Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion

[Caoimhe]

Lesbians is the best fic and needs more praise for its deep hidden allegories and heroic subject matter.

[Ironmonger]

Lesbians is the best fic and needs more praise for its deep hidden allegories and heroic subject matter.

Yes, "deep hidden allegories" and "heroic subject matter." Wink. xD I don't even...

[FeatherDust]

I read about the crippled Scoots thing and wish they'd go with it somehow, but not just make "Scoots goes nuts trying to fly" in the same vain of "Applebloom goes nuts trying to get a cutie mark."

Yeah, I'd really like to see her get her own story. I don't think she would go crazy trying to fly -- she's gotta be aware of her own condition -- but it'd be nice to have that laid down in canon rather than the big question mark it is right now.

Also, in retrospect:
"It's not chaos, you dodo!"
JESUS, Sweetie!

And that's where I'd probably go with a plot. She's been concealing her problem, and at some point her friends have to start wondering when she'll learn to fly, etc, start suggesting asking Dash for lessons, maybe even start in with Cutie Mark Crusaders Flying Teachers. And Scoots is too embarrassed to admit she knows she won't ever be able to fly, but it hurts to have them working so hard on a doomed project, too. And eventually she has to come clean, and finds out that her friends don't look down on her for it, and she should've just told them.

I would love to see a story about a handicapped person that doesn't wind up going weird. By weird, I mean like the one where the disabled person does something perfectly normal and it's all "heroic" because they're disabled, which is utterly patronizing. Or worse, they have some amazing ability because their body "makes up for" the disability, which is a sweet little lie to make the rest of us feel better, and then makes ACTUAL disabled people look bad by comparison for not having gained something "in exchange".

You rarely see it, but what I really want is basically, "Yeah, I'm handicapped; it doesn't define me."

[O. Hinds]

I read about the crippled Scoots thing and wish they'd go with it somehow, but not just make "Scoots goes nuts trying to fly" in the same vain of "Applebloom goes nuts trying to get a cutie mark."

Yeah, I'd really like to see her get her own story. I don't think she would go crazy trying to fly -- she's gotta be aware of her own condition -- but it'd be nice to have that laid down in canon rather than the big question mark it is right now.

Also, in retrospect:
"It's not chaos, you dodo!"
JESUS, Sweetie!

And that's where I'd probably go with a plot. She's been concealing her problem, and at some point her friends have to start wondering when she'll learn to fly, etc, start suggesting asking Dash for lessons, maybe even start in with Cutie Mark Crusaders Flying Teachers. And Scoots is too embarrassed to admit she knows she won't ever be able to fly, but it hurts to have them working so hard on a doomed project, too. And eventually she has to come clean, and finds out that her friends don't look down on her for it, and she should've just told them.

I would love to see a story about a handicapped person that doesn't wind up going weird. By weird, I mean like the one where the disabled person does something perfectly normal and it's all "heroic" because they're disabled, which is utterly patronizing. Or worse, they have some amazing ability because their body "makes up for" the disability, which is a sweet little lie to make the rest of us feel better, and then makes ACTUAL disabled people look bad by comparison for not having gained something "in exchange".

You rarely see it, but what I really want is basically, "Yeah, I'm handicapped; it doesn't define me."

Have you heard of this?

[FeatherDust]

Have you heard of this?

Yeah, I've heard good stuff about it. I mean, for an eroge.

[Cptadder]

Wouldn't the other ship in your example be closer than that, though? And what if the scouts get there before the fading is complete? And wouldn't doing it at night make it worse due to the light being more visible in the dark?

Rainbooms don't seem to create much in the way of the light aside from the initiation point, look back at CMC episode in Season 1, in fact the light dims wherever the Rainboom circle passes. It's a visual phenomenon to indicate a magical blast wave not a 1000 watt wave of light. Correct me if I'm wrong but it fails to even light up Canterlot to any great extent during the royal wedding.

If you can't see the acceleration disk you have no idea a rainboom has taking place which brings me to just thought about second method. Can you tilt a Rainboom sideways? Instead of being a flat explosion in the vertical, could you swap it on it's head for the horizontal? That could greatly cut down on the observable distance.

Ah, good point. However, this does mean that the Zebras will probably be interested in it from the start if they find out about the research station at all. "They're building a dedicated closed research station out in the middle of nowhere? What's too secret and/or dangerous for Hoofington? We need to get more information on this."

But sir we can't sneak an agent in it's a closed research facility! Our only option is an invisible infiltration system and the wards around this place go both ways, nothing gets in nothing gets out. We can't sneak through a wall and if we used a Unicorn to port in we'd set off every alarm in the place! Great one what you ask is impossible to do quietly.

Ah, good, though I was more concerned about whether someone more knowledgeable about OS and the like would approve of the information flow patterns.

We have plenty of similar places for Research the big thing is access control. As long as no paper or hard drives or microdot cameras get out you'll be fine in the short term. The instant something is developed enough to hit the field your going to lose it sooner or later after all.

Lesbians is the best fic and needs more praise for its deep hidden allegories and heroic subject matter.

Yes, "deep hidden allegories" and "heroic subject matter." Wink. xD I don't even...

Of course, it's full of symbolism relating the matter of Lesbians to the cultural and ethnic struggles of the Serbian people in a modern world struggling with their own place in a continent that does not like them surrounded by people they've spent thousands of years fighting. You have to dig like one layer down to find all of this Ironmonger, I've not seen symbolism this blatant since the crosses everywhere in Evangelion.

[Caoimhe]

When Littlepip says "Then we all fucked" she is refering to us, the reader. It is we who are fucked. Also Uganda

[Vergil]

When Littlepip says "Then we all fucked" she is refering to us, the reader. It is we who are fucked. Also Uganda

Well I just got back from out of town and I have absolutely no idea what is going on.


So everything must be normal then.

[Caoimhe]

Project Horizons!

[Ironmonger]

Now I want to use "Uganda" as a swear word. T_T Damnit Caoimhe.

[Caoimhe]

U gan da it.

[RoboRed]

[Ironmonger]

U gan da it.

What the turkimenistan?

[Kattlarv]

Well crap, turns out my body failed out on me again, bad body. Atop of that I overslept, again, despite going to bed at midnight for a change :< (and fff- lost another day due to stuff.)
Anyhow; as Glorian would say: Onwaaaards!

@EP: Just to start with another NSFW speculation: I just had a random trailing off, what if Scotch, along with using her slightly random knowledge of building stuff outside of a vault, had a "sex ed"? Like, taught the fillies (since so far, no colts have been abused in the crusaders) about sex, masturbation and whatnot, trying to get their confidence back, and motion that sex is not just something awful stallions do to them. Just a random thought. On another side note, managed to fix the NV bug with not being able to sit on the couch, was a command for it, apparently somewhat common glitch.

(Drugs) Again, I avoid them hard and mercilessly, I don't want to end up revealing shit xD

(Hugs) I still can't recall the last one that had any impact or effect on me...

Okay, this was embarassing... I had planned to get ~15 pages down, I crashed after one. To my defence, just spent 7 hours discussing and partially working on the FoE-RPG. And fuck me if I won't reply to every damn message of this forum by the end of tomorrow! ... technically today, but whatever xD

[O. Hinds]

Wouldn't the other ship in your example be closer than that, though? And what if the scouts get there before the fading is complete? And wouldn't doing it at night make it worse due to the light being more visible in the dark?

Rainbooms don't seem to create much in the way of the light aside from the initiation point, look back at CMC episode in Season 1, in fact the light dims wherever the Rainboom circle passes. It's a visual phenomenon to indicate a magical blast wave not a 1000 watt wave of light. Correct me if I'm wrong but it fails to even light up Canterlot to any great extent during the royal wedding.

Don't the rainbow tracks and the boom circle glow, though? Sure, it may not be enough to significantly light up the surrounding area, at least during the daytime, but it ought to still make them more visible.

If you can't see the acceleration disk you have no idea a rainboom has taking place which brings me to just thought about second method. Can you tilt a Rainboom sideways? Instead of being a flat explosion in the vertical, could you swap it on it's head for the horizontal? That could greatly cut down on the observable distance.

…Okay, it's clear that we've been assuming that the other was assuming the same things we were again. I just thought that that the disk's axis was parallel to the rainbooming object's velocity at the time of the boom (though this can be reshaped; the disk from the SS, for example, is perpendicular to the plane's velocity even though the sub-rainbooms feeding it are determined by the props, and the same sort of thing is true for the SPP towers).

Actually, you can even see this happening in the Canterlot Wedding rainboom.

Ah, good point. However, this does mean that the Zebras will probably be interested in it from the start if they find out about the research station at all. "They're building a dedicated closed research station out in the middle of nowhere? What's too secret and/or dangerous for Hoofington? We need to get more information on this."

But sir we can't sneak an agent in it's a closed research facility! Our only option is an invisible infiltration system and the wards around this place go both ways, nothing gets in nothing gets out. We can't sneak through a wall and if we used a Unicorn to port in we'd set off every alarm in the place! Great one what you ask is impossible to do quietly.

Even if they can't get in (which still isn't certain; sure, while a perfectly closed system would keep them out, I'm not sure how close Equestria would get to that), they can still watch it very carefully.

Ah, good, though I was more concerned about whether someone more knowledgeable about OS and the like would approve of the information flow patterns.

We have plenty of similar places for Research the big thing is access control. As long as no paper or hard drives or microdot cameras get out you'll be fine in the short term. The instant something is developed enough to hit the field your going to lose it sooner or later after all.

Ah, good. (Not sure what exactly you mean here by "in the short term", though.)

[Cptadder]

Don't the rainbow tracks and the boom circle glow, though? Sure, it may not be enough to significantly light up the surrounding area, at least during the daytime, but it ought to still make them more visible.

You can't get perfection, you can just try for better. If it's harder to see the Rainboom blast wave at 2000 hours in fog conditions over water then you try and set up a trap with those details in mind. As the Zebra commander it's on you to set the conditions of the first live fire test vs hostile forces. Be it day or night, foggy or clear your just trying to test the thing and deny those darn Ponies as many details as possible.

If you can't see the acceleration disk you have no idea a rainboom has taking place which brings me to just thought about second method. Can you tilt a Rainboom sideways? Instead of being a flat explosion in the vertical, could you swap it on it's head for the horizontal? That could greatly cut down on the observable distance.

…Okay, it's clear that we've been assuming that the other was assuming the same things we were again. I just thought that that the disk's axis was parallel to the rainbooming object's velocity at the time of the boom (though this can be reshaped; the disk from the SS, for example, is perpendicular to the plane's velocity even though the sub-rainbooms feeding it are determined by the props, and the same sort of thing is true for the SPP towers).

Actually, you can even see this happening in the Canterlot Wedding rainboom.

Even if they can't get in (which still isn't certain; sure, while a perfectly closed system would keep them out, I'm not sure how close Equestria would get to that), they can still watch it very carefully.

Which is why you set up five research facilities not just one or two and make them big enough to have multiple projects going on.

Ah, good. (Not sure what exactly you mean here by "in the short term", though.)

Short term is the time it takes to get a weapon ready and have it leave the research facility. If it takes six years to make a death ray then that's the short term. However there is a general hard limit of a year if for fiscal reason. Your bean(Apple?) counters want to know what you are spending Princess Luna's bits on and you have to detail the project in some way. However the instant you tell an accountant your not just telling him or her but all of his or her aides, all of their friends, friends of friends and anyone nearby. You can pull some Opsec and knowing a project exists and where it's being researched is a far cry from knowing exactly how or what is being done.

There are books detailing the cold war games between the Americans and Soviets as each side fought to make submarines quieter. Not all the books are great A easy reading material but some of them tell what is a very interesting story. Each side would come up with some new method. At which point the other side would get spies to steal it and improve on it. Several times spies stole that information back and improved on the improvements.

OAN
The Ponies and the Zebras face an issue as both sides have access to a resource that the other simply can not duplicate. On the one hand you have Unicorn magic, on the other Zebra fetishes which neither side can simply duplicate. But they can steal ideas and even if the Ponies can use Unicorns to find and work with gems much easier, there is nothing stopping Zebras from copying purely mechanical earth pony designs and common use bulk production designs.

[Admiral Stoic Rum]

U gan da it.

What the turkimenistan?

Belgium ... That is all, I must now wash my mouth out with soap, i feel so dirty having said it.

[Sindri]

Back after 36 hours and I have six more pages to go through...

I love that Mech drawing. Wish I could see it not chopped off.

If you right click and open the image in a new tab you see the whole thing.

I can't wait till you get to the fourth and final form of Blackjack.

Hah! I was partially right in my random vague speculation a few months ago! Maybe!

In other news, if everything keeps going, we'll hopefully be brushing 51 next week. Hopefully. I'm going to make it shorter than usual to make things easier on my awesome editors.

Oh! Whomever sent me a 'friendship is madness' tee shirt with ponythulu on it, thank you! ::wears it now!::

Damnit, that's just arriving now? I started that process months ago! Heck, it probably went to your old address to, didn't it? I need better minions...
Anyway, glad you like it!

Going by what I've seen in the relatively short time-span that I've been here, this is the best forum I've ever been on. It's refreshing to talk to people who aren't jerks.

Welcome to the Herd! When I first watched the cartoon I enjoyed it, and it was definitely pretty high quality, but far from the best thing ever. But it drew my attention in enough that when the season 2 launch came around, and I had a rare free night, I decided I might as well watch one of those season 1 marathons leading up to the livestream of the Return of Harmony.

Ten hours. On the internet. Live, uncensored, barely moderated chat between dozens or hundreds of anons, stretching across at least 21 time zones. And it was... friendly. Cheerful. Intelligent. Lacking in profanity. Rage-free. Rational.

At that point I concluded that Ponies were some kind of all-powerful witchcraft, and I'm never going to leave.

As most of you probably have heard, the release of an inflammatory film has sparked civil unrest and rioting in the Middle East and elsewhere. Apparently, the actors in the film didn't even know that it would be dubbed over and become evidently insulting to Muslims. There is no reason to release such a film other than inflaming the already discriminated against Muslims. So pointless.
Any thoughts?

My understanding was that most of those riots were already planned and the video was just seized upon as a convenient excuse? Dunno, not following the story too carefully. In any case, I'd expect the vast majority of the religion to be more disappointed by the violence than by the video, and to try to distance themselves from those responsible.

The Hague doesn't require bullets to be designed not to fragment, just that they don't design them specifically to do so.

Personally, I've never understood why anyone would agree to laws that dictate the humane way to shoot someone.

Kind of silly, isn't it?
On a somewhat related note, bullets that have armor piercing abilities don't produce as severe wounds, and a wounded soldier takes up more resources in the short term to the enemy than a dead one. Many militaries tend not to leave wounded men where they fall.
Oh, and thanks for that correction.

A hollowpoint gives more stopping power from the same gun and doesn't penetrate as much, so if you use it in an urban area you're much less likely to accidentally injure someone behind the target (or through a wall when you miss) and you can better defend yourself against whatever thugs or addicts you might need a weapon against, instead of putting a dozen rounds into them, dying, and having them bleed to death minutes later. But they can't go through even light armor, so if you're issuing hollowpoint rounds to your military that says you're aiming at people who aren't equipped to fight. A solid round is more practical on a conventional battlefield, where you might need to go through cover or take down armored opponents and immediate stopping power is less important (most soldiers will stop and get medical attention when shot, instead of continuing to charge like the guy in a PCP-fueled rage). So I figure it's less about making the bullet wound kinder on your opponent and more about equipping to fight enemy soldiers instead of enemy civilians. Loading a hollowpoint round makes you more effective against unarmored targets and less effective against armored ones; if the people you're supposed to shoot are armored and your superiors want you to refrain from shooting bystanders they're going to forbid you from loading bullets that work better on soft targets. Meanwhile a police officer very rarely faces an armored target and needs to take down unarmored ones as fast as possible, so they load bullets that are better on soft targets and don't go through to hit things you don't want in crowded areas.

Of course the rules might change a bit when doing counter-insurgency, with the less well-equipped and more fanatical targets, but in a stand-up war the ban on fragmentary ammunition makes sense.

I agree that pegasus magic includes the ability to fly -- in fact, I suspect based on Hurricane Fluttershy that it enables them to "drag" a lump of air around, which is how they do weather work. Dash usually doesn't generate gale-force winds when she flies, but when she pulls 16 wingpower for the test, she does.

Scootaloo is not a good example for the average young pegasus, though. Faust intended her to be crippled and never able to fly. She noted that it was never stated out loud in the first season, and the current writing crew might therefore go elsewhere with that story thread, but that was the original reason for the scooter. I say, until contradicted, Scootaloo should be assumed flightless.

I thought Faust said that Scootaloo hadn't learned how to fly yet. Can you link where she was called crippled?

(And before somebody tries to refute this with Pound Cake, let me just say his sister could do things Twilight would find difficult, but we already saw a whole sequence of Twilight learning to use magic in her cutie mark story. Foals just have a weird wild magic effect, and cannot be used as evidence that all children should have that kind of power.)

As for how they work, the ability to hover, fly with tiny wings, accelerate in impossible ways, and pull carts/chariots behind them with complete disregard for gravity leads me to believe that pegasus magic is mostly a careful warping of local gravitics, or maybe density manipulation for themselves and anything they're carrying.

#I'mgoingtohell
#Butnotasfastasthepersonwhomadethis
[snop]

See, Jihad isn't inherently bad. It's one of the central tenets and duties of the Islamic faith, and generally refers to a personal struggle to follow the way of their god and live a good muslim life, to build a good muslim society, and to defend Islam from outside attacks through legitimate protest and such. Defense through force is only to be used under the most extreme of circumstances. But some idiot mistranslated it as "holy war," and the worst of the extremists use it as such despite directly contradicting their own religion, and suddenly everything is fucked.


Meanwhile the word "crusade" didn't exist until it was developed specifically to describe a series of idiotic wars of conquest using Christian religion as an excuse. But that one's managed to lose all negative connotations and gets used all across the west to refer to bloody children's groups...

When Littlepip says "Then we all fucked" she is refering to us, the reader. It is we who are fucked. Also Uganda

Goodnight, children!

[O. Hinds]

Don't the rainbow tracks and the boom circle glow, though? Sure, it may not be enough to significantly light up the surrounding area, at least during the daytime, but it ought to still make them more visible.

You can't get perfection, you can just try for better. If it's harder to see the Rainboom blast wave at 2000 hours in fog conditions over water then you try and set up a trap with those details in mind. As the Zebra commander it's on you to set the conditions of the first live fire test vs hostile forces. Be it day or night, foggy or clear your just trying to test the thing and deny those darn Ponies as many details as possible.

Hm... I'm afraid that I've no good ideas for this at the moment, and I ought to have been getting ready for bed an hour ago, I thing.

Even if they can't get in (which still isn't certain; sure, while a perfectly closed system would keep them out, I'm not sure how close Equestria would get to that), they can still watch it very carefully.

Which is why you set up five research facilities not just one or two and make them big enough to have multiple projects going on.

Ehh... Okay. Still, R&D outside Hoofington is going to be of interest anyway.

Ah, good. (Not sure what exactly you mean here by "in the short term", though.)

Short term is the time it takes to get a weapon ready and have it leave the research facility. If it takes six years to make a death ray then that's the short term.

Ah, thanks; I just wasn't sure if the "short term" was linked to the project or to the facility.

[RoboRed]

UNRELATED:

[Ironmonger]

I see your reference and raise you a rockified marching song

[FeatherDust]

Scootaloo is not a good example for the average young pegasus, though. Faust intended her to be crippled and never able to fly. She noted that it was never stated out loud in the first season, and the current writing crew might therefore go elsewhere with that story thread, but that was the original reason for the scooter. I say, until contradicted, Scootaloo should be assumed flightless.

I thought Faust said that Scootaloo hadn't learned how to fly yet. Can you link where she was called crippled?

It was word of mouth from somebody who talked to Lauren Faust. Here's a link queued up to the right spot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UztWnWOdAyc#t=165s

This is the EQD article for that video.
http://www.equestriadaily.com/2012/08/a-couple-of-neat-tidbits-of-information.html

[O. Hinds]

Random-not-very-good-writing:

[Kippershy]

Random-not-very-good-writing:

Tut tut tut. Call yourself an editor?
At the moment, "Alert" and "Armed 1 were lit.

See what I see?



/tease

[O. Hinds]

Random-not-very-good-writing:

Tut tut tut. Call yourself an editor?
At the moment, "Alert" and "Armed 1 were lit.

See what I see?



/tease

Very sorry! I wrote this while sleep deprived. Thank you for spotting the error. I also, due to said sleep deprivation and the low importance of this, didn't read through a second time to proofread.

[Valikdu]

I have an announcement. I am drunk!

Blackjack's been through so much. It feels like forever ago when she was all badass with the shades and everything...

She never asked for this.
*hides behind kinetic barrier*

I fucking love cheese...

I fucking love steak.

SHIELD YOUR EYES FROM TERRIBLE PIC:

@Somber
She's gonna go super saiyan? Or avatar style possessed by OP character.
At
this point she doesn't have that many spare parts to lose. Her body's
been mutied up, then augmented. The only path that I see is her somehow
getting original body back, which is nigh impossible, or she get's
integrated into some kind of cyber system, like a giant mech.

A giant mech, you say?:

And I've seen that before as well...*memories of the BioWare forums bombard brain*
This place is much nicer than that...

Wat?
...then again, I'm not there much apart from the newest-game-at-the-time thread and the MLP thread.

Someone should do a study of female protagonists in Fo:E fics, see what we find.

MolaDOS likes the way you think.

Testing must be performed. For science.

Lesbians is the best fic and needs more praise for its
deep hidden allegories and heroic subject matter.

I just imagined the ultimate FoE clopfiction. It would have to be written by a proficient writer of that genre (I even have candidates in mind) and would have every female protagonist of the FoE fics that are considered good (except for Silver Storm, because... I don't like her), as well as the female members of their retinues (that are of age), just going at it. Including all the alicorns. No plot actual reason is necessary. It would be glorious.

When Littlepip says "Then we all fucked" she is
refering to us, the reader. It is we who are fucked. Also Uganda

MY BRAIN IS FULL OF FUCKS AND I DON'T EVEN GIVE ONE

[Kippershy]

Random-not-very-good-writing:

Tut tut tut. Call yourself an editor?
At the moment, "Alert" and "Armed 1 were lit.

See what I see?



/tease

Very sorry! I wrote this while sleep deprived. Thank you for spotting the error. I also, due to said sleep deprivation and the low importance of this, didn't read through a second time to proofread.

Don't be sorry ya silly geet. Like I say, I was teasing. It was a minor error anyway.

[Katarn]

I found this really funny:

[O. Hinds]

Random-not-very-good-writing:

Tut tut tut. Call yourself an editor?
At the moment, "Alert" and "Armed 1 were lit.

See what I see?



/tease

Very sorry! I wrote this while sleep deprived. Thank you for spotting the error. I also, due to said sleep deprivation and the low importance of this, didn't read through a second time to proofread.

Don't be sorry ya silly geet. Like I say, I was teasing. It was a minor error anyway.

Yeah, I know. I just tend to take even small errors rather seriously...

[Downloaded Skill]

Katarn I was on the site just recently. He can get P-21 and Rampage, but not Blackjack. Keeps giving me Littlepip, Velvet Remedy, and Homage for some reason.

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