away, and it seemed like the talisman had been broken to the point only the F.A.D.E. shield's self-powering properties after taking hits had been keeping it up before.
“NO! I don’t want to die! Please...”
“All things die,” Tom answered. “Hush now... it’s time to go to bed...”
Still not Daisy Bell. But yet another nice callback, and something that emphasizes that even with Tom's strident opposition, it wasn't without a measure of compassion even for the Eater.
It wasn’t just mere light and energy, any more than the Eater was simple metal and malfunctioning machinery. It was a beam of light that shone out into the universe.
A light which said Equestria, Equus, wasn't going to die that day, or fade away as the Eater drew off all its souls.
In Tenpony’s windows, a line of light gleamed towards the heavens from behind the distant mountains. In the S.P.P. hub, images from dozens of towers showed the pillar of light stream into the night.
Nice choices in that both are associated with that other pillar of light, Celestia One.
But the souls lingered.
Millions. Tens of millions. Freed from the Eater, they hung like a constellation of stars spreading in all directions. Some sank into the earth. Others streamed towards the sky. Some touched the weary survivors. I killed the shield and stretched out my hoof towards the countless motes. One drifted against me, and for a moment I smelled Mom’s mane. I heard the warm chuckle of P-21. Another gave my cheek the caress of a soft gray wing.
Perhaps a nice upside to not having been able to clearly communicate an idea that the souls of Blackjack's friends and loved ones returned just then is that it offers the explanation that they came down before the Eater was finally destroyed--thus willingly being caught up in the Eater's hell--to be sure they could be there for Blackjack afterward, which would demonstrate as well great faith in her.
Such a beautiful ending, and a remarkably short denouement for so long a story. But when there's nothing else that needs to happen, why drag it out?
Icy Shake- Alicorn
- Posts : 1209
Brohoof! : 308
Join date : 2012-06-05
Age : 35
Location : Boston, MA
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by Icy Shake Sat Nov 07, 2015 9:37 pm
- Chapter Seventy Seven Overall Thoughts:
- For the first time in a while, the action picks up after a time skip, this time quite small, as the audience joins Blackjack on a railcar in the red tunnels under the Core. This is the first of four major sections in the chapter, and is an extended action piece that introduces Blackjack's current team and their capabilities while getting them where they need to go.
On which note, it's interesting to think about why each member was chosen. Whisper was a freebie, a flier who brought her own moonstone, who insisted on joining. Dusk similarly didn't take up room, just moonstone, and was probably the next best flyer option after Whisper at that point. Coming from the other side, Sweetie Bot took up space but no moonstone, and was heavier artillery than anyone else. Crumpets and Aries, with their power armor, were well-defended, and they offered mid-level punch and fire, respecitvely, with fire being a key asset if they're expecting gore abominations that Blackjack was already aware of. Let's say that they anticipated the sniping as switching mechanism, which on its own qualifies Lancer, but he's also a narratively good choice due to the ties with his father. Psalm made for a good choice because the alicorns have basically the best magical shields available, and Psalm should I think have been about the only alicorn in Hoofington after the Enervation came back in force. And Pythia, who should have been there anyway, stowed away. Now I liked the point about justifying not taking Scotch because she was too young, or rather, the commentary around it that made it clear that it was the excuse Blackjack was using to support a decision she was making in order to uphold her promise to keep Scotch alive. It just meant having to pretend that Blackjack saw her as a child, when she hasn't for a while in story terms.
Along the way, Lancer gets killed, and there was a near-miss with Dusk.
Upon reaching their destination below where the Eater has been raised to the surface, they find the Legate, still alive but now the size of a skyscraper and frankly a horror. They need to find and destroy the four fragments of his heart, the soul jar keeping him alive even though the state-maintenance regeneration has gone. The pieces are in his chest, head, throat, and waist, and each step of the way Blackjack receives important help from other members of her team, from Dusk helping her escape being grabbed by the Legate's tentacle entrails on the first (and then being caught and engulfed herself), to the Legate's hesitation on seeing the corpse of his son buying a few seconds, to Whisper flying down his throat to grab one (losing her wings in the process), to Crumpets and Aries dropping a tanker train on him which helped get another, and Sweetie Bot plugging herself into the spark battery array of the railcar to recharge enough to get another shot with her giant laser to direct at the Legate (severely messing with her programming/functioning, it seemed). So by the end, Aries is also dead and everyone else is in too bad shape to continue on with Blackjack, who will have to go on alone, at least physically.
The parting here and some discussion earlier covered three perspectives on how Blackjack proceeds. Pythia pushes for the idea that though you don't necessarily seek death, it's not the worst thing there is, and neither is pain, but unnecessary suffering is a real problem. Whisper, having already lost Stygius and Goldenblood (and, not so long ago, Sanguine and the life she'd built around him), seems already to be grieving Blackjack: if you buy into the stages concept, she hits denial, anger, and bargaining pretty clearly as she tries to act like she doesn't know Blackjack has no real intention of coming back, threatens her, and describes what their relationship/interactions will be like after it's all over. In contrast, Psalm is an underplayed calmness that strikes me as knowledge and acceptance that Blackjack probably won't, and doesn't particularly mean to, survive. It's fitting, since she's been in the same state and thanks to Unity and alicorn mind magic she probably had better direct knowledge of how Blackjack's mind works than just about anyone still living.
Going on alone, Blackjack rises up, joined by a reappearing Dealer. On the way, they discuss Blackjack's cutie mark story, revealing that Hatches had died not in a pure accident, but after volunteering to leave the game first in Blackjack's place after Blackjack's whining. That Hatches died because Blackjack got her to leave first . . . well, it's not hard to see why she'd try to leave that out in her mental closet. And the idea of her talent basically being to bring death where she goes, to enemies and friends alike, fits very well with other data points, including her own occasional reflection and Big Daddy's ability to see people as they really are, which had her as blood and stars when they first met, and later Cogjack as blood and Blankjack (without her cutie mark) as just stars. And as far as the competing theories go, based on source of theory (the personification of the Wasteland compared to Cognitum), consistency with events, and basic logic about what a talent is (and what makes a good story), I score it 6-0 6-0 6-0 Death over I-Just-Win-Victory. Perseverence/Victory Thereby is intermediate. Anyway, the added context on her cutie mark is actually something that, I think, adds an extra layer of justification for Blackjack's various guilt problems and general angst; if you strip away the denial and repression, the "not thinking about it," she's been dealing, poorly, with seeing herself as responsible for another's death since she was a filly. And it's part of the very core of who she is, as seen with her cutie mark. And it adds a certain tragic sense to things, in that she's been fighting against her fate/destiny all her life, if that's what it really meant.
But yes, that whole thing was enjoyable, and the bit of tarot was nice, even if nothing seemed dispositive. Relatedly, having the Dealer back was great, as was getting a better idea of who he is, or at any rate another interpretation, since it was all still pretty consistent with him starting out and ending as Blackjack's crazy. And one thing that I found nice about it was that Blackjack seemed to instinctively know what he was from the very beginning, and it was only later, after trying to work things out and Echo had hijacked him, that she really started thinking of the Dealer as something other than the idea of the Wasteland.
After this, Blackjack reaches the bowl where the Eater of Souls lies, waiting to capture Tom in Hoofington's F.A.D.E. shield system. We get an action setpiece wherein Blackjack needs to destroy each of the six inner-layer generators, using moonstone bullets on their starmetal casings, which on the front end is fine but nothing that interesting in itself since she's not even against anything alive or all that smart. Punctuating it with temptations for how to go forward, notably using EC-1101 to control the Eater and fulfill Cognitum's plans was nice, but not really something that added much tension since at this point rejecting that kind of path was a foregone conclusion. But that all doesn't matter so much, because the real challenge and what actually added a lot of color to the chapter was the Eater's non-physical response: putting Blackjack/Luna into dreams to stall her.
The first was an alternate reality with Stable 99 was getting better under acting overmare Gin Rummy. I'd probably need to think more on this, but I'm unsure how well supported the idea that Gin Rummy would never, ever emancipate the males is. There's certainly plenty to support the idea that it wouldn't be her priority or anything. And I suppose that you can go with some implicit basis on Blackjack's own attitudes as of Chapter 1, which might well reflect her mother's. But bearing in mind how convinced Blackjack was that under enough external pressure, her mother would surely drop the breeding program, back in the 20s, there might just have been a chance if things had been different and for whatever reason there was external pressure against it. But then, I can't think of any particular constituency that would exert that pressure, so it's a moot point. Anyway. Regardless of that detail's prior support, I suspect that the root of the Eater's mistake in this case is in an inability to distinguish, or simply not caring to do so, between others to get these details right. Blackjack wants to free the males, so her mother must as well. It comes down to the extreme narcissism of the EoS, the idea that not only does he matter more than everything else, but compared to him, nothing else matters at all. That wasn't the first time that this characteristic was key to Blackjack's success here, either, since the key to beating the Legate, at the very end, was to play his vanity against the EoS's, such that the Eater could no longer suffer his tool to exist if it insists on its own utility.
For the next, with Luna drawing the stories of the Wasteland and being supposed to make peace with the zebras, a slightly different failure came through. Again it involved getting the details of a someone wrong, this time in particular Celestia insisting on breaking zebra families to indoctrinate their children as one of the terms of the armistice. But even before then, I was skeptical on the basis of the interpretation of what Luna wanted: why would Luna want to scrub zebra myths and legends of her connection with Nightmare Moon? Luna, at least as she exists now, was greatly concerned with her potential to return on that path, and was wracked by the guilt that convinced her that it was true. Sure, stop the modern propaganda and all, but the further step also steps on a personal view of mine that associates Luna, the Princess of Dreams, with myth, legend, stories, much like she explicitly aligned herself with sex compared to Celestia, because "night is the time for lovers". Granted, this is my own baggage rather than something from FiM, FoE, or PH. But leaving that aside, the big thing is that the degradation, humiliation of the zebras, and forcing them to accept guilt for the war, indoctrinating their children, these are all things that the Eater would desire in her place. It couldn't or wouldn't imagine that Luna would have desires different from its own in order to make the dream right.
Anyway, the escape in each case required not just a personal sacrifice, but choosing, this time against necessity, to repeat what I'd probably call Blackjack and Luna's defining sins/failures, the one that for Blackjack was where she really went full-on suicidal, and which motivated Luna's self-recrimination that she was, and then acting as, Nightmare Moon once again.
The repeat-Lucidity was of a very different character, I thought. The draw on this one was categorizing the crazy of each of the major characters, both in FoE and PH. It was an interesting way of looking at how you might piece together a fantastic delusion from bits and pieces of what's around you, and although there's always been plenty showing Blackjack's own problems, this gave an interpretation of some of the tendencies other characters exhibited, especially those from FoE. If, of course, an exaggerated one. And I can't go without noting that Velvet Remedy as a delusional narcissist was great.
The themeing broke down a bit, though, not so much in there being a mundane explanation for Blackjack's perceived life, but in that she just brute forced her way out calling on her Princess of the Night powers. And to an extent that's fine, because the real fun was in finding the cracks anyway. However, being able to simply force her way out of this and subsequent dreams is something which I think was a net negative, since it raises the question of why she couldn't have done that in the Stable 99 and treaty signing dreams. As such, it retroactively reduces the impact of the decisions made, because they were unnecessary.
Out of the rest of the dreams, the one that stood out, short as it was, was Blackjack on the Seahorse. And in one respect it was a nice change by having the dream be something where she's more trapped by powerlessness or horror rather than desire for it to be the truth.
Now, something here is that it seems to me that the Eater had an easy way out: just make a dream that seems like what Blackjack/Luna expected the immediate future to be, with her continuing the fight and then succeeding with the plan and escaping to extend the dream long enough that in the real world, the Eater traps Tom. And it seems an obvious choice, but I suspect the reason it wasn't tried was because the Eater couldn't bear to even pretend that it was losing in order to achieve its goals, or doing so didn't even cross its mind. It's like a rhyming repetition of cutting off the Legate because he presumed to claim to be important to the Eater. So the ability to reach that ultimate loss was inextricably tied to one of its core character traits, an unexamined flaw (and at that, one whose existence itself prevents that examination).
But after escaping the dreams, there's still the physical side of things, and Blackjack's body is crippled in parallel with the moonstone bullets she brought being converted to starmetal in the presence of the Eater. In the end, she's reduced to tearing out her own heart, literally made of moonstone like Glory had said (where I'd thought it a metaphor), and using it on the last F.A.D.E. generator's casing, leaving herself without power. But since by that point Tom had already been caught by the generator and it was powering itself she then needed to use Luna's power to raise the moon on Tom to lift it, breaking the F.A.D.E. feedback system, and dropping it on the Eater for the final victory. So what I love here, beyond the extreme, frankly prototypical sacrifice on Blackjack's part, is that this final victory required something from the very defining core of both Blackjack and Luna (in addition of course to the innumerable contributions made by their friends and allies to get them there and keep them going): the sacrificial offering of herself from Blackjack, willing to endure everything and pay any price to save ponies; and from Luna the very first thing we ever learned about her—"Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, there were two regal sisters who ruled together and created harmony for all the land. To do this, the eldest used her unicorn powers to raise the sun at dawn; the younger brought out the moon to begin the night." And there it truly was the case that only the Maiden of Stars could have done what was needed in that moment.
And with the destruction of the Eater, before Blackjack dies (having thrown up the shield again around her to survive the blast), she sees the release of the tens of millions of souls that the Eater had captured and trapped around itself, literally freeing the souls from the state that, when she'd been in it, she'd called Hell even as she'd saved those still living. And the release of those souls resembles a galaxy of stars, so like in "Black", she is at the end seeing the stars before and as she dies. But this time, instead of having at last made a degree of rapport with P-21 that had been impossible before, and being comforted by a present, living Glory, and after dying being affirmed by her mother in the everafter, their souls come to her one last time so she doesn't die alone. And then, Luna's soul leaves as the technology keeping Blackjack's body alive approaches the end of its power supply, leaving it to watch the stars and smile as darkness and silence overtake her whole world.
It's a beautiful ending to the story itself, and the choice to be so evocative of "Black" was, I think, a good one. And the big difference, that this time she hadn't been able to pay the full price herself, what hasn't changed (and which we are able to witness because of the way souls work in the setting) is that the people with her then still love her, still care, despite their own sacrifices. Because as much as Blackjack's nature is to shoulder all blame herself, everything they did that led to their deaths was their choice, because they cared like she did. And even without the souls themselves, there would have been the memory of their love.
Before I get to what this chapter got right, I'll cover a few things that I found to be more on the negative side of things. Fortunately, most of them are fairly discrete points which didn't negatively impact the whole all that much.
I do not understand why Blackjack was playing coy about who the driver of their railcar thing was. It was maintained long enough to build a little bit of tension, but not all that much, and I'm not sure what the payoff was supposed to be, especially when it was made clear relatively early on that it pretty much wasn't Scotch, which is where the real threat would be. She didn't have any special connection with Blackjack I can think of to make her presence particularly emotionally resonant, and while her material contributions were unique and probably without substitute, I don't know what not being upfront accomplished enough in terms of maintaining any surprise of what she did/could do for them to justify that bit of unreliable narration.
I found parts of the rails scenes difficult to follow, at least on my first read, especially in cases where you needed to track the relative positions of two enemy trains plus the strike team's over up to three tracks and switching between them. I think that in turn contributed to me getting tired of that segment before it had been played out. That said, having the start be just the death race scenario rather than involving opposing characters meant giving room to establish the team, their dynamic, and their capabilities without the added factor of a personality on the other side. And that's a good thing, because it makes friends doing things off screen or with minimal attention focused on them at the time in the Legate fight later on work more smoothly.
Blackjack not having realized that Whisper was pregnant struck me as being a bit too oblivious given what she's seen and heard the last couple days. And perhaps it's partly my fault as the reader, but this was an instance where it was so heavily signalled that I'd assumed she had realized, and finding out that she had not pulled me out for a while as I tried to piece together if there had ever been a positive indication that Blackjack did know. And by structural necessity it wasn't worked up to at all: unlike, say, the case of Caprice in Flank, there was never an indication that Blackjack didn't know which would build a sense of dramatic irony that could be released when she caught up with the audience.
Okay, to the good. The action for most of the chapter was quite varied, and made good use of the different skill sets and materials each member of the squad brought, and this was especially true of the segment with the Legate. It got more repetitive with going through all the F.A.D.E. shields, with it seeming to just ramp up difficulty rather than more intrinsically change the situation (getting a fragment from the Legate's brain or throat was very different from his waist), and of course by that point there was only Blackjack. However, that was fine because the real focus there was less on the physical happenings there than Blackjack's temptations to go through with Cognitum's plan or just try to directly control everything with EC-1101, and of course the dream traps. The dreams didn't have quite the same sense of doubt-inducing surreality as "Lucidity" did, because among other things of the different framing, and because the flaws here were things other than simply kind of fading between the simulation and something more like the real world. One of the things to appreciate with those was actually using some of Luna's specific powers or knowledge associated with dreams, especially nice because compared to 76 Blackjack was very much at the forefront for most of the chapter, even more so on the front end.
Moving back to the end a bit, in some respects, I prefer this as the end of Blackjack's life/story to the things included in the Epilogue. Specifically, "At the End of the Trail" has long greatly influenced how I was expecting things to end for her, and I'd interpreted it as meaning that she'd lay her burdens down with her death, when she'd be reunited with those she'd lost. And like "Black," the end here showed that death isn't necessarily a bad thing. Depending on the context and the alternatives, it can actually be the happy ending, or perhaps the sweetest out of a bitter bunch. (It's doubly good that the ending landed, for me, as well as it did, because it then supports the earlier conversations on the topic with Pythia and the Dealer, and others to various extents.)
Except for some logical problems (her soul is pretty clearly still in her cloned body, since the mind transfer is a different operation and the soul work required a necromancer or Discord; the matter of whatever agreements Pythia had made on her behalf with the stars), the end of 77 delivered that wonderfully. Having the two ponies she loved most be dead makes the delay of her own death more difficult than it otherwise would have been, but I suppose part of the idea is that she can/must then avoid repeating her slide into suicide following the gassing of 99, as promised then and reaffirmed to Glory and P-21 since returning from the Core. (And the situations were actaully somewhat similar at that, built on the deaths of some of those she knew best that happened in a way she might well blame herself for, and also the loss of a future she'd defined all her hopes on for some time—fixing 99, reuniting/reparing her relationship with Glory, or at least making sure she was happy. P-21 and the children.)
On the whole, I found this chapter to be a very satisfying conclusion to the story. After waiting so long, and with the memory of the disappointing late portions of FoE something I could never really keep from creeping in and seeding doubt, I'm very happy with how PH ended up. Like the entire story, it wasn't perfect, and there were some aspects of the last few chapters I didn't really care for, but the good massively outweighed the bad for me and I'm very happy to have been following the story all this time.
- Chapter Seventy Seven Editing:
- dependent when there’s a narcissist."
non-directional quotation mark
the lights, here half on the walls and half on signal post between the rail lines,
"on the/a signal post between" or "on signal posts between"
I passed the healing potion to Pythia, and she quickly administered it to Psalm, then saw his gaze.
Right now it looks like it might be Pythia who saw the Legate's gaze. I suggest making the part in the middle a subordinate clause so the last segment of the sentence is more tightly bound to the first: "Pythia, which she quickly administered to Psalm, then"
I quickly took stock of her, an earth pony mare, olive green with a grayish mane, in Stable 99 barding.
When she previously appeared (memory/dream in ch 21) and was described, Duct Tape was gray:
Then Duct Tape walked by and the homely gray filly looked at the three of us… no, looked at Daisy.
“No! Please! I’m sorry!” Duct Tape begged as Daisy ploughed into the smaller gray filly and proceeded to pummel her.
“You didn’t see anything! You understand?! Nothing, you gray pussy!” Daisy shrieked
--was this an intentional change?
I blinked at her, then at the pad of paper showing the cybernetic unicorn. She was collapsed on the Tokomare, bleeding as she pointed a revolver at a talisman, her eyes narrowed in focus. “I really don’t see the appeal, Luna. Blackjack. LittlePip. Why do you obsess over failure and disaster when the war is finally over?”
“Over?” I asked as I blinked at her, then looked down at the picture.
should that be "cybernetic alicorn"?
heavy on blinking unless specifically calling attention to that. are there possible alternatives, like turning to stare?
“The zebra people admit fault in misappropriating ancient superstition for propaganda purpose.
"purposes"?
You vary between utterly agitated to the point that we need to sedate you to catatonic depression where you don’t move for hours.
suggest "between ... and" or "from ... to"
Like a colossal serpent, the silvery snake rose up,
"snake" should probably be something more general or just different . . . "Like a snake, the snake rose" just feels wrong. Maybe something like "monster/monstrocity", "enemy", "star", "Eater".
It’s serpentine lips spread wide.
"Its"
One solid hit would be like a mother of all boats landing on me.
I think the expression goes "the mother"?
I streaked along the massive, serpentine body, too close for it to blast itself.
maybe "for it not to"?
a red-maned white mare with a neutral expression being visited by a pale green unicorn, for instance
Okay, I'm just going off of the descriptions in the prologue, so this could easily be wrong based on later description or something, but at least there it seems like Caravan Lily is cream, with green mane (with gold streaks)
Icy Shake- Alicorn
- Posts : 1209
Brohoof! : 308
Join date : 2012-06-05
Age : 35
Location : Boston, MA
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by O. Hinds Sat Nov 07, 2015 10:56 pm
@Icy Shake:
Ah, thank you very much as always.
Ah, thank you very much as always.
- Spoiler:
I assume not; thanks.Icy Shake wrote:--was this an intentional change?
I've made it "I quickly took stock of her, an earth pony mare, gray with a grayish-green mane, in Stable 99 barding."
Hm. I was looking at the art the author posted, but now that you mention it, that might have been the cream coat looking greenish next to the very green mane; thanks!Icy Shake wrote:Okay, I'm just going off of the descriptions in the prologue, so this could easily be wrong based on later description or something, but at least there it seems like Caravan Lily is cream, with green mane (with gold streaks)
O. Hinds- Zebra Engineer
- Posts : 4863
Brohoof! : 383
Join date : 2012-05-09
Character List:
Name: Ris Haends Aeronauticus
Sex: Male
Species: Zebra
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by Icy Shake Sun Nov 08, 2015 1:04 pm
That's an interesting question. It's complicated a bit by how Zebra seems (from what I remember) to be mainly Swahili or Arabic with maybe some bits of Latin and Greek thrown in mainly for the Roamani and Starkatteri, such that which language used might have some content. But I'd probably say that given the frequent significance of the names' meaning, it would make sense to just use the translation. Alternatively, you could go the middle route of having untranslated names for zebras with names coming from something other than the "main" Zebra language, such that the Greek names (like Pythia, Atropos, Eurydale, Scylla, Orion) and maybe Latin/ish names (like Vitiosus and Impalii) would still, even for new characters, not be in English. But for most of the rest (like Majina, Sekashi, Adama, but of course only for new characters), who have names from the more common sources, the names could be rendered in English. Note that could also probably be justified by a different focus in what Zebra Scotch is learning, kind of like how she thought the Atoli spoke backwards.
Though now I do wonder why Lancer introduced himself in Pony while nobody else did (okay, there was Briarthorn), as far as I recall. Also, who decides it's a good idea to follow a guy whose name is "Vitiosus": wicked, depraved, faulty.
Though now I do wonder why Lancer introduced himself in Pony while nobody else did (okay, there was Briarthorn), as far as I recall. Also, who decides it's a good idea to follow a guy whose name is "Vitiosus": wicked, depraved, faulty.
Icy Shake- Alicorn
- Posts : 1209
Brohoof! : 308
Join date : 2012-06-05
Age : 35
Location : Boston, MA
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by RoboRed Mon Nov 09, 2015 8:38 pm
Somber just pushed out several more chapters to PH on FIMfic including chapter 43, where Happyhorn was introduced, which led to the crazy RP events back on the Blogger comments section on EQD which helped bring us all in the PHCC closer together.
There's a couple songs I had wanted to post way back then that I felt fit the theme of the chapter. I (and I think someone else), already brought in Frame of Mind (along with the Star Trek episode it was sourced from). But there was one other. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it online anywhere, and it was a rather old song.
Thankfully, I finally managed to find it again (and no wonder it was so hard - apparently it was under a working title when I first heard it!). Here is "Do You Know That You're Insane" by Sean "cheshyre" Hodges.
There's a couple songs I had wanted to post way back then that I felt fit the theme of the chapter. I (and I think someone else), already brought in Frame of Mind (along with the Star Trek episode it was sourced from). But there was one other. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it online anywhere, and it was a rather old song.
Thankfully, I finally managed to find it again (and no wonder it was so hard - apparently it was under a working title when I first heard it!). Here is "Do You Know That You're Insane" by Sean "cheshyre" Hodges.
RoboRed- Royal Alicorn
- Posts : 13859
Brohoof! : 717
Join date : 2012-05-09
Age : 35
Location : Nebraska
Character List:
Name:
Sex:
Species:
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by SilentCarto Mon Nov 09, 2015 10:30 pm
I think I'd prefer to keep using zebra names and just note what they mean when they come up. That's just me, though.swicked wrote:The new story is going to be told mostly with respect to Scotch's perspective (though it will be third person as opposed to first). In the zebra lands they speak Zebra, not Pony, and names like Majina have a meaning (in this case, "Happy Tale") and, now that Scotch is learning Zebra she can actually understand those meanings.
Should new zebra encountered be referred to by zebra-sounding names (like Majina) or pony-sounding ones (like Happy Tale)?
Because I'm worried whether it's better, in terms of an MLP fanfic, to continue with the naming conventions people are used to from these fics or if we should continue using zebra names.
That's fine too.swicked wrote:Mmmk.
Translation it is, then. Which is good, 'cause that's what we were already doing.
Though yeah, mixing that up a bit when it comes to other tribes might be interesting, too.
I look forward to helping make each tribe as distinct as possible.
SilentCarto- Alicorn
- Posts : 1585
Brohoof! : 393
Join date : 2012-05-08
Age : 45
Location : Texas
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by Icy Shake Thu Nov 12, 2015 7:52 pm
I was recently referred to someone who does, basically, the "Drunk History" treatment, text form, for stories. When I ended up seeing this, I broke out laughing because of how similar it sounds to things I've repeatedly heard re PH:
Anyone want to take a blind guess at what they were referring to?
Okay, where were we?
[Character] just fucked everything up over and over again and then died
awesome.
I hate to break it to you guys
but this story gets way the fuck grimmer before it claws its way out of the sadhole
like [Author] tried to pack as much tragedy into this fucking thing as possible
before the day gets inevitably saved.
He’s like a dude at an all-you-can-eat sadness buffet
just cramming in the depressing calories
because he knows he’s inevitably gonna shit later.
Okay, bad metaphor
I’m just stalling because this part of the story sucks.
Anyone want to take a blind guess at what they were referring to?
Icy Shake- Alicorn
- Posts : 1209
Brohoof! : 308
Join date : 2012-06-05
Age : 35
Location : Boston, MA
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by SilentCarto Thu Nov 12, 2015 10:39 pm
Sounds like ASOIAF to me.Icy Shake wrote:Anyone want to take a blind guess at what they were referring to?
SilentCarto- Alicorn
- Posts : 1585
Brohoof! : 393
Join date : 2012-05-08
Age : 45
Location : Texas
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by Evilgidgit Fri Nov 13, 2015 10:19 am
I was wondering, how did Somber and the editors come up with the layout and locations for Hoofington? I recall the land was briefly mentioned in F.E., but there wasn't really any description of it. It takes a lot of effort to make a world, and the Hoof is very good, but was the creative process behind the design?
Evilgidgit- Earth Pony
- Posts : 169
Brohoof! : 18
Join date : 2013-06-06
Age : 33
Location : UK -
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by O. Hinds Fri Nov 13, 2015 7:56 pm
Well, that was all Somber, as I recall; I'm afraid I'm not thinking of any details I know on the out-of-universe origins of the layout and locations of the Hoof.
O. Hinds- Zebra Engineer
- Posts : 4863
Brohoof! : 383
Join date : 2012-05-09
Character List:
Name: Ris Haends Aeronauticus
Sex: Male
Species: Zebra
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by Icy Shake Sat Nov 14, 2015 2:15 am
A good guess, but no. It's the Silmarilion, and the character is Turin. Source here.SilentCarto wrote:Sounds like ASOIAF to me.Icy Shake wrote:Anyone want to take a blind guess at what they were referring to?
Icy Shake- Alicorn
- Posts : 1209
Brohoof! : 308
Join date : 2012-06-05
Age : 35
Location : Boston, MA
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by Icy Shake Sat Nov 14, 2015 9:53 pm
Fallout: Not Equestria: now with 100% more FIMFic.
. . . And up to #4 on the Feature Box.
. . . And up to #4 on the Feature Box.
Icy Shake- Alicorn
- Posts : 1209
Brohoof! : 308
Join date : 2012-06-05
Age : 35
Location : Boston, MA
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by RoboRed Sun Nov 15, 2015 12:41 am
It's happening.
RoboRed- Royal Alicorn
- Posts : 13859
Brohoof! : 717
Join date : 2012-05-09
Age : 35
Location : Nebraska
Character List:
Name:
Sex:
Species:
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by Icy Shake Sun Nov 15, 2015 12:48 am
RoboRed wrote:It's happening.
- You come to the sobering realization that things will never stop from keep happening constantly.:
![[GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion - Page 11 06428](https://2img.net/h/cdn.mspaintadventures.com/storyfiles/hs2/06428.gif)
Icy Shake- Alicorn
- Posts : 1209
Brohoof! : 308
Join date : 2012-06-05
Age : 35
Location : Boston, MA
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by Kattlarv Mon Nov 16, 2015 5:14 pm
Hum, dragged here by random tumblr post rumor while I'm waiting for a freaking update to install so I can turn off the comp.
Is PH supposed finished, and there's a pseudo-sequel coming up or what?
If so, then man, I am so far behind on the revisions xD Not counting that I have to scrap and re-write the non-18+ parts. And jebus did I trail off on those xP Shesh, should just stick to the plan, and to what I can. Even if people say I did massive improvements on those parts, they were also very keen on pointing out I fucked up approximately 85 % of any non-18+ scene xD Ah well. Doubt it's too much of a rush anyhow.
Is PH supposed finished, and there's a pseudo-sequel coming up or what?
If so, then man, I am so far behind on the revisions xD Not counting that I have to scrap and re-write the non-18+ parts. And jebus did I trail off on those xP Shesh, should just stick to the plan, and to what I can. Even if people say I did massive improvements on those parts, they were also very keen on pointing out I fucked up approximately 85 % of any non-18+ scene xD Ah well. Doubt it's too much of a rush anyhow.
Kattlarv- Hydra
- Posts : 560
Brohoof! : 27
Join date : 2012-05-10
Location : Sweden
Character List:
Name: Dewflower
Sex: Female-ish
Species: Unicorn
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by O. Hinds Mon Nov 16, 2015 9:12 pm
PH is complete, and the pseudo-sequel Homelands has been started (with, so far, the prologue and first chapter up on FIMFiction).Kattlarv wrote:Is PH supposed finished, and there's a pseudo-sequel coming up or what?
O. Hinds- Zebra Engineer
- Posts : 4863
Brohoof! : 383
Join date : 2012-05-09
Character List:
Name: Ris Haends Aeronauticus
Sex: Male
Species: Zebra
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by Kattlarv Tue Nov 17, 2015 3:17 am
Hum, okies. Thanks.O. Hinds wrote:PH is complete, and the pseudo-sequel Homelands has been started (with, so far, the prologue and first chapter up on FIMFiction).Kattlarv wrote:Is PH supposed finished, and there's a pseudo-sequel coming up or what?
If it's anything, I've at least learned to aim for the more simple things :P
Plan to scrap almost all side shiz. And possibly only change the sex scenes. As that's what I was out to do to begin with. Still tempted to flesh out the characters a bit so they don't suddenly sprout new personalities as they do now. But eh... dunno if I can write them properly enough. That, and have fallout ghouls instead of movie zombies. (though that said, Somber could have made the hoofington ghouls movie zombies for a reason, so I dunno)
Either case, has actually been waiting for PH to wrap up so I could perhaps snatch one of the editors to ensure the revision is good enough. I know I gotta rewrite it a second time, but I'm not really in a rush as said. Just gotta chuck out the pointless text and focus on what I was doing this in the first place for. I already failed to stay on track once. But managed to focus a bit better this time around.
Kattlarv- Hydra
- Posts : 560
Brohoof! : 27
Join date : 2012-05-10
Location : Sweden
Character List:
Name: Dewflower
Sex: Female-ish
Species: Unicorn
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by ILM126 Tue Nov 17, 2015 10:37 am
Just curious, Hinds, are you or someone else is going through the entirety of FoE:PH to check and convert it for FimFic? Just curious ^^"
ILM126- Pegasus
- Posts : 215
Brohoof! : 15
Join date : 2014-08-30
Location : Australia
Character List:
Name:
Sex:
Species: -
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by SilentCarto Mon Nov 23, 2015 12:46 am
It was barely mentioned in FoE -- they reported Brimstone getting shot down a couple of times, and it appeared in a couple of lists of locations. It wasn't even on the map of FoE. (And I should know!)Evilgidgit wrote:I was wondering, how did Somber and the editors come up with the layout and locations for Hoofington? I recall the land was briefly mentioned in F.E., but there wasn't really any description of it. It takes a lot of effort to make a world, and the Hoof is very good, but was the creative process behind the design?
Hah! Yeah, I guess I can't disagree.Icy Shake wrote:A good guess, but no. It's the Silmarilion, and the character is Turin. Source here.SilentCarto wrote:Sounds like ASOIAF to me.
This just had to happen while my computer was out of comission. WELP.Icy Shake wrote:Fallout: Not Equestria: now with 100% more FIMFic.
. . . And up to #4 on the Feature Box.
...maybe we ought to start a new thread? Yes? No?
SilentCarto- Alicorn
- Posts : 1585
Brohoof! : 393
Join date : 2012-05-08
Age : 45
Location : Texas
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by Icy Shake Mon Nov 30, 2015 1:42 am
Is it bad that my mind went right here when that part of the episode happened, only via PH (and thus obviously with shipping implications as well)?
- Spoiler:
![[GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion - Page 11 Tumblr_nykx19Kp8C1uxdv6do1_500](https://2img.net/h/36.media.tumblr.com/4cf30319004fdb0991c9890cadf64435/tumblr_nykx19Kp8C1uxdv6do1_500.png)
![[GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion - Page 11 Tumblr_nykx19Kp8C1uxdv6do2_500](https://2img.net/h/41.media.tumblr.com/b9bb99ba8410f75de79279a0213cbc9e/tumblr_nykx19Kp8C1uxdv6do2_500.png)
![[GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion - Page 11 Tumblr_nykx19Kp8C1uxdv6do4_500](https://2img.net/h/40.media.tumblr.com/f4fc88343c729eba546e03cd0c5445cb/tumblr_nykx19Kp8C1uxdv6do4_500.png)
![[GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion - Page 11 Tumblr_nykx19Kp8C1uxdv6do3_500](https://2img.net/h/40.media.tumblr.com/b9bb99ba8410f75de79279a0213cbc9e/tumblr_nykx19Kp8C1uxdv6do3_500.png)
![[GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion - Page 11 Tumblr_nykx19Kp8C1uxdv6do5_500](https://2img.net/h/36.media.tumblr.com/a4fce6e5e1c36e6effa16ea89374205d/tumblr_nykx19Kp8C1uxdv6do5_500.png)
Icy Shake- Alicorn
- Posts : 1209
Brohoof! : 308
Join date : 2012-06-05
Age : 35
Location : Boston, MA
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by Icy Shake Tue Dec 01, 2015 2:46 am
So it turns out Psalm no longer kills Pinkie in the version updated for Fimfic. It's an interesting choice, and stitching up that little departure from the events or implications of FoE is the kind of thing that will, I'm sure, be appreciated by some, and probably disliked by very few. The kind of little change, like changing "buck" to "stallion" or doing new footnotes for after chapter 33, that strikes me as a nice bit of polishing, and a sort of bonus for anyone rereading.
Since it looks like I won't be finishing the thoughts today (hopefully tomorrow) and some of the chapters are right on the edge of what's on Fimfic, some editing:
Since it looks like I won't be finishing the thoughts today (hopefully tomorrow) and some of the chapters are right on the edge of what's on Fimfic, some editing:
- Editing:
- 46:
We caught Nurse Candy, then handed her right over to Fluttershy who ‘Pinkie Pie promised’ us that they’d make her better.”
"promised" should perhaps be capitalized to match "Pinkie Sense" which is capitalized except in the chapter quotation for 54 (and one case of "Pinkie Promise")
48:
I closed my eyes asked Lacunae, “Any ideas on dealing with all
"eyes and asked"
50:
“Sorry Pinkie. Looks like the zebras want to play.
comma after "sorry"
Goldenblood, but you can’t just accuse–“ Rainbow Dash
inverted quotation mark
53:
With his machines of war we shall bring Red Eye to heel and save all of Ponykind from the Wasteland.”
"Ponykind" shouldn't be capitalizedXX:
The Goddess initially wanted to save Ponykind.
"Ponykind" shouldn't be capitalized
58:
I felt like I was being dragged back to the Seahorse… only worse.
"Seahorse" should be italicized
Xenith escaped on the Griffinchaser, but with the radiation levels
I think "Griffinchaser" should be italicized
63:
might make one confident that they were the hunter in the forest as they picked out the armed and armored brood standing watch.
"brood" should be capitalized
65:
“Oh yes, and I’m sure Cognitum Pinkie promised that she’d keep her word,
"promised" should perhaps be capitalized to match "Pinkie Sense"
68:
Then there were tears springing down her cheeks as she screamed at top of her lungs, “Get out!”
"at the top"
75.1:
if I was just... if I could just..."
"Kill again?
non-directional quotation marks
"Ow. Bloody nora.
non-directional quotation mark
Icy Shake- Alicorn
- Posts : 1209
Brohoof! : 308
Join date : 2012-06-05
Age : 35
Location : Boston, MA
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by O. Hinds Tue Dec 01, 2015 7:58 am
@Icy Shake:
Ah, thank you very much as always.
Hm. Why do you think that that change is an improvement?
Ah, thank you very much as always.
[goes and looks]Icy Shake wrote:So it turns out Psalm no longer kills Pinkie in the version updated for Fimfic. It's an interesting choice, and stitching up that little departure from the events or implications of FoE is the kind of thing that will, I'm sure, be appreciated by some, and probably disliked by very few. The kind of little change, like changing "buck" to "stallion" or doing new footnotes for after chapter 33, that strikes me as a nice bit of polishing, and a sort of bonus for anyone rereading.
Hm. Why do you think that that change is an improvement?
Aye, capitalizing.Icy Shake wrote:"promised" should perhaps be capitalized to match "Pinkie Sense" which is capitalized except in the chapter quotation for 54 (and one case of "Pinkie Promise")
I tracked this down in 56.Icy Shake wrote:XX:
The Goddess initially wanted to save Ponykind.
"Ponykind" shouldn't be capitalized
The actual vehicle, it looks like, was the Griffinchaser II ("Griffinchaser" being presented in FoE as a series), so I'm leaning towards it not being italicized. Why do you think it ought to be?Icy Shake wrote:I think "Griffinchaser" should be italicized
O. Hinds- Zebra Engineer
- Posts : 4863
Brohoof! : 383
Join date : 2012-05-09
Character List:
Name: Ris Haends Aeronauticus
Sex: Male
Species: Zebra
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by SilentCarto Tue Dec 01, 2015 11:09 pm
I approve too. It's more in line with the original without having to rationalize why there's no bullet hole in Pinkie's skull, and it perhaps smacks less of revisionism, I guess. And it's good to see that Psalm still has doubts and hesitations despite what she's done already -- it fits a bit better with her personality as Lacunae and afterward.O. Hinds wrote:Hm. Why do you think that that change is an improvement?
On revisionism: I don't object to filling in blanks where FoE remained silent, and I don't even necessarily object to recasting events as they were revealed in FoE. But I can also see how someone might feel that rewriting facts we know about Pinkie's end comes off as a bit arrogant. This way is more comfortable all around.
SilentCarto- Alicorn
- Posts : 1585
Brohoof! : 393
Join date : 2012-05-08
Age : 45
Location : Texas
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by Icy Shake Wed Dec 02, 2015 1:46 am
I was thinking of it being more like a contraction of the name than as referring to the series it was a member of. So more like "get back to the 'Force" (Galeforce) than "get back to the Raptor."O. Hinds wrote:Icy Shake wrote:The actual vehicle, it looks like, was the Griffinchaser II ("Griffinchaser" being presented in FoE as a series), so I'm leaning towards it not being italicized. Why do you think it ought to be?Icy Shake wrote:I think "Griffinchaser" should be italicized
This, roughly. But that alone isn't it. It's that it was done while preserving the motivations all around. Psalm was still going to take the shot, just didn't have the time. And sure, she'd always been cold about the Partypooper assassinations, but the shock of Pinkie's awareness is enough to justify this being different (and it doesn't hurt that, having known Pound and Pumpkin from their time at Luna's school, as well as Big Macintosh, she was probably reasonably well acquainted with Pinkie even outside of O.I.A.). And it shows there's something left of the mare who was so broken up about accidentally killing the Legate's (different Legate) son on one of her missions. I actually think that losing the sentence about her heart beating harder than it ever had before was also good, because though I don't think her role in the event had been established at the time, and even with the creepiness of Pinkie knowing, I have some trouble seeing Psalm being more affected by this than Shattered Hoof Ridge.SilentCarto wrote:I approve too. It's more in line with the original without having to rationalize why there's no bullet hole in Pinkie's skull, and it perhaps smacks less of revisionism, I guess. And it's good to see that Psalm still has doubts and hesitations despite what she's done already -- it fits a bit better with her personality as Lacunae and afterward.O. Hinds wrote:Hm. Why do you think that that change is an improvement?
On revisionism: I don't object to filling in blanks where FoE remained silent, and I don't even necessarily object to recasting events as they were revealed in FoE. But I can also see how someone might feel that rewriting facts we know about Pinkie's end comes off as a bit arrogant. This way is more comfortable all around.
- Epilogue Running Thoughts:
- Ten or so people were crowded around the fire’s warming light. Mostly ponies, but there were a pair of zebras, a griffin, and a helldog too. An alicorn listened in silently, the blue’s eyes soft and wise.
So, right off the bat an indication of at least some level of peace and comity betweeen the species.
“Security died?” the youngest of the group, a pegasus foal with a bright orange mane, asked as she rested atop her mother. The unicorn gave a sober nod, and then foal screwed up her face and added, “For good?”
1) That works in a way as a nice little double-entendre. And she certainly did die "for [the] good."
2) That filly knows her shit. That's an important question to ask where Blackjack dying is concerned.
And even one of your councilors! Yeah! First Citizen Boing said that Security had done almost as much harm as good.”
Dude, you're getting off track. Getting into the historical record and bringing up people who acknowledge she existed and did do a lot of good, even if balanced, isn't exactly helping your case. Especially when you're appealing to people who, based on what's presumably in the Security story, had personal reasons to have beef with her.
“She said ‘let us not wipe the blood from the hooves of heroes, nor worship them without skeptical consideration.’ She didn’t buy into that whole Security deal.”
Not a great line when you're a Pip booster.
She tossed the scroll aside and started to dig through her saddlebags, pulling out a plastic bag containing a stack of rune-covered three by five cards. Pythia withdrew them and started flipping through.
. . .
“You keep them on notecards?” Scotch asked with a half smile.
Pythia froze, giving Scotch Tape a flat look. “What should I keep them in? A black ponyhide tome with runes of evil on the cover? ‘Cause I think we tried that once,”
This really is a great moment for Pythia, both cute and funny. Also kind of a thematic connection to Twilight.
I need to see if this order was actually carried out or not,” Pythia replied. “I doubt it was. I mean, I can’t think of any zebra that would actually do it... but I have to make sure.”
There were zebras who were willing to do a lot of things . . .
“Accounts vary as to what actually happened there.”
“Let me guess: died three times and saved the world?” the stallion said with a grin.
The striped pair regarded each other and simply shrugged. “It is a long story,” the zebra mare replied with a slightly pained look before addressing the unicorn mare.
Sounds like some people aren't Zencori. :P
“There’ve already been terrorist attacks in Junction City. And sure enough, those ‘United Equestria’ morons started calling for war before we even figured out who the attackers were.”
That's nice setup, even though it seems like it's only general setting-work like a lot of the stuff around it.
“That’s because the Carrots can’t see an inch past their noses,” she replied without looking up.
Ooh, I bet if Chris ever does read this far, he won't like that. :D
That political capital is going to be of much more use in the long run than bottlecaps would in the short run.”
“And Blackjack would approve of the altruism,” Hoity rumbled.
. . . “Indeed.
Heh. Even here, after she's gone, people remark on that aspect of her.
From the far side of the arbor, [Charm] emerged. She was thin, her mane paler and wispier than it had once been. “Yes?” she asked, as if not sure if she was in trouble or not.
Again (also with Boing earlier, if in a different way), this (especially with the additional parts later) is a nice way of showing long-term consequences and the magnitude of Charm's sacrifice, without having her die.
“That they’re not mine? No. Let everyone believe that they’re the illegitimate offspring of Lord Blueberry. He was a good stallion, and his mother loves them. Far safer than anypony else knowing the truth. They’re happier this way,”
It's sad, but kind of hard to argue with the point she makes.
On the far side of the canyon, a white pony watched. It was impossible to make out more than that. She looked up at the ghoul, “Hoity, who–”
Like the build-up.
“Yeah. Even the Commonwealth is feeling the pinch,” the unicorn admitted. “The griffin invasion and dragon war really took their toll. Even getting quality firearms material is tough.” She drew an old, worn pistol and carefully drew back the slide. When she released it, it didn’t return until she gently smacked it with the pad of her hoof.
Likewise here, and in its case the double-use as establishing the limitations of the new setting.
“It’s not the lives you could have saved that matter. That’s never enough, and you can drive yourself crazy if it’s what you focus on.” They turned, but only her white muzzle poked out into the firelight. “You save as many as you can, when you can. That’s all anypony can do.”
Now that's nice character growth, even if we can only see the result.
“Anyway, the Brood are just strange. There used to be a doctor studying them, but she went crazy. Too much working around with taint. I don’t know the details...”
* * *
A grotesquely swollen Dr. Morningstar, fused with a golden tree, birthed a menagerie of fused creatures as she ranted and raved about her children. Candlewick, Dazzle, and Brutus faced her along with a half dozen others fighting to eliminate the horrific birthing monstrosity.
That's sadder now that I remember: "“Virginity is all in the mind,” Morningstar replied glibly. “Besides, I’ve been a father and a grandfather. I’m quite thrilled for the chance to be a mother too.”"
When turning Ponyville into a ‘Hellhound Sanctuary’ had been a bust, because hellhounds weren’t animals and lived wherever they Goddesses-damned pleased, the NCR’d made a real effort to restore the village.
Of all the things that could read specifically as a Take That!, this was a nice choice. Funnily delivered, and it really has a point.
She’d spotted Psalm there, along with Stronghoof. The pair either hadn’t recognized her or hadn’t wanted to interact. There wasn’t much to talk about. ‘Hey, been a long time since Blackjack got killed. How you been?’ ‘Fine, and how have you been holding up since we let Blackjack go die all alone?’ At least Crumpets and Dusk had ended up a couple. Eh, lesbians... go fig...
A lot packed into that paragraph. One of the best ships confirmed still alive and together, plus a new one. Whispers's state of mind regarding the end of the line. And, of course, she's still got a bit of my favorite homophobe in her. :)
She glanced behind her, knocked again, and frowned. Had something happened? She should break the door down! Get her power hooves! ...Or maybe just check the backyard first?
Good use of narration here. Like how easy it is to see the immediate reaction to stress coming from old Psychoshy, and the change on top of it.
“Here! Please read this! I... he wrote it... just in case...” She held the scroll case out. After all, if Rainbow Dash had survived as a ghoul, there might have been a chance of seeing Fluttershy again. He was always two steps ahead... sometimes off a cliff, but still, two steps ahead.
Using his powers for good . . .
From behind Whisper emerged a colt. His yellow coat had a dusky, mustard hue. The mane was an uncanny copy of his father’s down to its deep purple color.
I still love the presence of colorful batponies.
The strange pony levitated it back to the suspicious mare. “It’s a nice weapon. Looks like there’s still some room for a few more names though,” she said as Glimmershine examined the gun closely
AND WHERE ARE MY GRANDKIDS?!
“Come on, open up,” she repeated, staring at the door. “Fine, you want to do this the hard way? I’ll do it the hard way.”
Might have done without the RD quote.
‘We are all in this together’ declared the caption of one picture of an abstract white unicorn hugging dozens of tiny ponies in her hooves.
Obviously not the first sign of something off, but I really like this one.
Running faster and faster, I raced past mares and stallions casually strolling into and out of the stable and burst out into the air. Bright sunlight played across the crops spreading out along the hillside. All I could do was run. Glory was supposed to be out there! And Rampage! And Lacunae! But as more thoughts piled on, I sobbed and gasped as I raced faster and faster, trying to catch a life that had left me behind.
I like the contrast between the freedom and vastly improved physical setting and Blackjack's sense that what really matters is the empty spaces where her friends should have been.
I shouldn’t have stopped, for at that moment, everything that had happened to me happened once more. Everything, all the way to the last moments following the Eater’s death, struck me in one colossal torrent.
Still a little surprised she ended up with memories all the way through the end of Lunajack's life. To the original guess that it was due to continuing Perceptitron/moon dust connection with that body and mind, I suppose I'll add star schenanigans.
Crying was vomiting for the soul, and I had so much to bring up.
I like that metaphor.
Dark purple wings surrounded me, and I was pulled into an alicorn’s embrace. All I could do was clutch Psalm in desperation, my tears bleeding months of agony and loss. Finally, I found just enough voice to whisper, “I had friends...”
Of course, the very thing happening right then indicates that she still does. In a way, that's underlining the tragedy, parallel to what she'd said earlier by the campfire, in her character, that she so often focused less on what she still had or what she had accomplished than what she'd lost or failed to do.
Okay, turns out Littlepip was never called a terrorist anything like as often as Blackjack, possibly never at all.
The structure no longer served as a place of reverence, and the center of the interior was taken up by a massive block of white marble. Carved into the surface was the image of Security in repose; they’d gone with a ‘lying on her back clutching a bunch of lilies’ image rather than a ‘cybernetic and humping a shotgun’ one.
Hmm. Especially given the jibe about the image, a tomb still tends to be a place of reverence. Maybe not a place of worship?
Anyway, re the image: well, whitewashing your major figures is a pretty standard practice. Even if the latter might have been both cooler and more true to life. But I'm mappy to see that in the narration here; sometimes, a character changing over time isn't a good thing. :D
“Can you believe Boing wants this place torn down?” Crumpets muttered. “Fucking nuts.”
“Yeah, but she’s as nutty as my sister,” Dusk replied tersely.
Okay, context is suggestive of referring to Moondancer, given Moondancer's hostility and what I recall as more mellow and pragmatic reception of Blackjack towards the end by Dusk than some of the others in her family. But could also be saying Glory was nutty, kinda following her dad. Think I'll stick with the former, though.
An apple rolled from the doorway to her feet. Steel Ranger armor could handle just about any grenade made... except for this one.
Or a balefire grenade (well, egg). But those weren't the most common thing . . .
Sword and Vigilance got through, but sadly, think Duty and Sacrifice very likely didn't.
“I hate you sometimes. You know that. I know you know that!” she grumbled next to me.
"Eh, I bet I've still spent more time hating me than you have."
“Story of my life,” I replied, and we walked towards the back of the cave.
Using this line twice was interesting. In each case ("I didn't agree to this" and "nobody is going to believe this back home"), it's true, but they kind of reinforce each other, since so much of what made Blackjack's life amazing and unbelievable was propelled by things she didn't really want.
Oh well… I levitated talisman and sword and cleanly cut the former in twain with the latter, the sword giving a brilliant flash of light and crackle of magical energy as it went through.
Okay, missed it first time, but it does look like at least in this case there was a very different reaction than the Eater-moonstone annihilation, which would have been a lot more violent.
That mist collected into a small filly-sized shape, and with a flash of light, the body of Rampage the filly was formed. The soul motes started to wander away, but three lingered. Then one tiny mote slipped into her body as the other two departed.
Okay, it's real similar to the end of 77, and I do think it was better there, what with a lot more build-up, but I'm enough of a sucker for this kind of thing to find it touching.
The striped filly wiped her eyes and then stared ahead of us, where Equus loomed. The land was greener, the seas bluer, the mountains and deserts more defined. The zebra lands no longer burned with megaspells. “Do you ever regret it?” LittlePip asked softly as the world grew ahead of us. “What you gave up?”
I smiled through my tears and lied through my teeth. “Not a bit of it.”
Okay, first of all, I didn't expect something to top the vomiting for the soul line, but "smiled through my tears and lied through my teeth" is pretty good, and wonderfully placed here. (Almost feels more like a song lyric than prose narration.) Okay, it's two cliches strung together, but I don't think I've seen them integrated so closely before, and the gap between the normal connotation of each leaves the combination feeling different from either. And it makes me think of Rarity, and I can't help but get the feeling that there's still regret not only of what she gave up, but that she couldn't give still more. That tension's been a big thing for a long time, and I'd be suprised to see it entirely gone even at that point. Great way to almost end things, and something that, with the bit coming after, emphasized it's not the end, and that for all that Blackjack has changed, the core of who she is remains the same, and beautiful.
“So, where are we going?” Rampage asked, actually sounding like a filly for the first time ever.
I hugged her close and reached over to put a hoof across LittlePip’s shoulders as she guided us back to Equus. “Home,” I answered her. “We’re going home.”
Okay, it's probably contingent on some of the things I've been doing the last week (a lot of Mr. Plinkett . . . ), and it certainly isn't the fault of the writing. But it's ruined a bit by my mind flashing to the "Wesa going home" line from Phantom Menace. Sigh.
- Epilogue Overall Thoughts:
- Boo as proactive, BJ reactive
All right, so this is pretty different from a normal chapter. Surprise. Well, I think the first thing is a moderate change I've had in opinion regarding the major point of the chapter, Blackjack returning to life with all her memories intact. As an emotional end to the story, her dying at the end of 77 is still in some senses better, but not really an option for me since the issue of her soul still being in her clone body is something I just can't easily overlook. In any case, it's the kind of thing where you can to an extent get the best of both worlds by simply waiting a while to read the epilogue after the end of the story. Rather, the epilogue's way of bringing her back has grown on me relative to what I'd originally expected, which was her forming a new mind without her old memories, and basically getting to have a whole new life, separated in that respect from both the pain and the happiness of her old life. For one thing, that would basically negate the whole promise to Glory (and Rampage, and maybe P-21?), and delays her soul's reunion with them without really giving much continuity in the person living afterward.
Okay, that done, the rest. The epilogue was a great example of planting seeds for later. Not the plot hooks, which are certainly like that in their own right, but things contained within the epilogue itself. The question the filly asked about what happened to Blackjack, and more so how Glimmerlight said that you could see her PipBuck at her tomb/memorial. The early discussion of the attacks in Junction City. Showing the old pistol before making its real significance known, and the related degree of defensiveness Glimmerlight had about Blackjack. The remark about not focusing on what you weren't able to do. The flashbacks being introduced by a relevant remark, and the hints within that Blackjack was alive. However, I kind of wish that the Dr. Morningstar one had been the first (or first after Scotch's), rather than later on: given a few of them and the connection to, if not what Blackjack saw herself directly, then at least the general idea of what she was there to partially witness, it seems like she might have been there , one of the people fighting her. And it could work, maybe, especially if she were incognito, or since it was a small group of (at least a third) old friends, just people keeping her secret. Anyway, it was one of the few flashbacks that didn't feature Blackjack directly, and might have been a more gradual lead-up if placed before Grace's, merely implying the possibility of a first person view. However, it's complicated by the Homelands lead-in. Blackjack obviously wasn't there to see that happen, since part of the reason Scotch wants to leave is because Blackjack isn't awake yet. Now, maybe it's just breaking perspective more strongly than with the Grace and Whisper flashbacks, especially if that's also what happened with Morningstar. But I could also buy some kind of memory thing, them meeting up later or Blackjack somehow getting a memory orb, even at a stretch something like one last bit of Perceptitron effect. Anyway, minor point.
Okay, more on the flashbacks themselves. Following up on the setup point, establishing Bouillotte and Baccarat as growing up and not being told about Blackjack does, if not actually provide new information, prime the reader for thinking in the direction that Glimmerlight ends up paying off as being Blackjack's great-x granddaughter. And Blackjack being there then makes her tracking down Glimmerlight, and knowing details about her mother's death, more directly and immediately supported than relying merely on a sense that that's the sort of thing she'd do based on how much she'd staked on her children, and more indirectly the Stable 99 sense of continuity and extra weight put on the mother-daughter relationship. On a personal note, I'll say I liked Hoity's reference to how Blackjack would approve of Grace's altruism; what's the point of a hobby horse if you're not going to ride it, after all? Anyway, I enjoyed the follow-up on Charm especially, since her mental problems are both consistent and an effective way of showing that even though she survived, her sacrifice really did have a cost. Similarly but to a lesser extent, Grace's paralysis. Should note, of course, that it's sad to see that, unless you count Boo (and even there, the actual amount of time with her as a "child" is small), there's no indication Blackjack had a chance to be the "best damn mommy she could be."
Whisper/Fluttershy. It was another one that had a lot of niceness to it. It's a bittersweet reunion, pushed over the top with Nocti. Goldenblood thinking ahead to write the letter was a nice touch, but tempered a bit by the fact that the Fluttertree was common knowledge at that point. So points on thoughtfulness, but on further consideration it doesn't exactly play as an example of his foresight or contingency planning. Whisper being a metal singer and particularly professional performer I liked as another same-but-different thing between her and Fluttershy, with the Pony Tones. Her as the Element of Magic was a great extension of her role in the Battle of Hoofington, with the Harmony/music magic. And she really had come so far, with probably the greatest rise of anyone we saw (Rampage was close, but her real low-friendship/relationship points were way before the story started) from being broken down and discarded by Sanguine. Having her be brought in in a later stage of the Apex incident fits well with how I see her, or how she's been handled, in that it means she arrives rather than being there from the start. And with the possible exception of the time from about Hippocratic to Hightower, when she was still broken down and trying to figure things out, she consistently made intense entrances, and when she got somewhere, things got upended. All the time. Pattern also fits with the batpony kingdom.
Covered my main concern with the Homelands tease, about the perspective issue, but otherwise it was good. It's an interesting question, what happens to Scotch and Pythia and Majina in the zebra lands. (Also now Precious.) But that's better talked about elsewhere, and in any case the story seems off to a good start one chapter and a prologue in.
Then there's Blackjack's reawakening. It's a little eerie, and the examples of things that aren't right from her perspective are generally good, with my favorite being the non-Overmare poster, even if it seemed to slip by her a bit. But the big one, which still doesn't get a rise (suggesting that that's the idea; she is used to these things on some level), is that the pair in the showers are sisters, where naturally she'd be very aware of any sisters living in 99 under her old life. Psalm comforting her follows in a long tradition of Blackjack, Lacunae, and Psalm being support for each other when, often, nobody else would understand like them.
On the present: the framing story is nice, with that group around the campfire. Granted, Glimmerlight and the NCR guy got most of the focus, but there was some nice group interplay generally. However, especially right around the Morningstar flashback, I was having some trouble tracking exactly who was saying or doing what, since only vague and sometimes overlapping descriptions (mare, unicorn, cloaked mare, unicorn mare, pegasus mare . . . ) were used. I'm still not 100% sure that it's Glimmerlight, not Blackjack, who is the new Taurus. Relatedly, if Glimmerlight is the new Taurus, the most direct indication that Blackjack may have gotten her cutie mark back (earned again? soul effect? something else?) is that she'd be identified as a Security groupie. So that's still at least a slightly open question.
The Brood slowly evolving into new forms is an interesting yet natural extension, given both the nature of Flux and the fact that many would have an extra push from captured souls. I confess to being a bit ambivalent about Brood besides Boo becoming draconequi, but that's probably just me wanting her to be extra special and thus not exactly a principled position. Especially since she's also the new Mare Do Well. In any case, having her be more proactive—what with bringing in the radwyrms to get the figurines and free Rarity's soul and the terrorism (which I'm choosing to believe involved setting a bomb off at night while the building was empty, which I think has some support given Littlepip's not killing her) to expose shenanigans in the Twilight Society—both works in support of Discord's old message that chaos and order don't map onto good and evil and serves as a contrast to Blackjack, who appears to have moved into a more reactive mode. Otherwise, the relationship between Boo and Blackjack is nice, ranging from occasionally heartwarming and cute mother-daughter to something more like close friends and gossip buddies. And that's something that I think fits both of them well, since although Blackjack was basically raising her when she was the equivalent of a child, that's not really her main emotional or social mode (and it was only a few months, mostly the two of them alone), and doesn't seem right for a chaos spirit to act along those lines all the time either. At any rate, the epilogue made a better case for switching from the original plan of having Boo die in the Core than the ensuing chapters, where there wasn't much for her to do and most of what she did do could probably have been filled in by someone else. One more emotional support/pep talk scene before the final run, or serving as a trigger for Blackjack's friends to believe she was the real deal, or playing messenger just don't outweigh the idea of her growing her soul and immediately having it ripped out in the process of rescuing Blackjack. (Also serving as a bit of a bridge on the major character death front between Lacunae and the sudden, rapid-fire Glory-P-21-Rampage sequence at the end to have there be less of a sense that core characters really were in play.) Becoming a new spirit of chaos while pushing things in a good direction, plus helping to keep Blackjack together after losing the rest of her family and later on almost everyone she knew, and being the one of her children whose life she really did get to be part of is certainly more compelling.
Littlepip was fun enough. She makes a good foil for Blackjack, both in terms of personality (put-upon stick in the mud killjoy who just can't maintain in the face of Blackjack) and in terms of how to deal with things (top-down, by the book, and of course wanting to kill Boo). Blackjack, of course, proved just the opposite by Shanghaiing Littlepip to the moon and basically telling her "Do the findy thing," in a classic moment of, yeah, seat of the pants improvisation, but also optimism and faith, a kind of trust in others and that they'll be able to make things work out right that I don't tend to get as much from Littlepip (see also, attitute re Boo, etc.). One of the things with Littlepip that stuck out to me was a pair of exchanges that ended in each case with Blackjack saying "story of my life." First was in response to Littlepip's “I didn’t agree to this! When I got into the rocket, I wasn’t planning on this!” while the second was to “You know... nopony is going to believe this back home.” Both, of course, are fair descriptions of Blackjack's life, but they build off of and emphasize each other. It was in large part a life built off of responding to things she didn't plan on and didn't want, yet it was precisely rising to the occasion that made her life unbelievable. But not only that, it was what also brought her more mundane happiness, friendships, love; so much, big and small, good and bad, hinged on things she didn't really choose, from Deus to cancer, rebirth, and so many sacrifices, both her own and those of the people around her.
Getting closure on the Rampage and phoenix talisman arcs—and thus also that of the last of Macintosh's Marauders—was something that clearly needed to be done. I kind of agree with Blackjack that it seems like she took a long time to keep her promise to go back for her, but it certainly made for a good end note with them going home to their new, healing world, even if it was sappy. Repeating the lingering souls move from the last chapter was appropriate, but I'm glad it wasn't given more focus or time than it was, since it was just done, and with stronger, or at least more immediate, motivation and importance. It's a happy result that not only are the other souls freed, but Rampage gets to live something of a normal life, and one where she doesn't need to worry about dying last of all.
Both 77 and the epilogue ended on very up notes, but in greatly different ways. 77's was more eschatological, based on the release from the pains of the world, Luna's final redemption and her soul's escape, and Blackjack finally reaching the end of her trail (kind of). The epilogue's was more classically optimistic, not only in having the healing process more advanced both for Blackjack personally and Equus generally, but in ending on a not-an-ending, with the promise that even if we don't see it, the stories of Littlepip, Blackjack, and Rampage aren't over yet. Rather than an old, dying world ending, it's a new one spread out for them, and it is, as Blackjack says, home.
- Epilogue Editing:
- Aren't you a smart pony!
non-directional apostrophe
, “The NCR is way more loosy goosy with contracts
suggest "loosey-goosey" (more commonly used, and better endorsements)
Bouillette glanced over at her
"Bouillotte"
with all the tactlessness and licence of youth.
"license"
It’s not like you’re facing a powermad alicorn,
suggest "power-mad"
With time, eventually, the Astrostable could be used again. Some day...
"Someday"
“Then she came back from the dead a fourth time, and this time she descended deep into the earth to some even bigger monster from destroying us all!”
deep into the earth to ["stop"/"keep"/"prevent"/something?] some even bigger monster from destroying us all!”
alternatively, "into the earth to some even bigger monster ["bent on"/"intent on"/whatever] destroying us all"
“Yeah. Life sucks. Wear a hat,” Pythia replied as she looked at a new scroll. “Where did your mom get all of these, anyway?”
“She took them from the Legate when we fled,” Majina said as she stared forlornly around the room. “Stashed them away and brought them here when she had a chance. She thought they might be important.”
“Well, she wasn’t wrong,” Pythia said as her eyes flickered across the page.
these are really similar attributions. I suggest changing a bit, such as making the second on "Majina said, staring forlornly"
And at that moment Pythia froze.
comma after "moment"
“Noblesse Oblige,” she murmured.
"Oblige" shouldn't be capitalized, unless maybe it's specifically been established as her or her family's, or the Society's, motto, which I don't think it has been.
Whether a product of the magic that had transformed her, or just good luck, Fluttershy had aged
I don't think the first comma should be there
She left out ‘Used me’.
I don't think "Used" should be capitalized, since it's not something she actually said
Hard. "Ow! Shit!
non-directional quotation mark
Mom must have had maintenance to clean while I was out.
suggest "had maintenance [nothing/come/stop/whatever] by to clean" or "had maintenance clean"
“I... We were going to Megamart’s reopening, and then to visit the Riverside market.”
based on Homelands, should that be "Lakeside market"?
Running faster as faster, I raced past mares and
"faster and faster"
Like the plains behind me, the mountains had gotten cooked too, but they had afforded some protection from Horizons.
suggest dropping the "too", since "Like the plains behind me" makes it redundant
Icy Shake- Alicorn
- Posts : 1209
Brohoof! : 308
Join date : 2012-06-05
Age : 35
Location : Boston, MA
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by O. Hinds Wed Dec 02, 2015 5:20 am
@SilentCarto and Icy Shake regarding the change:
Hm, I think that that makes sense; thanks.
@Icy Shake:
Ah, thank you very much as always.
Hm, I think that that makes sense; thanks.
@Icy Shake:
Ah, thank you very much as always.
I suppose that that's a possibility, but I'm doubting that it's the case here; among other things, FoE did use "Griffinchasers" at one point. Sorry.Icy Shake wrote:I was thinking of it being more like a contraction of the name than as referring to the series it was a member of. So more like "get back to the 'Force" (Galeforce) than "get back to the Raptor."
Hm. That seems like it might be detrimentally repetitive with something a bit further up the page; I think I'll just go with "faster".Icy Shake wrote:"faster and faster"
?Icy Shake wrote:Ooh, I bet if Chris ever does read this far, he won't like that. :D
In FoE? Or at all? Because I imagine the latter could depend on who one asks.Icy Shake wrote:Okay, turns out Littlepip was never called a terrorist anything like as often as Blackjack, possibly never at all.
O. Hinds- Zebra Engineer
- Posts : 4863
Brohoof! : 383
Join date : 2012-05-09
Character List:
Name: Ris Haends Aeronauticus
Sex: Male
Species: Zebra
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by CD Thu Dec 03, 2015 9:00 am
O. Hinds wrote:In FoE? Or at all? Because I imagine the latter could depend on who one asks.Icy Shake wrote:Okay, turns out Littlepip was never called a terrorist anything like as often as Blackjack, possibly never at all.
Between blowing up General Harbinger end ending alliance negotiations with the alicorns, bringing down a number of ships in conjunction with the mercenaries, organizations and settlements of the wastes, and taking over the Single Pegasus Project central hub to slowly erase the cloud cover and cities, I'm fairly certain a lot of pegasi think of Littlepip as nothing less than a sadistic terrorist out to destroy their way of life.
CD- Earth Pony
- Posts : 109
Brohoof! : 14
Join date : 2013-03-01
Location : Netherlands
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by Icy Shake Thu Dec 03, 2015 7:05 pm
I was talking about being personally called a terrorist, rather than with some tangential connection to Red Eye via New Appleloosa, and in FoE or PH, such that she personally heard it. Afterward, after all, I'm guessing there weren't many people calling her one anywhere she could hear about it. Point was, it's a bit rich for her to be calling Boo a terrorist, and it would have been more so if I could think of examples of her being called one and objecting. But getting called "terrorist" to her face was more Blackjack's thing, and she mostly took it in stride, though of course she didn't agree with it. For example,CD wrote:O. Hinds wrote:In FoE? Or at all? Because I imagine the latter could depend on who one asks.Icy Shake wrote:Okay, turns out Littlepip was never called a terrorist anything like as often as Blackjack, possibly never at all.
Between blowing up General Harbinger end ending alliance negotiations with the alicorns, bringing down a number of ships in conjunction with the mercenaries, organizations and settlements of the wastes, and taking over the Single Pegasus Project central hub to slowly erase the cloud cover and cities, I'm fairly certain a lot of pegasi think of Littlepip as nothing less than a sadistic terrorist out to destroy their way of life.
The puce pegasus led me to an office door marked ‘Security’; that made me smile. “Lieutenant? That… um… it’s the… ah…” She glanced at me. “Terrorist? The one who attacked Miramare?”
“Terrorist. You blow up one Vertibuck, and suddenly everypony’s convinced that you’re a complete monster,” I muttered dryly.
“You did what?” Scotch Tape and P-21 asked in unison.
“Didn’t I tell you about that?” I blinked at their surprise. Then again, with everything I had to tell him earlier, I might have left that little detail out. “They shot first, you know. I was merely defending myself,” I said primly.
Icy Shake- Alicorn
- Posts : 1209
Brohoof! : 308
Join date : 2012-06-05
Age : 35
Location : Boston, MA
Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
by SilentCarto Thu Dec 03, 2015 8:42 pm
To be fair, she was out to destroy their way of life, but it was with their help.CD wrote:Between blowing up General Harbinger end ending alliance negotiations with the alicorns, bringing down a number of ships in conjunction with the mercenaries, organizations and settlements of the wastes, and taking over the Single Pegasus Project central hub to slowly erase the cloud cover and cities, I'm fairly certain a lot of pegasi think of Littlepip as nothing less than a sadistic terrorist out to destroy their way of life.
The Enclave was making up and awful lot of lies about the situation on the surface to justify their non-involvement. A big part of the concept of opening the sky in the first place was to let the Enclave civilians see what their goverment was covering up, which implies that the average pegasus would most certainly not consider revealing that to be terrorism -- rather, they've been made aware of a huge problem they need to help solve.
And hey, if it means they can get ahold of some berries in the process...
SilentCarto- Alicorn
- Posts : 1585
Brohoof! : 393
Join date : 2012-05-08
Age : 45
Location : Texas
Sponsored content
Page 11 of 16 • 1 ... 7 ... 10, 11, 12 ... 16
Similar topics» [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
» [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
» [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
» [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
» [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
» [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
» [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
» [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
» [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion
Page 11 of 16
Permissions in this forum:
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
![[GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion - Page 11 Left_c10](https://i.servimg.com/u/f38/17/06/55/33/left_c10.png){kind=small}
![[GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion - Page 11 Bar1010](https://i.servimg.com/u/f38/17/06/55/33/bar1010.png){kind=small}
![[GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion - Page 11 Right_10](https://i.servimg.com/u/f38/17/06/55/33/right_10.png){kind=small}