Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion

[Sindri]

I think my problem is using Equestria Daily as 90% of my frame of reference. There's a lot of video game stuff that makes it there.

The only time I go to eqd is to find an episode link that actually works. That website has been overrun by a more... I dont know what to call them, but I dont really like it anymore. Plus now the content amount has shot through the roof, so keeping up with everything is near impossible.

I've got EqD on my rss feed, so if there's a headline that looks interesting I'll head over. I also usually skim the nightly wrapups for general news that might be interesting, and I look through almost every drawfriend because there's a lot of awesome art being done. But yeah, the majority of posts are not particularly interesting to me.

[Caoimhe]

Ugh why did I continue reading that thread

Or, the characters are made in such a way that the readers don't build attachment to them, because they're not made in a relatable way. Ask yourself, what hurt more for you personally, the feelings that were presented by Littlepip after Arbu, or after Blackjack loses her limbs?

Here's a person that doesn't "get it" in my opinion. I hated that Arbu scene because it was extremely out of character for Littlepip. During it I couldn't help but groan that it was the requisite "hero's downfall" arc. LP being the paragon of virtue had no real motivation for doing such a deed and it just plain didn't make sense with her character. Of course it would stick out for someone who only saw it from a two dimensional perspective. Meanwhile Blackjack's gradually degrading self was foreseen long ago and is completely in line with her reckless willingness to go through hell and back with little regard for herself, since she hates who she is. That arc was all about Blackjack's hopelessness and suicidal tendencies to be free of responsibility and was totally believable. Put simply, her flesh couldn't contain her and it makes her cyberficiation much more tragic. It really drove in the point that the wasteland was no more a prison than the stable was for her.

[Derpmind]

Ugh why did I continue reading that thread

Or, the characters are made in such a way that the readers don't build attachment to them, because they're not made in a relatable way. Ask yourself, what hurt more for you personally, the feelings that were presented by Littlepip after Arbu, or after Blackjack loses her limbs?

Here's a person that doesn't "get it" in my opinion. I hated that Arbu scene because it was extremely out of character for Littlepip. During it I couldn't help but groan that it was the requisite "hero's downfall" arc. LP being the paragon of virtue had no real motivation for doing such a deed and it just plain didn't make sense with her character. Of course it would stick out for someone who only saw it from a two dimensional perspective. Meanwhile Blackjack's gradually degrading self was foreseen long ago and is completely in line with her reckless willingness to go through hell and back with little regard for herself, since she hates who she is. That arc was all about Blackjack's hopelessness and suicidal tendencies to be free of responsibility and was totally believable. Put simply, her flesh couldn't contain her and it makes her cyberficiation much more tragic. It really drove in the point that the wasteland was no more a prison than the stable was for her.

This is why I haven't said anything there. You just rattle this off in a few minutes where it'd take me ~20 minutes to write a paragraph that big, and where I'd only say "LP followed the traditional hero's arc but BJ is a realistic person with believable psychological issues." you not only put more words out there but you say more. I'm direct, you're inclusive.

[Overthepacific]

90% seems to be a bit high and cynical, dont you think?

I have never claimed to not be a cynical bastard. But the number seems accurate from all the people I've encountered over the years.

I tend to follow a simple philosophy in life: 90% of everything is shit. Literature, hobbies, vacation spots, websites... but especially people. If you put me with ten randomly selected people, I will probably hate nine of them.
Among the remaining 10%, 90% of those (9% of the total) are tolerable. People that aren't unpleasant to be around and might be fun in the right activity or setting, activities that are decent for passing the time but not very productive, books that don't have much value to them but aren't bad, etc.
90% of the remainder (.9% of total) is pretty cool. 90% of that remainder (.09%) is fucking awesome. And it keeps going up in increasingly small fractions until you run out of sample set.

And it sound like a kinda shitty outlook on life, but when you think it through to the natural extension it's actually very optimistic. Because of the seven billion people on this world, I'd probably hate 6,300,000,000 of them. I'd only tolerate 630 million of them. But 63 million are pretty cool. And seven million people are various levels of amazing and wonderful.
I think that a planet with seven million amazing, wonderful people on it is a pretty cool place to live, don't you? Certainly worth putting up with six billion morons for a while.

But it's also why I don't waste my time on sites like 4chan. When the shit is entirely unfiltered, only one post in a hundred has any value. Even in a place like FiMfiction, where the worse half has been eliminated, that's forty shit posts and nine useless ones for every good piece.
The point of the internet, in my opinion, is to simultaneously expand the sample set of people to several million and sort them by interests, personalities, and intellects; while geographically restricted groups like at a school or workplace inevitably contain a high fraction of shitheads, a good forum rarely contains anyone I really hate and usually has several people I end up loving.

Well, to each their own I suppose. But putting everything into a statistic doesnt really feel true to the erratic ways of human nature. You never know what youre going to find, whether it be wonderful or horrible. So time spent searching through what seems to be meaningless to find something new and enjoyable you might not have expected is never time wasted.

[Overthepacific]

I hated that Arbu scene because it was extremely out of character for Littlepip. During it I couldn't help but groan that it was the requisite "hero's downfall" arc. LP being the paragon of virtue had no real motivation for doing such a deed and it just plain didn't make sense with her character.

I wouldnt say it was out of character as much as kkat just didnt know how to properly handle fleshing out a scene like that, so the overall feeling of her murdering the entire town just didnt seem to be within the confines of her rage at the time. I can see that scene working out, but not the way it actually did.

[Sindri]

Well, to each their own I suppose. But putting everything into a statistic doesnt really feel true to the erratic ways of human nature. You never know what youre going to find, whether it be wonderful or horrible. So time spent searching through what seems to be meaningless to find something new and enjoyable you might not have expected is never time wasted.

Oh, it's nowhere near a hard, fast rule, just an estimate based on observations over the past couple decades.

And like I said, the awesome minority is well worth the cost. After all, I'm here reading recursive MLP fanfiction. I go out into the piles of crappy fanfiction knowing full well that most of them aren't anywhere near worth my time, because I know that magnificent ones are buried in there. I dig through reviews, trope pages, recommendations, and a few episodes of dozens of crappy anime for each one I watch through and remember. And I'm polite and courteous to pretty much everyone I meet until they give me a reason to be otherwise, because the cost of a little kindness toward every asshole and moron out there is a lot less than the cost of turning away somebody I would have loved because I treated them like shit in our first meeting.

[Caoimhe]

Ok, one more. Kips, I disagree with your idea in that thread that the title of the story doesn't fit. It fits quite well as a looming mystery that's not discovered until later, and the fact that I felt for a while that the word "project" was the verb form since for quite some time we didn't hear reference to the actual project.

Lets look at this for a second:

verb (used with object), pro·ject.

-to propose, contemplate, or plan.
-to throw, cast, or impel forward or onward.
-to set forth or calculate (some future thing): They projected the building costs for the next five years.
-to throw or cause to fall upon a surface or into space, as a ray of light or a shadow.
-to cause (a figure or image) to appear, as on a background.

Consider those two definitions (especially the second I bolded) and their relation to the 'horizons.' If that isn't badass and completely in line with the themes of the story, what is?

[Overthepacific]

And I'm polite and courteous to pretty much everyone I meet until they give me a reason to be otherwise, because the cost of a little kindness toward every asshole and moron out there is a lot less than the cost of turning away somebody I would have loved because I treated them like shit in our first meeting.

You never know what meeting somebody will actually lead to. A lot of different impressions can lead to very different relationships. I know a girl who is the exact opposite of that, she starts out by being a complete bitch, and whoever actually excepts it in a certain way, she befriends.
I remember the first time I met her, she knew I played guitar, so she asked about it, and I said yes. She goes on to say "You probably suck, Im much better than you." which I took as a challange, saying "I doubt it, well see about that.".
She knew she wasnt as good as me, but thats how she wanted to make her introduction, weve been pretty good friends ever since. A lot of my friends became that way because we met through violent arguments or physical altercations, but weve became friends through it anyway.

Of course, maybe I live in backwards town. Im getting off topic here, and Im not really sure what the point of all that was.

[Vergil]

Good god I don't read the topic for two hours and come back to Cai dropping truth bombs all over the place

[Moodyman90]

Unrelated to anything, so feel free to ignore this but as my brain went off on it's usual tangents, rabbit trails, and general rambling as the day goes on, somewhere it went to comparing Fallout Equestria to actual Fallout playthroughs.

If the original story was a game, it would be a straight story playthrough with minimum side quest completion. The story itself was basically Fallout 3's plot with elements from all the games thrown in. Mostly Fallout 1's with The Master and his super mutant army plot, and The Pit DLC from 3 and Dead Money DLC from New Vegas being promoted to main game and story quests.

Project Horizons on the other hand, if it was a Fallout game being played, it would be one where the PC would go to an area, do the quest there, one of the quest would end up sending them to a new area in which they would start doing quest there. Repeat till they run out of quest and start going back to old places to collect rewards.

An example being from New Vegas. If you do the Brotherhood of Steels' quest, you're going to end up within shelling range of the Boomers. Once there you might as well do the Boomer's quest, which will send you to Helios One.

But this is all round peg square hole since while Project Horizons has the obvious elements, settings, and characters from the Fallout games... for the most part it is it's own story. To the point it can't really be compared to the games.

I'm sorry, just me rambling on nonsensically about this story and games. Just that I have nothing else to add to what's being in discussion here but it's from all this discussion my brains been going on like this.

[Kippershy]

Ok, one more. Kips, I disagree with your idea in that thread that the title of the story doesn't fit. It fits quite well as a looming mystery that's not discovered until later, and the fact that I felt for a while that the word "project" was the verb form since for quite some time we didn't hear reference to the actual project.

Lets look at this for a second:

verb (used with object), pro·ject.

-to propose, contemplate, or plan.
-to throw, cast, or impel forward or onward.
-to set forth or calculate (some future thing): They projected the building costs for the next five years.
-to throw or cause to fall upon a surface or into space, as a ray of light or a shadow.
-to cause (a figure or image) to appear, as on a background.

Consider those two definitions (especially the second I bolded) and their relation to the 'horizons.' If that isn't badass and completely in line with the themes of the story, what is?

I respect you for not simply saying "NO UR WRONG" like you could have (not saying you would normally) and I definitely see what you mean, that's not something I had ever considered before.
Is it really that weird that even from the very get go, I always knew that Project Horizons was referencing some kind of project in the same usage of the word as a school project, for example?

Even before I had any clue what EC-1101 was, hell, before I had even really began reading - I just always assumed that Project Horizons was some project of action and not project as in projection.



To me, Project Horizons always screamed out: "There's something big planned for the horizons, something big planned for the world around you and horizons is the keyword to say it's about the bigger picture. This is the story of that."
And yes, in that respect if it hadn't been named after the actual project but just as a projection of whar lays out in the horizons, what is coming for you tomorrow... it would have been wonderful.
Instead, I can only take it as a hint of what the endgame is all about but the fact we've waited so long before it's become relevant at all tires me.

[WavemasterRyx]

This discussion interfered with Boo's birthday? Okay, my irritation with it just shot up several notches. I'm now joining the people saying "Somber gets the idea already; you can stop now."

Very much so. I had actually set aside a whole week leading up to the 3rd so that I could draw something nice to celebrate Boo's birthday, but with everything going on in the forum I could barely bring myself to sleep, let alone draw anything.

I'd hoped that maybe I could manage to do something by the 13th (today) as a fallback, since that was when I started her tumblr, but I still didn't feel like drawing at all until late last night, and then I only barely managed to do a little drawing to wish my mom a happy birthday.

I probably won't be able to finish this tonight, but I think it's off to a good start.

Spoiler:

[Icy Shake]

Ugh why did I continue reading that thread

Or, the characters are made in such a way that the readers don't build attachment to them, because they're not made in a relatable way. Ask yourself, what hurt more for you personally, the feelings that were presented by Littlepip after Arbu, or after Blackjack loses her limbs?

Here's a person that doesn't "get it" in my opinion. I hated that Arbu scene because it was extremely out of character for Littlepip. During it I couldn't help but groan that it was the requisite "hero's downfall" arc. LP being the paragon of virtue had no real motivation for doing such a deed and it just plain didn't make sense with her character. Of course it would stick out for someone who only saw it from a two dimensional perspective. Meanwhile Blackjack's gradually degrading self was foreseen long ago and is completely in line with her reckless willingness to go through hell and back with little regard for herself, since she hates who she is. That arc was all about Blackjack's hopelessness and suicidal tendencies to be free of responsibility and was totally believable. Put simply, her flesh couldn't contain her and it makes her cyberficiation much more tragic. It really drove in the point that the wasteland was no more a prison than the stable was for her.

Yeah, pretty much with you here, and on most of your other responses to the thread. On this one, I think his point might be a little defensible just on the basis that it's pretty much the only time she's placed any negative consequences on her deadly uses of force, so it has a greater relative impact in the story when compared to the slow-motion build of limb loss and cancer over probably at least a hundred thousand words. That said, I disagree with Arbu as more personally impacting to me.

One of the parts of the thread that most stuck out to me was how many, on the one hand, hated Blackjack's angst (which you responded to well with

I don't know how people can complain about angst when the story is narrated by an insecure manic depressive with a traumatic childhood born in a confined caste-based autocracy

though you left out that she's also recovering from the discovery that males are people, and by extension she's a (former) rapist. ) and yet another major complaint amounted to

Hoofington is so shitty everyone in the party should have killed themselves by now

despite the fact that out of the core party ex-Rampage, there have been at least two suicide attempts (I don't remember any besides BJ and P-21, but I could be wrong); Blackjack has at various points basically been making slow[er] motion attempts to throw her life away; Glory is desperately clinging to a painful relationship because she doesn't know what else to do; Scotch has been shielded from much of the worst, and was still forced into memory modification to "help" her; and Lacunae could only attempt suicide in heavy enervation fields, and doing so would be contrary to the core of her character.

[Moodyman90]

Ryx, you're stuff is always awesome and heartwarming, even when you do somewhat sad or completely funny pictures.
Keep up the good work.

[Guest]

@Kipper
The best titles mean multiple things. This may not be the best title ("It" is the best title, probably), but just 'cos it's endgame doesn't mean it's not also metaphorical.

@Wavey
That's definitely lookin' great so far. :)

[Kippershy]

*hugs and doesn't let go of Wavey as long as he's here*

[Quotidian]

I probably won't be able to finish this tonight, but I think it's off to a good start.

I DAWWWed so hard I HNGGed.

[Kippershy]

Is it really that weird that even from the very get go, I always knew that Project Horizons was referencing some kind of project in the same usage of the word as a school project, for example?

You thought it was.
You couldn't know.

Because I always thought it was a "project" in that sense. I googled project horizons and got the wikipedia page about the military base on the moon. Before long there was mention of... I think steelpony was the first, right? Ever since "project" came to mean "the OIA did this". Anyway, yeah, I always thought it was that sort of project, but you can hardly know before Somber tells you.

Swicked, Switcked, Swicked... who are you talking to here again?
Exactly.
Me.

I don't need to think, I just know.

[Meleagridis]

Somewhat relevant: There's currently a discussion of Project Horizons' pros and cons going on at FimFic as well.

...I'm too tired for this.

Come to think, does Tartarus still exist in Project Horizons?

That's a good question. I wonder if anyone has written a fic about it yet.
Shit Retl, you give me the best ideas for fics. I kinda want to start one about that. I even started assigning characters and roles and backstories, wtf.

Some people should talk more about this, and why prisons like that are needed even in Sunshine+Rainbows Equestria and how a giant three headed dog is replaced by the best robot not that I have any personal cerbias.

90% seems to be a bit high and cynical, dont you think?

I have never claimed to not be a cynical bastard. But the number seems accurate from all the people I've encountered over the years.

Wanna do a survey?

[StoneSlinger88]

I wouldn't put the percentage so high. The assholes just drown out the normal folk. There have been a few times when I've just had to put my faith in humanity, and so far people have surprised me. Trusting in other people to do what's right is sometimes all you need to do to show them down a good path. By the same token, when somebody's trusting in you, try your best to not let them down. Breaking that trust spreads, but so does reinforcing it.

[Kippershy]

Swicked, Switcked, Swicked... who are you talking to here again?
Exactly.
Me.

I don't need to think, I just know.

Ah, like how I know you're full of crap.
I gotcha

At least I'm not full of something else...

[WavemasterRyx]

Ryx, you're stuff is always awesome and heartwarming, even when you do somewhat sad or completely funny pictures.
Keep up the good work.

Well thank you kindly, Moody, I really do appreciate it.

That's definitely lookin' great so far. :)

Thank you, OAC, I'm trying my best with it.

*hugs and doesn't let go of Wavey as long as he's here*

Thank you, but I must decline.

I DAWWWed so hard I HNGGed.

Oh dear, that sounds very serious. I do hope you don't injure yourself, Quoti.

Well, progress is going a little slower than I'd like, but it's getting there.
http://24.media.tumblr.com/e9f90cadb74d468f771c67894b272c81/tumblr_mjnh3qcgPB1r8cms2o1_1280.png

[Kippershy]

*hugs and doesn't let go of Wavey as long as he's here*

Thank you, but I must decline.

I take it I've upset ya?

[Retl]

Well, progress is going a little slower than I'd like, but it's getting there.
http://24.media.tumblr.com/e9f90cadb74d468f771c67894b272c81/tumblr_mjnh3qcgPB1r8cms2o1_1280.png

Nnng~<3 So much cute!
I think it's the eyes that really get me, but they're all so happy too. Nice stuff so far.

[O. Hinds]

This discussion interfered with Boo's birthday? Okay, my irritation with it just shot up several notches. I'm now joining the people saying "Somber gets the idea already; you can stop now."

Very much so. I had actually set aside a whole week leading up to the 3rd so that I could draw something nice to celebrate Boo's birthday, but with everything going on in the forum I could barely bring myself to sleep, let alone draw anything.

I'd hoped that maybe I could manage to do something by the 13th (today) as a fallback, since that was when I started her tumblr, but I still didn't feel like drawing at all until late last night, and then I only barely managed to do a little drawing to wish my mom a happy birthday.

I probably won't be able to finish this tonight, but I think it's off to a good start.

Spoiler:

I hope that you feel better soon, and that does indeed seem to be a good start.

cerbias

[obligatory groan] :)

Well, progress is going a little slower than I'd like, but it's getting there.
http://24.media.tumblr.com/e9f90cadb74d468f771c67894b272c81/tumblr_mjnh3qcgPB1r8cms2o1_1280.png

...Cuteness levels... rising...

[Derpmind]

Is Project Horizons a little too popular? Apparently there are bucketfuls of people who read it for element X and couldn't care any less about everything else in the story. In that fimfiction thread there were more than a few people who apparently never understood that the characters are supposed to have depth to them. I'd think that the first chapter or two should knock anyone paying attention upside the head with the fact that the main characters are not supposed to be mentally sound invincible heroes. (Hell, here's a side-argument: None of PH's characters are plot-shielded from emotional trauma at all. Unlike, say, 99.999% of protagonists everywhere.) And for another example, well, I suspect there's more than a few people who read the story for the action scenes alone. (How much complaining is centered around the Legate?) Moreover, because the story's so emotionally powerful, it seems that many people who decide that the story's not for them feel the need to be very noisy about how it's terrible in every way, regardless of how much they read. So here's the question again: Is Project Horizons too popular?

[Sindri]

Is Project Horizons too popular?

Well, it's a story that's magnificent for a small fraction of people and completely unsuited to the norm. As such it's unlikely to ever be popular but it's very widely known. This means that more of the people who'll appreciate it get a chance to do so, but it also means that there are legions of people who have no idea what's going on, or were looking for something simpler, or hate characters with depth, who see the story, decide it sucks, and become very vocal about it. Which then leads to further legions who join in without even looking at the work because they think that it's a cool thing to hate.

Without the name being out there, real new readers would never find it. But as the name spreads the hatedom expands exponentially.


As H. L. Mencken said “No one in this world... has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.” The most popular things, in literature, television, politics, etc. have always been those which play to the lowest common denominator; you make normal people like you by doing what they expect and making them feel smart, which requires the work to be predictable and unintelligent.
Somber's writing is just the opposite. To understand the characters you must look beneath their surfaces into the underlying personality, and understand how events effect them psychologically. To understand events you must connect pieces of information from disparate sources and think about them all. To read the story, just skimming through the words on the page is not enough.
The average person either sees characters acting in a way which does not fit the classical stereotypes they're familiar with and decides the story is stupid, or sees plotlines more complex than they care to track and feels insulted. Both will become angry that the best known FoE sidefic wasn't what they wanted it to be, and feel the need to spread the word about how much it sucks.

It'd be great if you could skip over 90% of people and only show the story to those with a chance of getting it. But that's just not how it works, outside direct word-of-mouth transfer. The moment the story is mentioned on 4chan, or EqD comments on how huge it is, everybody hears equally and the hatedom grows a lot faster than the fandom. If you want the fandom to grow at all, you need to get the name out and the natural consequence is that you'll get more people hating you. Just like every good story I read forces me to wade through a pile of shit and every friend I've made has been at the cost of putting up with a lot of assholes.

[Meleagridis]

I take it I've upset ya?

I think you just need an egg timer. Set it to ten seconds every time you do the bear hug, and let go when it rings.
Everybody gotta breathe some time.

None of PH's characters are plot-shielded from emotional trauma at all.

I think it's better to say that PH is one of the very few that has any believable reaction to trauma. Scotch's thing has been one of the things swung around the past few weeks, but so much so that it's one of the revisions in the latest chapter. Got a feeling it's going to be addressed hardcore in the next little while.

And Glory does seem too resilient. I mean, I can't remember the past little while too good... how many times did she really break down after that? Getting her wing back may have helped a bit, but after the merry-go-misery her life's become her situation with Blackjack should really be a reversal of... uh... Ante Up? I think that's where BJ was on the cliff, anyways.

With Blackjack we were in her head, so we could hear the effect of everything. With Glory we can't really get the coverage we need for what she's gone through.

Somber's writing is just the opposite. To understand the characters you must look beneath their surfaces into the underlying personality, and understand how events effect them psychologically. To understand events you must connect pieces of information from disparate sources and think about them all. To read the story, just skimming through the words on the page is not enough.

Which is why I don't read it at one in the morning.

But criminy, Sindri. Or should that be Cynicdri? Sheesh! People may be scum, but people is pretty rockin' too, and not always at the same time. People is people, and saying otherwise with such a hefty percentage is a funny joke if there's a punchline, but otherwise it's a hyper-cynical over-generalization.

Thought about that survey?

[Kippershy]

I take it I've upset ya?

I think you just need an egg timer. Set it to ten seconds every time you do the bear hug, and let go when it rings.
Everybody gotta breathe some time.

And with this, I feel better about myself as a person. Thanks for making me laugh.

[Overthepacific]

Some people should talk more about this, and why prisons like that are needed even in Sunshine+Rainbows Equestria and how a giant three headed dog is replaced by the best robot not that I have any personal cerbias.

Maybe Equestria isn't the Utopia that everyone makes it out to be? Maybe serious crimes are instantly punished with with exile to tartarus or death. Maybe Celestia is more of a Tyrant than she lets on. Food for thought I suppose.

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