Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion

[Sindri]

Chapter Review (finally):

[FeatherDust]

Hmm, I do believe I may be too hard on the whole situation. I'm going to have to reread...

W-wait. What? I... I won an argument? With the internet?!

Kidding, kidding

Really my main feeling about Stygius is "He's new at this, but he has pretty good instincts". I can see where people get the "mary sue" vibe, but I don't know about that. I never really felt uncomfortable about him. He comes off to me as a nice guy who's trying his best.

I didn't find the ending of the Stygius-BJ thing to be startling, really... he came there with the intent of a quick one-night stand, and BJ barely comprehends the concept of long term relationships with males. I don't think Whisper's got too much competition for Styggie's attention underground, either, since it sounded like a lack of suitable partners is what drew him to the surface in the first place.

[Caoimhe]

His expansion into a nobel prince that comes out of the blue is what sorta irks me about it. The character shift was fairly sudden and our cast kinda just "bwah?" and go with it. Though in retrospect there really wasn't much downtime for Styg to exposit.

It could be explained as him putting on regal-mode for his sister but his personality change kinda clashes with his initial attitude of childlike naivety around Blackjack. Though in this same chapter we see batponies turning the Royal Canterlot Voice on and off for show without it being a night and day switch, really.

Possibly the batpony society is very, very stern and rigid and Styg never felt he fit in. Maybe he only felt comfortable showing his true self in the outside world. Like I said, a teeny bit of exposition could go a long way. If this is the case, it adds a little bit more depth to Whisper's decision. I'm not trying to say how Somber should write his story at all, just sayin'. :)

Interestingly, language and communication play a more significant role in this chapter: the above, Rover's possibly artificial dialect, the reading of BJ's thoughts and to some extent the recordings. Curious...

[222222]

Well for interested parties here is the latest news on the fallout mod plan

Spoiler:

[Somber]

Stygius was a bit of a Mary Sue. He was supposed to be an actual good, if horny guy. He followed BJ for base reasons but he quickly realized that BJ and her friends fight harder and live more than the Batponies who are genetically dwindling away. He's realized that if they are to have a future they have to have outside blood and risk interaction. They're literally dying from their secrets.

Anyway, thank you so very very much for the reviews. I'm glad the chapter worked. I'm going to have to go to Vegas sometime this week or next and find a place to live. Looks like the job prospect up here fell through. Oh well. We'll see if I can pop out ch 50.

Oh, if anyone lives in the vicinity of Vegas and doesn't mind a complete stranger crashing on their couch, I'd be glad to visit. Hotels are dang expensive. :(

[SilentCarto]

5) Okay, so Dealer acknowledged that he's a braincopy inside a crusader mainframe that's talking to the spell that houses his soul. ....is that the first time this theory has come up in the story? I know we discussed the possibility in this thread, but BJ didn't seem at all surprised by the idea that Dealer was, in fact, inside a computer.

How was that implied? It just said that Luna put half his soul into the... program... and asked him to find an heir. Nothing aobut any computer or transmitted thoughts, as much as I subscribe to that theory.

Uncertain. Luna is the obvious choice, but if it IS her, why did she wind up inside Eater? She died in Canterlot, nowhere near the Hoof. Unless Eater had an anchor into her soul from the whole Nightmare Moon thing.

The Eater's spider web crosses the whole planet. The Hoof region has it much more strongly than most places, but it's not localized, and Luna's soul is much closer to the Eater's than ordinary ponies, so she might have been drawn in more strongly.

That seems to be the implication but I'm not sure at all. If it was Psalm with orders to make sure Celly didn't get captured alive, why would she fire? Celestia wasn't on the verge of being captured.

I somehow don't think anyone in that room would actually want Celestia dead. Even Goldie. She's unique, precious and irreplaceable. Goldie has a ruthless political mind, but that doesn't mean he would actually arrange to murder her without extenuating circumstances. It's kind of... too obvious, I guess. I mean, suppose Mac didn't get in the way. Celestia dies, those on site can attest that there was no attempt to capture her, and Luna looks directly at the guy who just said it'd be a good idea to kill her. Goldie's not dumb enough to make himself the only suspect.

Since Goldie was trusted as the head of the OIA for years after that, it clearly didn't go down that way. But it must have been a setup if Psalm was the shooter. Perhaps the gun was tampered with so that the lens would show her illusory zebra ninjas sneaking up on Celestia. Doesn't matter. Who might be more eager than Goldie to kill Celestia? Someone, perhaps, who would later be willing to arrange a coup? Someone like Garnet and the Inner Circle, removing Celestia and their too-moral boss at the same time?

>Ponies have brows?

What do you call those things?

[Moodyman90]

I loved the chapter. It was a pleasant surprise and just what was needed after the past couple of chapters.
It sure did keep me laughing out loud a times. And great way to end it haha.

[SilentCarto]

Huh... actually, Luna's not an option for the screamer. She died hours after the attacks, but the scream began during the initial exchange when they turned on the shield. Goldie, perhaps, considering that it increasingly sounds like he wanted to use Folly to shoot the Eater... and if my theory is correct, that the Necropolis is inside the Eater's ring...

Also, daaayum girl! She picked up Dash's strength, clearly... the Glory I remember couldn't have pulled off that move! Next thing you know, Glory's gonna go suplex a motherf***ing train!

Or she'll throw a boat. Boats are cool.

She'll throw it ONTO Blackjack.

Rainbow Glory smacking BJ with a boat MUST BE DRAWN!

[tylertoon2]

Huh... actually, Luna's not an option for the screamer. She died hours after the attacks, but the scream began during the initial exchange when they turned on the shield. Goldie, perhaps, considering that it increasingly sounds like he wanted to use Folly to shoot the Eater... and if my theory is correct, that the Necropolis is inside the Eater's ring...

Would goldie really be that much of a surprise to blackjack though? She did seem pretty shocked, and I would think that blackjack would think of someone like Goldie to be there, no it would seem more fitting in my book to have a good pony there, or at least, someone BJ has no doubt to think they are good.

What would be truly terrifying is if Luna was absorbed into it at canterlot suggesting that the eaters corruption was much larger than anticipated. Again though. It's pretty unlikely.

And I agree, someone must draw that.

[O. Hinds]

…what?
No, seriously, what?
This makes no sense to me.
How do all of Rampage’s souls still have their memories. They are NOT just the summation of themselves, they do NOT have their original bodies. Most of said bodies weren’t even capable of regenerating. Is the phoenix talisman specifically attuned to retain memories? If so, why?
And I don’t just mean things like the recipes for recharging rad-away and other pedantic stuff like that. I mean stuff like the Angel remembering Blackjack across multiple meetings.
Do they each get a portion of Rampage’s brain or something? A portion that’s restored in full on regeneration, but that Rampage can’t access herself? Is there a possibility that Rampage could learn to access their memories and remember every filly and colt she’s ever killed?
This is freaking insane.

As I understand it (and I could be wrong) and hypothesize to fill in the gaps, it may be abstracted like this:
A bound soul is just data storage; it relies for processing on the thing it's bound to, be that a body, a soul jar, or some exotic magical framework, and that thing has read/write access. An unbound soul creates a secondary module in whatever "space" (freed up by the lack of a connection, likely, and possibly also expanded in an afterlife) is available to it. This secondary module consists of a processor, some RAM, some basic I/O, and perhaps some additional storage space. The key thing, however, is that the secondary module has read only access to the primary module. Events experienced by a fully unbound soul, therefore, are stored only in the secondary module (unless some soul-manipulating magic is performed from outside to transfer them, I suppose), and since the secondary module collapses when a soul is rebound, those events are not recalled, even if the soul is later unbound again. How a bound soul is altered may vary wildly; in Rampage's case, it may be that there is some dedicated storage in the talisman, but I think it more likely that that type of souljar has read/write capability instead of just read only. After all, Celestia also seems to have experienced things, though in her case, since she's hooked up to a computer system, affairs might be even more complex.

[SilentCarto]

Would goldie really be that much of a surprise to blackjack though? She did seem pretty shocked, and I would think that blackjack would think of someone like Goldie to be there, no it would seem more fitting in my book to have a good pony there, or at least, someone BJ has no doubt to think they are good.

What would be truly terrifying is if Luna was absorbed into it at canterlot suggesting that the eaters corruption was much larger than anticipated. Again though. It's pretty unlikely.

And I agree, someone must draw that.

It doesn't seem like the timing works for this to be post-Luna's death. The StableTec pagers all went off simultaneously, the time it took Marigold to get to 99 should be far shorter than the time it took AJ to get to Stable 2, and they felt the scream before they even left Hoss's house.

On the other hoof, Swicked is right, there was a notable lack of Luna in the Everafter.

--Woah, hold the phone. Remember those unknown green and gold markers on Eclipse's map?
I moved closer still and saw a second light, a soft orange point that sang the other sound. And then a third was born, a cheery pink. Another, majestic purple. Teal. A pair, green and gold.

[Sindri]

it seems like everyone on here has has some kind of emotional outpouring, so I guess it's my turn now...

Hrm. Middle of a chapter update might not have been the best time for this, but it does seem to be the place.

First off, things will almost certainly get better in college, wherever you end up. As soon as you're living somewhere different from your parents and responsible for your own schedule and work and stuff, a lot of problems seem to clear up. Meanwhile (after getting through the pointless GE requirements) you'll be in classes that actually mean something; once you find material you're genuinely interested in the homework and projects and such just kinda... stop being a chore.

And don't worry all that hugely about where you go to school; a prestigious university will look good for your first employer maybe, but in the real world (at least in the tech world) what you know and what you can do is more important than whether or not you could buy your way into the place with the most famous name. The important thing is that it gives you the opportunity to learn what you need to, not that you get condescended to by the most famous professors and pay the highest tuitions. Find a place that covers what you want to learn, and where you're comfortable spending 4+ years of your life and ignore anybody who says you should be doing better.
Or, if you honestly prefer, you can not even go to college. Most of the talk about how college grads make more money doesn't mean much; I worked out the math and (based on the best numbers I could find) the extra four years of work and lack of tuition fees combine to make a high school grad almost as good as a college grad from a purely financial standpoint. The big difference is that the jobs you get with a college education are typically more interesting than the work you qualify for without, and you got a chance to learn interesting things while you were there.

As for direction in life? At 17, if you're sure of where you're going or what you'll do with your life, you're wrong. I went into college with the vaguest "probably some sort of engineering" and I'm doing great. Most people I know who are successful in life are doing something completely different from anything they imagined in high school, and often even something that has nothing to do with their old major. Look for opportunities to do cool stuff, learn whatever you're interested in, make friends with the kind of people you want to be friends with, and you'll probably do okay for yourself. It doesn't really matter much if you go down in history or get rich or make your parents proud; the point of life is to live and to enjoy yourself along the way, so if you're content you're winning.

Ya know guys, with 49 out I'm pretty certain PH has broke the 1,000,000 word mark.

Nope. 969590.

Next chapter.

>And her army keep growing. If only she was smart enougth to USE it.

Yeah, but Glory is. As seen with BJ's first resurrection.



Incidentally,

Shameless plug, Shadowrun-flavored:

[222222]

@Sindri: I have to disagree about the whole not go to college thing. While it may not be strictly neccesary, many jobs have college requirements. Being a nurse, or a policeman, or a firefighter takes several years of college in most states and for no discernible reason. And everywhere else required credentials are being puffed up unnecessarily as well. At least, that's what my current research has shown, and I have had to do some research recently for school.

[O. Hinds]

…what?
No, seriously, what?
This makes no sense to me.
How do all of Rampage’s souls still have their memories. They are NOT just the summation of themselves, they do NOT have their original bodies. Most of said bodies weren’t even capable of regenerating. Is the phoenix talisman specifically attuned to retain memories? If so, why?
And I don’t just mean things like the recipes for recharging rad-away and other pedantic stuff like that. I mean stuff like the Angel remembering Blackjack across multiple meetings.
Do they each get a portion of Rampage’s brain or something? A portion that’s restored in full on regeneration, but that Rampage can’t access herself? Is there a possibility that Rampage could learn to access their memories and remember every filly and colt she’s ever killed?
This is freaking insane.

As I understand it (and I could be wrong) and hypothesize to fill in the gaps, it may be abstracted like this:
A bound soul is just data storage; it relies for processing on the thing it's bound to, be that a body, a soul jar, or some exotic magical framework, and that thing has read/write access. An unbound soul creates a secondary module in whatever "space" (freed up by the lack of a connection, likely, and possibly also expanded in an afterlife) is available to it. This secondary module consists of a processor, some RAM, some basic I/O, and perhaps some additional storage space. The key thing, however, is that the secondary module has read only access to the primary module. Events experienced by a fully unbound soul, therefore, are stored only in the secondary module (unless some soul-manipulating magic is performed from outside to transfer them, I suppose), and since the secondary module collapses when a soul is rebound, those events are not recalled, even if the soul is later unbound again. How a bound soul is altered may vary wildly; in Rampage's case, it may be that there is some dedicated storage in the talisman, but I think it more likely that that type of souljar has read/write capability instead of just read only. After all, Celestia also seems to have experienced things, though in her case, since she's hooked up to a computer system, affairs might be even more complex.

Celestia isn't soul-bound, though. She had her mind imprinted on the crusader mainframe, much like the leader of the steel rangers tried to do in that one stable.

The rational part of my mind reared up.  If that was what had happened, then this wasn’t really Celestia I was talking to.  It was just a program.  Just the illusion of memories.  Downloading your mind into a Crusader Maneframe doesn’t actually put you into the computer.  It just makes a copy of your brain.  The only way that…

I thought of Elder Cottage Cheese and his unholy intentions.  He had planned to truly live forever by not only turning the Crusader Maneframe into a duplicate of his mind, but then transferring his very soul into the machine.  Using it as a soul jar.

My face rose towards Celestia, my eyes opening in terrible realization as Rarity’s words once again whispered through my mind.

I even tried to have Spike burn it.  All that did was send it to Princess Celestia.

Princess Celestia had, for a limited time, been in possession of the Black Book.

“You…”  I stared, aghast.

“Yes,” Celestia confirmed regretfully, not even needing to hear the question.  “The spells were so easy to learn that I knew them the moment I opened those pages.  And how could I have resisted just a look?”

I felt a black chill.

“When you live as long as I have, boredom becomes an enemy,” She explained.  “In its own way, as dangerous to me as Discord.  Especially when I was alone.”  

Celestia sighed.  “In the centuries after I banished Nightmare Moon, I turned to learning everything I could about the mysterious, the secret and the forbidden.  I even learned tidbits of zebra alchemy and dragon magic -- those few things which a pony such as Myself could possibly perform.  Later, I even built a school to teach the things I had learned which where safe.”

Dragon magic?  Was that how She sent scrolls back to Spike?  I  couldn’t help but ask.

“Yes,” She told me with a nostalgic smile.  “I learned that from the dragon you now know as Mouse.”  She continued, “The secrets of the Black Book were a temptation that played on centuries of habit.”

No wonder the shield around the S.P.P. Central Hub was so invulnerable.  No wonder it had lasted so long.  It was being powered by Celestia’s soul.

How are memories stored in inanimate objects, though? Again, was the phoenix talisman designed to host memories? If it wasn't, how has it been done?

They could be stored in magical structures bound to those objects. As for the second point, I think that you must have missed part of what I said: it's both possible and, I think, likely, that the phoenix talisman simply had read/write access.

[Caoimhe]

--Woah, hold the phone. Remember those unknown green and gold markers on Eclipse's map?
I moved closer still and saw a second light, a soft orange point that sang the other sound. And then a third was born, a cheery pink. Another, majestic purple. Teal. A pair, green and gold.

Does that mean we might not have met this green yet, but it could be someone really important to Goldenblood?
From the color, I'd guess... Emerald? Was that one of the OIA liaisons?
I'm really grasping at straws, here.

Well if that's the case, we do know someone really important to Goldenblood who has been with BJ for a very long time. :O

[Sindri]

@Sindri: I have to disagree about the whole not go to college thing. While it may not be strictly neccesary, many jobs have college requirements. Being a nurse, or a policeman, or a firefighter takes several years of college in most states and for no discernible reason. And everywhere else required credentials are being puffed up unnecessarily as well. At least, that's what my current research has shown, and I have had to do some research recently for school.

Yes, there are a lot of jobs that you need to go to college for. And a lot that you don't. As a general rule, the ones that require college are more interesting and pay more, but the amount of extra pay factored against the cost of college means that the first point is the only one that really matters; if a person doesn't want to go to college and will be perfectly happy in a lower level job, like if they've always dreamed of being a plumber or something, there's no reason for them to go.

That said, I think it's a lot more fun to go to college and then be an engineer than to just learn how to fix/assemble piping and do that for decades, but to each their own.

[O. Hinds]

How are memories stored in inanimate objects, though? Again, was the phoenix talisman designed to host memories? If it wasn't, how has it been done?

They could be stored in magical structures bound to those objects. As for the second point, I think that you must have missed part of what I said: it's both possible and, I think, likely, that the phoenix talisman simply had read/write access.

Huh... I didn't remember the transfer being soul jar stuff. So... did Rarity make it? Why would she make such a thing? Or was soul magic not restricted to the black book?

No, they're two separate processes; it's just that it's possible to do both to the same maneframe.

[nebulous]

When I read about the green and gold marks, my first thought was "Oh my god! Lyra and Bon Bon are super-agents!" My second thought was that it was probably Spike and Goldenblood. Then I thought the gold might be Celestia since Goldenblood was supposed to be low-key and not equated with a ministry mare. Then I remembered that Luna was friends with him. Then I remembered that she didn't find out about his huge projects until she accused him of treason. So... probably Celestia. As for the green and gold souls in the Everafter, I guess they could be the same as the marks on the map if they were Goldenblood and someone who's currently unknown, but I don't think so since for one thing they're specifically referred to as a pair which probably means they have a close relationship and for another thing that scene with Sanguine talking over the radio implies that Horse is still around and he thinks Goldenblood is, too. And there's some more slight evidence for it being Lyra and Bon Bon since Lyra is confirmed to be dead of pink cloud with her skeleton on Ministry Walk.

I don't know about the Dealer's mind being in a maneframe causing the difficulty of contacting Blackjack. Why go to the effort of soul jarring the program if the maneframe getting blown up or failing from maintenance issues would make the soul jar useless? Maybe the effort needed to contact EC-1101 bearers is an unexpected side-effect of putting a soul into a computer program rather than into anything normal.

Theory on how souls in jars can retain memories: to keep it from slipping into the Everafter, a soul needs an anchor keeping it down. To interface with a soul properly and anchor it, you need something that can hold memories. Making a soul jar isn't just moving a soul from point A to point B, but also giving an object the right framework to hold a soul. This theory has a weak point since there was never any talk of building a container into the soul jar objects in any of the soul jar making scenes, but maybe it was part of the chanting and such that went on while casting the spell.

[Somber]

This is something from my fantasy stories kinda leeching in and not really based in MLP. All living things are comprised of a body, , a mind which is the throne of the self, and a soul which is the unique individual. Consciousness of mind is the bridge between eternal soul and physical body. When the body dies, the mind can no longer persist and the soul is no longer anchored. The soul can be reborn into a new body, but even if the creature is completely different it will still reflect the soul. The soul doesn't really have memories. It simply is and while it may change slightly from life to life, it is usually the same.

If the mind is damaged, the soul can not express itself, and the body just lays their mindless. If the soul is damaged, the fundamental person is forever changed. If a body is lacking and the mind persists by forbidden sorcery, you get a soul jar, a ghost, or a haunting. In essense, the soul expresses itself through a different body. If the soul is severed completely, the person loses all sense of self. They are at best mindless, and at worst, become psychopaths desperate to find and take the soul of another. Of course, such souls are damaged in the process and therefore they need another and another.

Sometimes you can get interesting things. Put an animal soul in a human and the spirital power gives you a werewolf. Put the souls of multiple people in one body an you get a super powered psychopath. Put multiple minds in a person and it builds the most efficient structure. Link a VERY powerful soul with multiple bodies over one mind, and you get a legion of telepathic people who fight and kill as one.

Not saying that any of this is going to show up in PH. It's just a magic rules for a fantasy setting. That's all.

[FeatherDust]

Just a thought that popped into my head, I was thinking about Whisper never being able to come above ground again, and then I realized -- she may find darkness soothing. She spent most of two centuries in stasis in the dark. I'm thinking darkness doesn't bother her too much.

[IncoherentOrange]

@Somber For lack of better words: Fascinating.

[FeatherDust]

5) Okay, so Dealer acknowledged that he's a braincopy inside a crusader mainframe

How was that implied?

Never mind. He mentioned being stuck in a mainframe for two centuries and I didn't realize he was talking about EC1101. (OR WAS HE?!)

[FeatherDust]

No, seriously, what?
This makes no sense to me.
How do all of Rampage’s souls still have their memories. They are NOT just the summation of themselves, they do NOT have their original bodies. Most of said bodies weren’t even capable of regenerating. Is the phoenix talisman specifically attuned to retain memories? If so, why?

OK, so basically, a soul has a memory, and a body has a memory, and in general they share their contents, but they're not the same memory. Things your soul experiences outside your body are ... dreams. They don't really work once you get back into your body. But they can still affect you -- you still have those feelings, but there's no context for them in your brain. It's sort of like when they did memory erasure therapy; the feelings are still there but you can't remember WHY you're terrified of junk piles.

Rampage is an odd case. She's closer to her souls than most ponies. But there's a Rampage brain in there that only starts at the point where she woke up in that crater -- those are the only memories she truly has. The Phoenix Talisman rebuilds that brain each time she regenerates (it would have to constantly keep track of that, in order to repair head trauma) with all its memories intact. She can occasionally tap into one of her souls, and when that happens she has those memories, but when she comes back it's all rather dreamlike and she doesn't really recall anything about the experience. Each of the souls has its own memory, distinct from her biological brain, which persists (thus why the Angel always remembers BJ, and so on).

[Cptadder]

RE: Soul memory and Body memory
This sounds like a case for SCIENCE to solve. Get me a team of myth-busting ponies, a hundred pounds of Comb-B and five pounds of detcord and we will see what kind of SCIENCE can determine exactly how well and how quickly Souls can retain memories.


After all we know from Snips they pulled the soul tearing spell on themselves to go to the "other" side so logically we can send in ponies to see if message exchange is possible and how much retention is possible.

Something very interesting I want to see answered.

When Blackjack died and went to The Farplane/The Great Beyond/The Farplane/The Twilight zone was she fully organic again? IE how did she see herself? Was she just another drifting mote of light without a body or was she a pony projection of how she was or how she saw herself? Questions, questions and triply out of body experiences.

[Sindri]

Second round of forum reactions from me, because leaving these boards for 26 hours leads to three pages of new material:

Rover is best puppy

Very true.

...whatever idiot thought it would be a good idea to send a special ops team to stage a fail assassination plot. You use provincial forces for that not your own people because if shit goes south your people may talk and undermine the entire plan.

True again. How do you handle being so true all the time?

Oy hey guys did you not notice Pslam there?

She's a sniper and an infiltrator and a damned good one of both. The standard palace guards wouldn't have a chance of spotting her.

...his father is a King in a world famous for not having Kings.

The changelings had a queen. The Society has a king.

No elaborate plots or double dealings just a simple moment in time that provides a rallying cry for a nation. No need to make it false cry

It was already rallying them in the wrong direction. Big Mac is a hero for giving his life for that of his Princess, not for who fired the shot or what influence it had after he was gone.

Silver Spoon and her Ghoul Gang (Trademark).

Everybody keeps saying 'Carrion and the ghouls' or 'Silver Spoon and the ghouls.' This is clearly Xanthe's party. She's the only one of them doomed enough to be a Fo:E party leader.

It's Luna, here's why:

Smells like confirmation bias to me. She does seem likely, but is by no means the only option. It could be the remains of the star that died preventing the Eater from rising thousands of years ago and wiped out the zebra city in the process. It could be the Eater caught in something more powerful; the hum of the Harbingers matched up with the screams of the Enervation IIRC. It could be the zebra shamans and alchemists who botched things back then. It could be Horse, or the engineer who turned on the reactor on his orders, caught here when they tried to exploit the fallen star for power. Luna's in the three most likely, but there are countless possibilities.

Really my main feeling about Stygius is "He's new at this, but he has pretty good instincts". I can see where people get the "mary sue" vibe, but I don't know about that.

I can't. Really, people on the internet are way too quick to scream Mary Sue. Stygius was lower-powered and received less screentime than pretty much anyone else in the party. If you run any of the core cast of PH or the original Fo:E through your standard Mary Sue litmus test you'll get a result off the top end of the scale. But he was in no way perfect, he did not steal the scene whenever he appeared in it, he was not instantly beloved by all, he did not effortlessly solve long-standing problems... he displayed none of the defining characteristic of a Mary Sue. Yes, if you took his stat sheet and put him in a story written by a 13-year old virgin pounding out their first fanfic, he'd probably be a particularly bad Sue. But with a halfway decent writer you can't just take a list of traits like "of an uncommon race" or "connected in some way to royalty" and write off somebody's existence as a mistake. Do I like Stygius? Not really. His first appearance left a distinctly bad impression, and while his later actions were rational, helpful, and occasionally downright chivalrous enough to prevent me from ever hating him, I just didn't know him well enough to like. But there's a huge difference between "I don't like this character" and "the author is doing it wrong!"

And honestly? His being a prince was not a surprise. Combat training that good matched with a complete lack of real world experience probably means soldier, knight, or royal given the setting. Tiny inbred community means he's likely to have some connection with the ruler. The logic and (usually) caution inherent in most of his actions despite unfamiliar and often desparate circumstances and his general seriousness implies either extensive hardship (unlikely in his hidden caverns and virtually impossible given inexperience with serious threats) or training from very young age if not birth toward some solemn role. As usual with Somber's writing, all the pieces are there if you pay attention to the character instead of writing him off as whatever literary stereotype you feel like from the first appearance.

I'm going to have to go to Vegas sometime this week or next and find a place to live. Looks like the job prospect up here fell through. Oh well. We'll see if I can pop out ch 50.

Oh, if anyone lives in the vicinity of Vegas and doesn't mind a complete stranger crashing on their couch, I'd be glad to visit. Hotels are dang expensive. :(

Alas. I'm afraid I don't live close enough and none of my contacts in the area are hiring... best of luck?

How do all of Rampage’s souls still have their memories. They are NOT just the summation of themselves, they do NOT have their original bodies. Most of said bodies weren’t even capable of regenerating. Is the phoenix talisman specifically attuned to retain memories? If so, why?

What's the point of a talisman that makes you immortal if you lose your memories and self the first time you get shot in the head? For that matter, in order for the talisman to work at all it would need to take an imprint of the body so it knows what to reconstruct toward. The souls are providing the power and holding everything together, but the Phoenix is keeping all their minds and a composite body together.

The angel decided a long time ago she would never bring “mercy” to Blackjack, though, since she rejected it the first time.Still, better to be safe than sorry.

Maybe she changed her mind after the second time Blackjack died without her?

Can we get a little more B movie in here? Maybe give her some alien DNA? Splice her with an insect? Turn her gelatinous? Anything?

Well, she already went through jellylegs. Do alicorn tumors count?

You know, though, Carrion would have been quite the interesting companion to of had this entire time...

Heee! ...Yes, it would certainly have been a different story. But he'd never fire on Charity.

what the heck is wrong with you, cake mare? What happened to us? You’ve changed; you’re not the mare I fell in love with!

Have I mentioned recently that I love you?
And you realize of course that after looking at all of this I need to read LMR, and I already have far too much to do?

...Not saying that any of this is going to show up in PH. It's just a magic rules for a fantasy setting. That's all.

Suuuure.

[O. Hinds]

How are memories stored in inanimate objects, though? Again, was the phoenix talisman designed to host memories? If it wasn't, how has it been done?

They could be stored in magical structures bound to those objects. As for the second point, I think that you must have missed part of what I said: it's both possible and, I think, likely, that the phoenix talisman simply had read/write access.

Huh... I didn't remember the transfer being soul jar stuff. So... did Rarity make it? Why would she make such a thing? Or was soul magic not restricted to the black book?

No, they're two separate processes; it's just that it's possible to do both to the same maneframe.

My question was who developed this process.

Well, the souljar process is just a souljar process. The upload process... that I'm not sure about.

[FeatherDust]

When Blackjack died and went to The Farplane/The Great Beyond/The Farplane/The Twilight zone was she fully organic again? IE how did she see herself? Was she just another drifting mote of light without a body or was she a pony projection of how she was or how she saw herself?

She was just a bodiless point of view -- a mote of light. She makes reference at one point to wishing she had lips so she could frown.

[FeatherDust]

Really, people on the internet are way too quick to scream Mary Sue. Stygius was lower-powered and received less screentime than pretty much anyone else in the party. If you run any of the core cast of PH or the original Fo:E through your standard Mary Sue litmus test you'll get a result off the top end of the scale.

Oh, I didn't say I thought he WAS one. I just said I can see where people are coming from. And yeah, in fiction in general, action/adventure heroes would almost always score high on the Mary Sue litmus test. They have to, or why would the problem they're fighting have remained un-managed for so long? Obviously if the general run of people can't handle it, they need a hero who is better and stronger than everyone else. That doesn't make them bad.

Anyway I'm not clear on how a character in an original work can be a mary-sue since the term is meant to be for fanfic characters who walk in and are better and more interesting than the actual main character of the story (but, most often, are only "more interesting" in the sense of having more bizarre powers or weird physical traits). I've heard it applied to Honor Harrington, for example, and I guess I can see that (better than everyone else, has a telepathic pet, etc.), but again -- every action hero is a mary sue by that standard.

But with a halfway decent writer you can't just take a list of traits like "of an uncommon race" or "connected in some way to royalty" and write off somebody's existence as a mistake.

And really that's the key. Jim Butcher (Dresden Files) once had a long discussion on the internet over whether "inspiration" (or "the idea") was more or less important than writing skill*. He argued that a good author can make a good story out of a bad idea, but a bad author can't make a good story out of a good idea. To prove his point he combined two bad ideas of the other guy's choice, and wrote a story based on them: Pokemon and the lost Roman 9th Legion. But it came out so well that he refused to post it on the boards because he was shopping it out to his agent. You can read that story; it's called Furies of Calderon and it's followed by the rest of the Codex Alera series. (And yes, it's awesome.)

Do I like Stygius? Not really. His first appearance left a distinctly bad impression, and while his later actions were rational, helpful, and occasionally downright chivalrous enough to prevent me from ever hating him, I just didn't know him well enough to like. But there's a huge difference between "I don't like this character" and "the author is doing it wrong!"

Fair enough. Your mileage is certainly allowed to vary.

And honestly? His being a prince was not a surprise.

Not for the same reasons, but it wasn't for me either. I don't know why, but it just seemed obvious when that fact came out.


* This is a self-serving argument for a poor author; if they claim The Idea is the most important thing, that a good idea guarantees good writing, then clearly they aren't failing because they are a lousy writer; they fail because they just didn't have the luck of stumbling across a Good Idea. I like to think Fallout Equestria in general is a wonderful counter-example -- "pastel ponies in a post-apocalyptic wasteland" is a horrible, horrible idea. Which is part of what makes it so awesome when it turns out to be authentically good!

[Guest]

Aleralol!

And thus, the question of where on earth that series came from was answered. On a related note, who says nothing productive ever comes from arguing on the internet? =P (But seriously, that was a weird but pretty great series - not perfect, and not Butcher's best work, but a nice and fairy unique dose of fantasy)

[Caoimhe]

How many other blanks besides Boo survived, if any? I wonder if you could extract one of Rampage's bosom buddies into one. Hmm.

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