Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion

[O. Hinds]

Twilight got wings for patching up a spell somepony else created, while Starswirl created books full of spells and got nothing but a classy beard. If alicorn status can just be handed out as a promotion or reward, why are there so few, what did Cadence do to qualify before she even reached adulthood, and why didn't Starswirl? Are Luna and Celestia something different from other alicorns, or do they all become immortal and gain cosmic power?

Maybe the "creating" in "creating new magic" was literal? As in, SStB was just discovering extant effects of poking the universe in certain ways, while Twilight actually changed the laws of physics? I don't know.

Does anyone else here tend to get really, really angry at Hasbro for doing their best to ruin possibly one of the best modern arguments for capitalism?

[Sindri]

Does anyone else here tend to get really, really angry at Hasbro for doing their best to ruin possibly one of the best modern arguments for capitalism?

...I can honestly say that has never been the reason I have gotten mad at Hasbro.

[Guest]

Does anyone else here tend to get really, really angry at Hasbro for doing their best to ruin possibly one of the best modern arguments for capitalism?

What, that everyone except for the people who succeed are terrible and deserve to be exploited? No, can't say that's ever happened.

[O. Hinds]

Does anyone else here tend to get really, really angry at Hasbro for doing their best to ruin possibly one of the best modern arguments for capitalism?

...I can honestly say that has never been the reason I have gotten mad at Hasbro.

Does anyone else here tend to get really, really angry at Hasbro for doing their best to ruin possibly one of the best modern arguments for capitalism?

What, that everyone except for the people who succeed are terrible and deserve to be exploited? No, can't say that's ever happened.

It's just... I know that there are benefits to capitalism, but modern American capitalist society seems to very often be arguing for its own abolition. FiM was and to a large extent still is an example of a really, really good product of capitalism, but meddling for the sake of shortsighted profit over quality is working to undermine that.

[Guest]

When a company makes something like FiM, call me a cynic, but I think it's all-too-often a happy accident. The execs sure as hell didn't expect it to be as good as it was when they started out, after all.

[Icy Shake]

Not so much: I think that there's a formula that has a pretty high success rate for making good derivative shows.
1. Find creators who love the source material.
2. Tell them to make the show they always wanted to.
3. STFU and get out of the way (except to tell them to follow standards and practices).

[StoneSlinger88]

Sometimes you have to trust the workers to polish the product as much as they can before they are forced to let it be sold. There are still companies out there that are very much concerned about quality, but sadly many are struggling to keep their quality high enough to outweigh the extreme affordability of cheap knockoffs.

[Sindri]

Not so much: I think that there's a formula that has a pretty high success rate for making good derivative shows.
1. Find creators who love the source material.
2. Tell them to make the show they always wanted to.
3. STFU and get out of the way (except to tell them to follow standards and practices).

And it worked great for as long as they followed that formula; the problems came when they forgot about step 3.

[CD]

Not so much: I think that there's a formula that has a pretty high success rate for making good derivative shows.
1. Find creators who love the source material.
2. Tell them to make the show they always wanted to.
3. STFU and get out of the way (except to tell them to follow standards and practices).

And it worked great for as long as they followed that formula; the problems came when they forgot about step 3.

Does any company remember step 3? Ever? Electronic Arts build a reputation of going against this rule as hard as they could. And how did that work out for them? Multiple franchises ruined forever. Never change a winning horse.

[Sindri]

Does any company remember step 3? Ever? Electronic Arts build a reputation of going against this rule as hard as they could. And how did that work out for them? Multiple franchises ruined forever. Never change a winning horse.

Valve is great. Bethesda mostly has it. Really EA is the worst possible example, but there are a lot of companies out there actively not being derptarded cocks.

[Icy Shake]

Warner Brothers is pretty good. Think the original DCAU run, which was over a decade of solidly good programming. Even more recently, Batman: The Brave and the Bold has been great, and I've tended to hear nothing but good things about the direct to DVD movies. The major interference, I understand, has been cancelling shows, which I think is a different animal altogether.

[CD]

Does any company remember step 3? Ever? Electronic Arts build a reputation of going against this rule as hard as they could. And how did that work out for them? Multiple franchises ruined forever. Never change a winning horse.

Valve is great. Bethesda mostly has it. Really EA is the worst possible example, but there are a lot of companies out there actively not being derptarded cocks.

I'm not a fan of Valve, so I wouldn't know. Bethesda... eh. Fallout 3 did deserve its share of criticism from purists despite the fun I had/have with it, but New Vegas was Obsidian's work. I never liked Oblivion as much as Morrowind, and Skyrim I just can't seem to get into. I suppose if I had to name a company that still holds my interest, it's Blizzard, but their online play policy and Mists of Pandaria have really turned me off from them to. Of course, I blame Activision for being the executive meddlers for that, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed with Blizzard to. I'm probably overlooking a lot of those other, smaller companies here, but if I can't remember them as a positive example, they're not all that impressive to me anyway.

[SilentCarto]

Like the gems Goldie pointed out in his paleontology lesson, the moon is supercharged with the souls of the pre-sentient creatures that once inhabited Equestria.

Wait. Holy shit. Assuming Project Horizons is what I think it is, Goldie planned on killing the Eater, a semi-sentient eldritch abomination, by throwing a moon made of dinosaur souls at it?

That is the coolest thing I've ever heard.

How about a wizard private eye riding a polka-powered zombie T-Rex to stop a body-swapping necromancer from ascending to godhood on Halloween?

This awesome:

Hm... Possibly, but that time they were trying to work with it, were they not? Extracting energy from it and its soul-eating. This would be collecting the energy released from its destruction.

It's not clear how the Tokomare works. While it's probably exploiting the same-frequency, different-amplitude trick that Horse demonstrated with the "hammer", it's somehow inducing the Eater to release energy. Maybe it's the evil-zombie-star version of throwing up? Point is, they started sucking energy out, and it responded by drawing energy (souls) in. That's how I interpret it, anyway. I would assume it would react the same way to injury, considering that a dissolving chip of starmetal gives off the same psychic scream that's normally associated with Enervation. I suspect that experimentation would reveal that any starmetal not directly consumed in the annihilation reaction emits an E-field as it dissolves.

Is it not explicitly said in the episode, though, that Twilight is a new type of alicorn (thus wasting this chance to explain Cadence)?

Nope. The only reference is Rarity's comment that, "You've become an alicorn! I didn't even know that was possible!"

just that nopony had ever created new magic before (what? need some explanation there)

Well, Twilight successfully completed a spell that directly affected Destiny itself. Something that was able, even in its incomplete form, to scramble the essence of who a pony is. In other words, it's not standard unicorn magic. It's something other, a whole new branch of magic whose surface was only scratched by Starswirl.

That said... Celestia may not have been entirely truthful in that, since she and Luna "discovered" the Elements of Harmony to use against Discord, and they seem to dwell in that same branch of magic. It would certainly explain why Starswirl's spell specifically latched onto the Elements and scrambled their bearers.

Twilight got wings for patching up a spell somepony else created, while Starswirl created books full of spells and got nothing but a classy beard. If alicorn status can just be handed out as a promotion or reward, why are there so few, what did Cadence do to qualify before she even reached adulthood, and why didn't Starswirl? Are Luna and Celestia something different from other alicorns, or do they all become immortal and gain cosmic power?

My headcanon: Twilight didn't get wings for fixing the spell. She got wings for achieving enlightenment in the process of fixing the spell. It's like getting a cutie mark -- Pinkie Pie didn't earn her cutie mark for throwing a nice party, the party was the external event that triggered her internal realization of what she wanted to do/was meant to do with her life.

"Completed", Celestia just turned her into an alicorn then patted her on the back and said she did it herself with a clearly false statement like calling it the first "new" magic and that it's never been done before. Twilight's a syncophant, she won't question the explanation as long as an explanation is given at all.

*facehoof*
Celestia didn't turn Twilight into an alicorn. She showed up to explain what the hell Twilight was doing in the Astral Plane, then Twilight's soul popped out and reformatted her body. Celestia's horn never lit up once.

[SilentCarto]

Anyone have rough sketch or anything of the like for Hoofington? Thinking about making a small map for the city, nothing fancy but just something to wrap my brain around when I don't remember/recognize a place.

Mine is here, though I haven't updated it in some time. The locations of places that aren't marked in red are straight from the horse's mouth, though.

Not so much: I think that there's a formula that has a pretty high success rate for making good derivative shows.
1. Find creators who love the source material.
2. Tell them to make the show they always wanted to.
3. STFU and get out of the way (except to tell them to follow standards and practices).

[O. Hinds]

@SilentCarto:
Hm... Good points. On the annihilation thing, I wonder what the range of the EoS is without boosting... it might be enough to just abandon the area and have the power systems run by robots.
...Unnnnless Cognitum was corrupted and/or created directly, which is one of the things that I don't know. Hm. Okay, not enough information.

[SilentCarto]

Celestia's ancient, she may play by different magic rules, or at least know others besides horn, potion or amulet magic. That just proves the spell would have to at least be more complicated to cast than the typical focus-hard-enough-and-it-happens way.

I'm not going to assume she has nebulous powers that she has never demonstrated, mentioned, or suggested. She did, though, use her regular old everyday unicorn magic to call up Starswirl's journal for a visual aid.

[SilentCarto]

@SilentCarto:
Hm... Good points. On the annihilation thing, I wonder what the range of the EoS is without boosting... it might be enough to just abandon the area and have the power systems run by robots.
...Unnnnless Cognitum was corrupted and/or created directly, which is one of the things that I don't know. Hm. Okay, not enough information.

The Tokomare activation probably gives us a good idea of its full capabilities. It was powerful enough to instantly liquify healthy pre-war ponies and to be "heard" clearly at Hoss's farm.

I don't think Cog is corrupted at all -- at least, not by the EoS. I think the Eater's influence on the Harbingers is directly via Dawn. After chatting with her about her reasons for leaving the Enclave, I'm strongly of the opinion that Dawn is the last survivor of a slaughtered starkaterri pony tribe (for lack of a more appropriate term).

Let's just say the more ridiculous additions Hasbro inserts into the universe, the more ridiculous conclusions I'm willing to jump to to justify stuff that doesn't make sense no matter how you slice it :P

Let's be clear about this -- Hasbro had little to do with the decision to alicornicate Twilight. That was always Lauren Faust's plan for Twi's ultimate fate (along with succeeding(!) Celestia), and everything the writers have said indicates that they were not in any way dragged unwillingly into this. The only thing that didn't come from within Studio B was cramming the whole thing into one episode.

If I may theorize, this gives them a perfect excuse to go beyond Ponyville and do the adventure stories Lauren always wanted, but had been nixed in favor of 100% "slice of life" stories by Hasbro from the beginning. They're more or less run though all the slice of life stories they can tell, and now they have reason to explore the wider world.

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https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/viewtopic.forum?t=968

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