Present Perfect vs. Project Horizons, Book 5

BOOK 1: 1-16 || BOOK 2: 17-33 || BOOK 3: 34-49 || BOOK 4: 50-62 || BOOK 5: 63-77 || EPILOGUE

I'm done.

I'm actually done! I can't believe it!

What am I going to do with myself now? D:

If you stumbled into this blog half-blind from drinking the cologne out of those bigass vending machines they have in convenience store restrooms, what I am finished with is, of course, Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons by Somber. This blog will detail my reactions to book five — in cheapo summary form again :( — wherein that word count starts actually feeling its weight, and Fallout: Equestria is officially turned into a Project Horizons sidefic. :V

(This review brought to you, as always, by VisualPony, Scribbler, Solar, GutiuSerenade, Astro-Brony, Vladimir Zarkov, Animelodie, Wuten, Ice Gaze, and me. And probably a few others, I had a hard time keeping track of everyone in the reading. D:)

Buckle up, it's gonna be a loooooong ride. :B I think maybe I'll make some arc title headings in case you need to step away in the middle...

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Before I begin, a note. I will be using the word "bullshit" a lot in this review. When I say that, I mean 'thing that is at once ridiculous, over-the-top, just-because and/or completely unbelievable while at the same time being so fucking awesome and amazing that I just don't care'. I need a shorthand for it, you see, it comes up a lot. If something is actually bullshit, I will use the term 'actual bullshit'. Otherwise, it is used with love and awe regarding the comic bookyness of Project Horizons.

COGNITUM

So, when last we left our erstwhile heroine, Blackjack, she and her Blank companion, Boo, had just nose-dived into the irradiated and Enervated Core or Hoofington, only to have an Enclave Raptor fall on them.

Fast-forward three months, and everyone thinks they're dead. Gee, I wonder why. No, but seriously, no one can find her Pipbuck tag, and though Rampage has gone into the Core looking for her, the mantra is, "If she were alive, she'd have told us." This starts off a great sequence where we find out what's been going on in the Hoof since the end of FoE. The Lightbringer, in the Single Pegasus Project, is unable to control the weather in Hoofington for reasons, so it's been raining like balls for months. Life in the Hoof has continued on, and we get to see some of what's transpired:

- Chicanery's mother, formerly Overmare of the Stable under Shadowbolt Tower, has been made Overmare of Stable 99, and the influx of ponies is really helping get the place into working order.
- Lacunae shows up, but, zounds! She's not Lacunae anymore! It's actually Psalm, finally in control of her alicornified body. So all those people who kept telling me Lacunae shows up again were lying through their teeth. >:V
- Princess Grace has run away from the Society and thrown in with Steel Rain.
- Candlewick, the Burner Boy Blackjack fought alongside at Yellow River, fights in the Arena to become of the Top Ten Reapers. Also, the various gangs are teaming up to fight the Harbingers.
- Chapel has a lot of new inhabitants due to the numbers of pegasus orphans coming down from the clouds.
- In what is one of my all-time favorite scenes in this whole story, P-21 teaches a class how to disarm a bomb. Using real bombs. That they are sitting on.
- General Storm Chaser is not handling the breakup of the Enclave well.
- Lancer makes up with his mother, and they, along with Majina and an old flame of his, are liberating zebra slaves in somewhere, I didn't write it down. >.>
- Glory is working with Triage to try and figure out Enervation, because though her dad's still alive, he's not healing. Turns out, there's a ton of tiny Enervation rings in his bloodstream, courtesy of his wife attacking him.
- Lastly, Steel Rain gets Dawn to confess to having worked against Cognitum in the name of proving that Blackjack isn't as worthy to be a prophet as Dawn is. Cognitum, of course, hears all of this, thanks to Steel Rain stealing a page out of Blackjack's book of tricks. Things don't go well for Dawn.

In between all these, we get very poetic looks at the Core, a very nice juxtaposition between life moving on and the place where life has stopped. Plates of food left rotting for 200 years, radios turning on to static, things like that. Also some overt symbolism like "The only security in the city was a lie." <.< But it's all narrated in third person, so it really does seem like maybe Blackjack has bit the big one.

Except there's one detail I noticed while listening to all of this: a lot of ponies who have Pipbucks who didn't before, ponies like Lancer and Twister. In fact, in each scene, at least one pony has one, and it's sort of emphasized each time.

Well, it turns out that third person narration is coming from Blackjack, who's still alive in the Core (because of course she is, there's 14 chapters left in the story!) and using the Perceptitron to keep tabs on her friends. And that narrative fuckery was a fantastic way to get back into this story. :D

From there, Rampage shows up and we see that Boo can talk pretty darn well now. It turns out they haven't gotten very far — a matter of blocks — because Blackjack's heavily-augmented body keeping falling through things, and they've also had to avoid the tons and tons of robots scouring the city for intruders. But more importantly, every time she's tried to use her broadcaster to reach somepony outside the Core, something gets into her head and makes her think about how great all this technology and progress is, how she should just stay right here, and that's why she's never contacted anyone. Cognitum is fucking with her.

We also find out that moonstone — stones from the moon, like literal moon rocks — is a powerful tool against Enervation. Wearing just a small piece of it protects a pony completely from the effects, and ingesting it — it's Blackjack, she does stupid things — causes major hallucinations. These facts will both be important in the book, though moreso the former.

What BJ hallucinates is the story of Eater falling to Equus, a great Permian extinction-style cataclysm, and the ages-old conflict between the 'song' — what Blackjack heard that one time she died and hugged a star — and the 'scream' — Enervation itself, which has always been described as a scream to date.

And yeah, it's kind of actually bullshit that Enervation, which started out as super-Taint, which was itself super-radiation in FoE, now has a way to be completely counteracted. I mean, this isn't Rad-Away, which lets you get through an irradiated area and then not die afterward; moonstone, just enough for a pendant or even an earring, stops Enervation completely for one pony. It becomes a non-threat and an example of the lengths this story has to go to to keep the stakes high.

Of course, as we soon learn, moonstone turns the threat from "being Enervated" to "losing your pendant". One snapped string, and you turn quickly into a pile of mush, especially in the middle of the Core. This happens to an unfortunate Steel Ranger sent after Blackjack by, you guessed it, Steel Rain. BJ is kind of fucked up by it. So everything is less "this is fine, let's move in" and more "on a hairtrigger overlooking the edge of a precipice".

Oh yeah, and Boo is randomly immune to Enervation because Blank, and Blackjack is randomly immune to Enervation because fuck I don't even know. :V I mean, it's probably her augments, and the downside to those is they leave her within Cognitum's sphere of influence. So it's kind of Unity all over again, but at least she can tell people shit.

One big plot thread throughout book 5 is finally learning what Horizons is. I mean, Blackjack has been on the edge of her fucking seat going crazy over it for at least two books now; it's kind of a big deal. And we get a lot of little bits and pieces here and there on the lead-up to the big reveal. One of those comes alongside a memory of Goldenblood's capture. He was betrayed to Horse by the zebra who was part of that multicultural team working on the Tokomare — I mention this because it is very important — and mentions a plan to stop and/or destroy the Eater of Souls.

It was here I made the comment, "y'know, if Goldenblood turns out not to be the real villain, I'll be fine with that, because Horse is just completely irredeemable." I was very wrong about this, on many levels.

Anyway, who should show up but the Legate, who's also immune to Enervation because he's got a Phoenix Talisman, too. And he makes this big pronouncement of, "I have come for you!" Like, super-dramatic and shit. And Blackjack's all, "I don't want to fight you." And the Legate's all, "Not you, her!" And Rampage gets up on her back legs and Shujaa's all, "If I must, I must." And the Legate's all, "Not you, her!"

The Legate has come for Boo.

I did not know what to make of this at the time, say that he asks, "Ready to come clean?" and her response is "No baffs!" which is just fucking precious. No, it turns out that Boo is actually Discord. Or, well, possessed by him. She's a Blank, after all, which are made out of Flux, which is Discord's blood. It kind of makes sense, I was just very disappointed by the reveal at the time.

But yes, it turns out that's where she gets her "freaky luck powers" from. Also, she didn't mention it earlier because Discord asked her not to tell. Now that she's sapient, Boo's naivete is honestly endearing, and it's hard to be mad at her. There's a fight, we find out the Legate has been around for centuries and is directly opposed to Discord, the former is buried under rubble (he must be an adventurer), and Discord breaks the fourth wall to let us know that Fallout: Equestria's setting is an AU of the show past season 2.

Seriously, he has a script and everything. Interestingly, it's claimed by him that due to his contrary nature, he's more apt to be heroic in the Wasteland because it's so full of evil and corruption. And Blackjack kind of takes the place of Fluttershy in being his friend, which was nice.

Anyway, Blackjack uses the see-through-walls scope of Psalm's sniper rifle at some point to spot Rampage talking to Steel Rain. And despite the latter's oath to protect Blackjack's baby after her pregnancy is revealed, she finds it hard to trust Rampage during this time. There's some more fighting with horrible flesh-beasts, a dream about her having twins — and she doesn't usually realize she's dreaming — and she finds out that all the floaty, glowy things in this place are actually souls held by the Eater's "gravity". Oddly, despite its name, it doesn't eat pony souls, only star type. Strange, huh?

But nevermind all that, Cognitum's here! And she is… Sweetie Bot. Well, she's inhabiting Sweetie Bot, anyway, and she wants Blackjack's body! She's got a whole collection of bodies in jars: Sanguine, Dawn, a Snips who is mostly bones, Charm, that Blank of Blackjack that was left behind in Hippocratic Research with Sanguine, and Horse, who, I should point out, is both still alive after 200 years and has no skin. This is the point at which I decided he was redeemable after all, and living two centuries in a jar, conscious and without skin, was punishment enough for anypony. c.c

We do, however, find out who and what Cognitum actually is: Princess Luna. Sort of. See, back two books ago, when last we saw Sweetie Bot, she was accompanying Horse at some kind of tech expo. (This was the scene right before we see the Tokomare the first time, if you're following along.) One of the pieces of technology there was a mainframe computer with a wire mesh helmet that would allow you to copy your brain patterns into a digital version. Turns out, Horse was hoping to copy the brain of someone high up in the government and maybe get a few secrets; he did one better than that, as one of the ponies in attendance was a mare named Eclipse, who was actually Luna in disguise.

So Cognitum is a copy of Princess Luna's mind from 200 years ago, with all the self-doubts and fears she harbored before the bombs fell. She will not accept anyone considering her as anything other than the real Princess Luna. And she's got everything Blackjack could want, up to and including that Blank body, which Blackjack's mind could be downloaded into, leaving her as flesh and blood, no longer worrying about whether she was losing herself.

Of course, Rampage is there, ready to betray her, because Cognitum has offered her a deal: help me, and I'll make sure you die. Yeah, Rampage's suicidal tendencies have finally gotten the better of her, after I proclaimed her role as growing stale. But it's not her who actually betrays Blackjack.

It's the Dealer.

That yellow earth pony in the jar is his body, you see. And he wants it back, because the magic binding his soul to EC-1101 is deteriorating. He just doesn't want to die. So he cuts Blackjack's strings, leaving her helpless. We get an interesting scene from the POV of her Blank as her mind is uploaded to the mainframe, and then put inside it. And I forget how, but this is where we really learn about Horizons.

It's a big moon stone missile meant to be fired at the Tokomare.

I'll admit, I was a tad nonplussed by this, amazing bullshit though it may be. But the whole point, as we find out in various snippets throughout the book, is that moonstone plus star metal equals big kaboom. Project Horizons is a fucking doomsday device constructed by Goldenblood to annihilate Equestria in the event that Princess Luna turned tyrant. Dude was gutsy.

The problem is, Cognitum has figured out a way to catch Horizons and hold it in place above the Tokomare. When they touch, moonstone and star metal explode, but if they're left in close proximity, the star metal will start growing uncontrollably, and we see this in an earlier scene. With this, Cognitum plans to generate infinite power and use it to clean the Wasteland to her specifications, becoming Princess and ruling a society of technological perfect forever.

The only thing standing in her way? Well, actually not Blackjack; she's in a jar at this point. No, it's a password. EC-1101 has a master password, which was installed by Duct Tape, Scotch's mother, a pony who's been dead since chapter 1. And there's a prompt, but she can't guess it, and she's only got three tries. So she does the only thing a self-proclaimed benevolent Princess of the Night can do in this situation, and starts using the Core's defenses to blast holes in fucking everything Blackjack has ever loved. I noted the Seahorse was one of the big-name targets, but quite a lot of towns are wrecked in mere moments.

(I want to step outside the story for a moment to comment that I really hate this trope. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the whole "Only you have the power to stop this destruction that I am wreaking" gambit villains tend to use is complete and total, actual bullshit. Like, number one, no, I, the hero, do not have the power to stop you. You are the one standing there, pushing the button, blowing shit up in my name because you think it's going to make me bend to your will. Even though you are probably right about that. But you are the one in control here, you are the one with the power, and that leads us to number two: you are currently demonstrating that, given power, you will misuse it. You will threaten and kill and destroy to get whatever it is you want. If I give in, if I give you what you want, I've got no guarantee you won't just keep pushing that button. You're the one who decided to take this inexcusable action, not me, and if I get out of here, not only will I stop you, I will make sure everyone knows who pushed that fucking button. The only thing you get out of this is infamy. I dunno, it's just a trope that bothers me is all. :B)

So Blackjack guesses the password right, Cognitum gets the access she needs, and before going off to the fucking moon to interface with Horizons directly, she decides to steal Blackjack's special talent. Why?

Blackjack's special talent is winning.

Think about it! Ace and Queen? 21? Blackjack? You can't beat that! Blackjack's special talent, as Cognitum puts it, is victory, and this is some of my favorite bullshit from book 5. It's also more or less untrue, spoilers, but it suffices to divest Blackjack of her cutie mark.

So Discord shows up from wherever the hell Boo's been hiding during all of this. He does a bunch of stuff, notably spiriting away a few of those body jars. And while it's obvious he's got all his powers, it's also apparent that everything he's doing is pushing him to his limit. Like, he's sweating every time he snaps his fingers. He's straining at the edge of his power.

But the main thing he does is trick Cognitum into reuniting with Luna's soul. Because, y'know, they just kinda had that laying around in case of soul emergencies. It takes the last of his power — he turns back to stone, then fucking turns to dust, he is dead and there is never a take-back — but she does, in the hope that it would show her the error of her ways or something.

Instead, it makes her more powerful. Like, you laughed when Blackjack got alicorn augments? Nuh-uh. Her body's a real alicorn now, wavy magical hair and everything. So that was kind of a bust.

And just when you think that's all the big revelations you can handle for one day, the Legate shows up and, holy shit, now Cognitum is really the Maiden of the Stars, right? He's about to throw down with her!

Except, whoops, nope, he actually bows to her. XD Yes, they've been in cahoots all along! The Brood are, in fact, a plan meant to simulate a sequel-war, an enemy against which the Hoof can unite, and all the Harbingers defeat under the banner of "Blackjack", so that they will be hailed as heroes and usher in a new age! It's cockamamie, but it just might work, y'know?

So she fucks off to the moon finally, leaving Steel Rain in charge. And he's like, there's no fucking way I'm leaving Blackjack alive, fuck what Cognitum says. So the mind transfer thing kicks into reverse, putting Blackjack back into the mainframe computer, he kicks the Blank off the edge of the cliff this was all taking place on, and unloads on the computer.

At this point, we get some more awesome narrative fuckery. Because, like FoE, PH has always had "leve up" footnotes. Blackjack goes through the story getting 'perks' and increasing her 'stats' and whatnot. And for the entirety of book 4, possibly some of book 3, each chapter has ended with "Footnote: Maximum level reached." It's turned into so much background noise by this point, I'm ignoring it more than ever.

But at the end of this chapter, after Blackjack has apparently died for the fourth or fifth time? We get, "Start new game: Y/N?" And holy shit, that just really slapped me across the face with how fucking clever it was. Like, shit, kudos, seriously! Using all the material available to her here!

And again, it starts to look more plausible that BJ is actually dead, as the next chapter starts out narrated by Princess Charm. We get some of her backstory (I love her narration, too, talking about things like her "fat older sister"), and it becomes apparent that, even if she's working for the common good, she's not a good pony; she's just been tortured into going straight by this point.

Anyway, she witnesses the completely expected discussion between Steel Rain and the Legate about how they plan to betray Cognitum and carve up Equestria amongst themselves. Like, seriously, zero surprise, no honor among thieves. And then the Legate turns on him, as well, and we get this awesome scene of him supplicating the stars. Like, go listen to the audiobook in this part, it's fucking amazing with all the audio effects. (Also, the Legate is voiced by Wuten, and he is so goddamn good at doing over-the-top dramatic villain dialogue. I think he was my favorite part of the whole thing!)

Meanwhile, it turns out that Charm sort of is Blackjack right now. She's got all these wires running into her brain, see, so when Steel Rain blew up the computer, she was still hooked to it, and Blackjack's mind was able to shunt itself into Charm's. So now Blackjack is in the odd position of her life being in the hooves of an assortment of her enemies and betrayers. Sanguine, still feral, keeps Steel Rain distracted, while Dawn and Charm work with Sweetie Bot, the still-functional Horse and Snips to first fish Blackjack's body out of the abyss, and then get her mind back into it.

Snips ends up dying in the process, his skull used as a magical sparkplug to amplify his magic enough to telekinesis her back. His last word is "Snails." I was cry. :(

We do, however, get a fantastic line from Steel Rain. Charm, I think, tells him that nopony likes him, to which he can only respond, "I like me." Like, he's just so offended by this. XD It was my finest moment.

Anyway, he takes out Sanguine, then Sweetie Bot, then Dawn, but Horse was able to oversee and conduct the mental transfer back into the body. Blackjack's back, baby! And she's unarmed. And facing Steel Rain. All she has is a moonstone pendant.

And his armor's made out of star metal. It's a cool scene. :D Eventually, he convinces her to spare him, playing off her forgiving nature. So she does. And Steel Rain, being the conniving coward he is, tries to stab her in the back.

So she teleports his pendant away.

The last she sees of him, he is dripping through the floor. <.< It's a horrifying way to go, and I more or less knew that was how it would happen, after we saw it happen to the earlier Ranger. But he dead.

Blackjack takes Charm and ends up in Goldenblood's office in the OIA Hub, which they found earlier. (I'm not sure, but this might be the OIA Hub.) She accesses a terminal, finds something about Nightmare Moon, a portal opens in the room, because that's something that often happens, and long story short, she walks into an orgy.

THE LUNAR PALACE

Starring Psychoshy and Stygius. <.< Remember them? Yeah, it turns out the batponies have been secreted away in a castle in a shadow dimension for the past 200 years. There aren't too many of them left, which means they're hella inbred; this is actually the reason Stygius can't talk properly. But after bringing Psycho — her name's Whisper now, remember — back home with him, Stygius has opened up their population to the potential of having new genetic material. They've even brought in a handful of other non-batponies to join in, so they are fucking a lot.

This leads to a fairly pointless-seeming side story, where Blackjack is all, "That's great, I hope you have lots of babies, I gotta go find my friends," and the batpony King (Hades, Stygius's father), is all, "No." And she's all, "Please?" And he's all, "Make me some batponies and I'll consider it." He's a giant dick, is what I'm saying.

But she goes wandering around in the Umbra (shit, I suddenly wonder if this is a World of Darkness reference), and runs into Luna's soul, because of course she does, and they talk a bit about all the stuff Luna did that she regrets. And, weirdly, this is the point at which Luna is set up as actually being the villain. Like, a lot of it is her taking lots of blame for things because we get it, she's sad, but she did some legitimately awful stuff during her reign. She wanted to resign, Goldenblood wanted to resign, she saved his life, everything was terrible and culminated in his 'execution'. (Yeah, you don't kill ponies with dragon fire.)

Oh yeah, and she gets attacked by the ghost of Steven Magnet. I'm not even kidding.

She is saved from that fabulous fate by Tenebra, Stygius's sister, who is really shy about what a raging lesbian she is, and whose inbred trait is epilepsy. Sad, since she's trying really hard to be a warrior. But because Blackjack saves her in turn, this gets her in good with Queen Persephone (the King's name is Hades, of course the Queen is named Persephone), who, I won't lie, is one of my favorite side characters. This in turn leads Blackjack to Project Redoubt.

Y'know, that Stable that was supposed to house all the richy-rich ponies who could pay their way in? Only it disappeared because it's under this Lunar Palace, and the whole thing shifted into the Umbra. So now the "Big Macintosh Megastable Redoubt" sits mostly empty, the one thing keeping the batponies alive all these years, with one occupant:

Goldenblood.

Yes indeed, ladies and gentlemen, fucking everyone who was important 200 years ago is still alive if they didn't die in Fallout: Equestria! And yet, this has not reached full bullshit proportions! :V

Getting to him is a chore, a literal memory orb puzzle in what's probably the best application of "things you might see in a video game" in either of these stories. The whole point is, picking up the orb starts a countdown, slowly killing whoever's using it until they can guess a 'password' to get in. Then they see a memory, then have to answer a question on a computer terminal. Note, if they get it wrong, there are four beam turrets in the corners. If they get all three passwords, essentially, then they get access. And the whole thing is set up so that only someone who really understands Goldenblood — literally someone like Blackjack, who's seen all those orbs scattered about the Wasteland — would know how he thinks well enough to answer the questions. The reason for this I will get to shortly. First, the memories.

The first is maybe the best one, because it gives us the full explanation of what happened at Littlehorn. Remember, Goldenblood was teaching there when the massacre occurred. And, as we learn, it was perpetrated by a Starkatteri zebra, part of the 'cursed' tribe (who Blackjack just so happens to recognize is Amadi, the zebra working on the Tokomare who later would betray Goldenblood!) entering the school under the cover of the zebra refugees we saw in an earlier… I think it was a Psalm dream, because babby Rampage was there. (Though now that I think of it, that may have actually been her.) Anyway, he has a Pink Coud talisman, which he unleashes in the middle of the school, and thank god he kills the dean, because that guy was a major dick. But it turns out exposure to Pink Cloud is what gave Goldenblood his raspy voice. Which is weird, because all this time, I had thought it was due to Blueblood beating him as a colt. <.< I'm not sure if I misinterpreted something, it was changed, or I just sort of assumed that. But Goldenblood is one of the few survivors, and he ends up blaming himself for the war because he tells them 'zebras' did it, and isn't able to specify in time to stop the news getting out.

The next memory is about Goldenblood confronting Twilight after Big Mac's death. Weirdly, she doesn't know why she's so upset, which seemed odd to me since, y'know, she's carrying his child by that point, you'd think maybe there was something between them. Even one-sided. Maybe she just didn't want to admit to it, not to GB, anyway. But this shows us that he and Twilight collaborated to make Gardens of Equestria behind Luna's back. As I put it, Twilight wanted to save Equestria if they lost, and Goldenblood wanted to save it if they won.

The last memory is a very intense scene of him confronting Pinkie Pie. Like, I really enjoyed the behind-the-scenes from before the bombs fell, but… Well, given how Pinkie suspected Goldenblood of doing something bad, and how good she was at surveillance, it turns out he really, really hated her. He starts out waiting for her in her office, and keeps saying, "Have a Mintal, Pinkie." Like, really fucking creepy. But eventually he attacks her, shoving Mintals in her mouth, and Pumpkin and Pound have to physically pull him off of her.

Then the big reveal: Pinkie accuses him of serving the Eater of Souls. Like, she says it in those terms, there's no fucking around here. He gets it because he grew up in zebra lands. And this is really important, but it's buried under her talking to Blackjack (not to mention the main character of Murky Number Seven <.<) and the realization that this is how she ended up in the hospital in the previous memory orb. I do really like this line of Goldenblood's, though, where he calls Luna's government "the greatest piece of sociopolitical performance art the world has ever seen."

Anyway, back in the present, she gets into the chamber where Goldenblood is held, whereupon she is hailed as "the executioner". At this point, you should be going, "Uh-oh," because what's one of Blackjack's catch-phrases? "I am not an executioner." But yes, it turns out Goldenblood set up a virtual system like the one at Happyhorn to torture himself with "interrogations" forever until someone who understood what he had done, and who would thus likely want to kill, showed up in the Redoubt to do just that. Unfortunately for him, the pony he gets is Blackjack.

Here, she convinces the AI — which is very insistent she either choose an execution method for him or die herself — allows her a peek into the simulation, and she gets to witness Goldenblood's final day in Equestria. Starting with his execution, where the dragonfire of course sends him to…

Shit, you know what? I'm going to have to backtrack and explain a couple of things from Fallout: Equestria first. Because this whole scene involves Goldenblood witnessing first-hand the destruction of Canterlot, and I fucking hated it. I mean, literally every single detail that Littlepip encounters when she braves the Pink Cloud to enter the city, Goldenblood is there to see. It got ridiculous, it was actual bullshit, and it strained my disbelief in terms of his overall importance to everything.

Anyway, in FoE, there was a pair of characters I really liked called Lionheart and Mouse. Lionheart was a batpony guard, and he actually features heavily in this sequence of PH. Mouse on the other hand was… a mouse. That spewed Pink Cloud from its mouth. And was originally a dragon. I don't recall what transformed her — it might have been poison/killing joke — but who she actually was was Spike's mother. I forget what they did, other than help out Littlepip at a dramatically appropriate moment, but they left an impact on me otherwise.

And it is to Spike's mother that Goldenblood is transferred by the dragonfire. (Celestia is there, is why.) So first, he gets a front-row seat to watching this dragoness, who couldn't care less about him, eat something that just so happens to be a Pink Cloud talisman. And this is how Canterlot gets full of Pink Cloud. Goldenblood rushes through the streets, , trying to get to the Palace so he can warn the Princesses. Along the way, he does things like be with Rarity during her final moments (it was horrifying, her eyes are melting down her face D:) and seeing Lyra fused to a fucking bench. (My god, did we really need to have that specific detail explained to us? I mean, do you see why I don't like this sequence?) Of course, he can't get there in time — I initially thought that his seeming immunity to Pink Cloud was due to having been exposed to it before, but as it turns out, he's being ghoulified through this whole process, something I did not realize until very much later — and when he does, the Princess are like, sorry, man, either we let everyone die from pink shit or drop the shield and let them die from bombs.

Luna sends him to Ponyville, where he is summarily beaten by an Angel hopped up on RAGE, DASH and who knows what the fuck other meds. All Goldenblood wants is to apologize to Fluttershy, but Angel, or rather the AI of the virtual world, won't let him. Then the scenario ends and there's a time she gets to talk to him alone before it starts up again.

And, of course, he knows who she is. Like, this was this huge confrontation, built up to throughout four-plus books of this story, and I just kind of had to roll my eyes because, despite being trapped in this infernal flagellation device, Goldenblood gets these chances to breathe and look out in the Wasteland, so he knows about her and LP. So he tells her a bunch of stuff about Horizons, how they have to slingshot it around the sun to hit Hoofington, how the Redoubt was meant to survive the impact, and how he planned to repopulate the world with Blanks, containing their old souls like soul jars.

You remember that part where Pinkie said he was serving the Eater? Well, it turns out that was true: he was being influenced by the 'song' of the star metal, and the Eater got him to stick a star spirit inside the Horizons missile. This is revealed as the final line of a chapter, but the impact isn't really explained until the one after, so I was left scratching my head. The idea is, once the missile impacts — assuming Cognitum's plan to catch it doesn't work — the Eater will be able to grab this star soul that's been struggling against its bonds all these years, eat it, and reach its full power so it can break out and devour everything. So that's bad.

Also, he attacked Pinkie because his mom had said the same thing to him on her deathbed, when she went crazy and tried to kill him. <.< It was a weird scene. At this point, I provide a summation of the stakes:

So all they have to do is get out of the mindscape without killing Goldenblood, figure out a way back to the World of Light, and then get to the Moon somehow to stop a crazy robot from either killing everyone on the surface with a giant rock missile, not killing everyone and enslaving them instead, or empowering an ancient evil to go Unicron on the planet. Fun!

But all this time, Goldenblood is trying really, really hard to convince Blackjack to kill him. And she eventually gets out of the simulation and gives her ultimatum to the AI: death by Wasteland. I was very pleased by this, because it's what I realized was the only way to get him out alive. :) So Goldenblood joins the party, which is about the strangest thing that could have happened by this point. I mean, seriously, 60 chapters ago it would have been inconceivable.

From there, we are dumped unceremoniously back into the fucking batponies plot. Long story short, BJ gets drunk, challenges the King for the talisman that control entry to the Umbra, nearly gets her dumb ass obliterated by his weird dark magic, and beats him by shattering her whiskey bottle and driving the shards into his eyes. Yowch. Unfortunately, the talisman is destroyed in the process, and the entire Lunar Palace is returned to the World of Light. (It was Blackpony Mountain all this time.) At least she can get home now!

Oh yeah, and Psychoshy gets really fricking pissed off at BJ for introducing her to her dad. XD Cuz that's a thing, remember.

IDENTITY

Anyway, we go from one of the dumber plots of Project Horizons immediately into another. Blackjack takes Charm, who's still alive but not in great shape because the batponies don't have any actual doctors, off to the Collegiate to get her some real medical care. Except no one believes she Blackjack. And I'm thinking, oh, okay, that means Cognitum's been here, dang, that's gonna be tough.

No, she's being stymied by cosplayers. I fucking shit you not.

See, Fallout Equestria exists in its own universe. It's actually the memoirs of Littlepip, and in the three months since Gardens happened, it's been distributed across the Wasteland. Everyone is familiar with the exploits of the Lightbringer and her friends. A few even know about Security and her friends. And they've been inspired to Do Better, so they're dressing up as their favorite heroes and doing their best to scour the Wasteland of evil! She even meets a few.

There is something to this plot, don't get me wrong. Blackjack having to struggle with her very identity is kind of a common theme, and this puts it in a whole new light. What do you do when no one believes you are who you say? It's just… Sagittarius of the Zodiacs literally calls it 'cosplay'. I could not take it seriously, and I'm glad the whole thing just sort of peters out in a few chapters, never to be heard from again.

The other big thing that happens right now is she sneaks in and finds Dr. Zodiac, currently a brain inside of those eye-bots from the Big Empty DLC of New Vegas. (See? I know the games now!) First, she gets to see a scene of Cognitum running a big anti-Brood offensive war meeting. And I had to ask why the hell anyone was following her; like, she is not even trying to sound like Blackjack. She shoots Big Daddy! And yeah, Rampage is there to vouch for her, but you'd think the preponderance of evidence might suggest that Rampage is being a fucking bitch and Blackjack's been possessed by the devil or something.

But she also finds out that the eyes she got from Zodiac way, way back after she died the first time had some kind of tracking device that let her see through them. So all her activities up to this point have been recorded. And also Zodiac was a zebra spy back during the war, but I didn't really remember enough to get the impact there. Blackjack kills her. :B

Except wait! She comes back in a cyber-pony body! And just as she's about to kill Blackjack back, wham, Calamity-ex-machina! Yes, Calamity, Velvet and Homage are there in the Hoof because they had to fix Calamity and something, something, Blackjack throws a tantrum and gets them to kind of agree that she's Blackjack.

And I was really confused by this whole thing. Like, not why LP's friends are there, they're big ponies, they can do what they want. (Though I'll mention this is why I say the side story status has flipped; writing about Kkat's characters after FoE kind of makes them more important to PH.) Just, first there's Zodiac being a spy. She never seemed evil, so she must have been a good actor or something. Second, Blackjack just killed the leader of one of the major factions in the Hoof! And like… no one comments on this or cares. There's no fallout or repercussions. Sagittarius just sort of takes over leadership of the Zodiacs, and they keep helping her out once they've been convinced she's herself. I mean, it'd be like Big Daddy, or even Cognitum dying, and it just ends up being this non-event because cosplay.

Then, as happens so often, Blackjack trundles her way back to Star House in Chapel, fixes herself a bowl of cereal, and nearly gets her head taken off by Morning Glory. Because cosplayers. She's able to convince Glory, P-21 and Scotch that she is the real Blackjack because Boo is there (somehow), and dogs and children never lie. And Boo is both. This leads to Scotch mentioning that something's wrong with Deus (I mean, other than he's a brain in a jar in a tank), and one of the biggest shakeups in the entire story.

See, Cognitum has been treating Glory like absolute garbage ever since she got back. Again, it makes you wonder how a being with a soul anywhere near it, that had been fed direct visual experiences could fuck up being a person so much. She's rejected Glory's attempts at intimacy and said some really nasty shit because apparently she just doesn't even give a fuck, and now Glory is going to take it out on the real Blackjack.

And I will admit, she has a point. Going back over all the things that have happened to them, the way Glory puts it, Blackjack is the hero, Glory is often the damsel in distress, and that is not a basis for a relationship. They're not equals, they're not partners. Also, with the revelation that Blackjack is pregnant, Glory's feeling left out, because she knows BJ and P-21 kind of have a thing for each other, and a child is a link Glory can never have with Blackjack. I was saddened that they were going to break up (again), but I was willing to accept that this relationship was not the best thing. Hell, I'd even said as much in other reviews.

But then she does the thing. Blackjack asks, "Do you love me," and Glory, straight to her face, in the middle of a crisis that is intensely personal to Blackjack and about to spill over into "end of the world", says "No."

I WAS SO MAD

I was like, "Bitch, you did not just say that to my waifu!" I thought so many nasty things at her, I called her worst pony, oh my god, this story got me livid at this character! And then it had the audacity to make me eat copious amounts of crow later on, but we'll get to that.

Anyway, Blackjack fucks P-21, because obviously that's the only thing to do in a situation like this. And yes, this was in chapter 69.

THE BROOD WAR

Then there's a party. Like, a fucking war convention. Word has gotten around that the Blackjack they've been talking to is not Blackjack, and everyone basically goes, "Thank Celestia". Blackjack is kind of not good at social, so she goes out to see what's up with Deus. She climbs into his mind, because that's a thing she can do now, and I really liked the description of him as "a gargantuan collection of pain, rage and disappointment". And we get a big reveal.

Rampage is Deus's daughter.

This unfortunately means she's Twist's rape-baby, but now that Deus is in considerably less constant pain than ever before, he wants to do better by her. And honestly? Deus is one of the best characters in this story, from a writing perspective, and I was all for this. I also love that he literally calls Blackjack a cunt affectionately.

You know who else is one of the best characters in this story? Triage. She does a little demonstration to show that Blanks are immune to Taint, by having Boo and Blackjack drink some. (It makes them feel good. Also, she's like, We're doing this because science, and someone in the back of the crowd shouts, "Science sucks!" I love it.) After this, Blackjack gives a rousing speech to all and sundry. And I found it interesting, because she ends her speech with "Hoofington rises!", that old propaganda catch-phrase, which she heard Cognitum end a speech with earlier that day. No one makes any point of it, which is kind of a shame.

Man, I'm afraid of how long this is going to be. There's a lot of great stuff in here, like Sagittarius showing he's a born leader by turning a challenge from Candlewick into a contest of dominance instead. Anyway, there's a new war council, everyone from Big Daddy to Xanthe is there. No one wants to play nice, Rainbow Dash is keeping the fact that she is Rainbow Dash very secret, so Blackjack sets up Goldenblood as the orchestrator of the war effort. And he's like, this broken shell of a pony by this point, riddled with self-doubt, but he's a born organizer, and not only the best choice because he can do it, but because he can also redeem himself by doing it. So it works.

Oh man, there's a great scene where they go off to try and get the Highlanders' help and are greeted by this rude little filly who turns out to be Bluebell's younger sister. And she shows up talking sass, and Scotch gets her hackles up, and I'm like, Is Scotch Tape going to have to smack a filly? And then she does. XD It was wonderful. Anyway, the Highlanders refuse to help because hillbillies. Homage whines a lot (even Blackjack complains about this), they talk to some Hellhounds, Crumpets and Psalm and Captain Thrush show up, and then the Core starts resetting itself.

Like, Enervation is gone, buildings that were toppled right themselves, it's really, really weird. And Blackjack's like, yeah, I remember a store once that tried to lure us in by looking nice and safe. Don't let anyone in there.

There is a lot of interesting stuff that happens in the leadup to the actual fight, but I noted that things were progressing at a snail's pace. Like, they go off to Miramare Air Force Base so Blackjack can get a gun. Then she gets separated from her friends, just so we can see how well-equipped and poorly trained the Harbingers are. She meets Dr. Scalpel, who's openly and willingly serving Cognitum because she's mad about what happened to Flank, and another of her rapists, who she convinces to bring some Harbingers over to her side. The whole point of the side trip, aside from the gun, is finding some stuff in Twist's office that will help Rampage remember who she is, but it's another of those departures that really feels like a departure.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, Rampage's real name is Peppermint, and I'm very sad events didn't align so Blackjack could make fun of her for not having a tough name.

Anyway, we get the scene of Twist and little Peppermint running through the newly-created Wasteland, trying to find shelter in the Highlands. Peppermint is quite the fighter, just like her mommy (:D), but unfortunately, Twist gets shot. And since she was carrying her daughter, what's a flesh wound for her is nearly fatal for little Peppermint. So she does what her beloved did for her once: cuts the talisman out of herself and puts it in her daughter. (In a cool bit of narrative fuckery, the POV of the memory orb shifts as the talisman is moved.) Then there's a tearful farewell between mother and daughter, and oh god, it hurt so much. D: But it turns out Rampage doesn't remember being Peppermint because, y'know, this memory orb exists.

Oh yeah, then the big party happens, I may have gotten confused. Once again, lots of downtime, lots of interesting things happening. Apple Bot is there, Psychoshy's pregnant (remember this, because Blackjack won't!), Crumpets is trying to convince Psalm to get with Stronghoof and it is highly intimated that that's what Crumpets wants for herself. Candlewick's brother, the leader of the Burner Boys, is causing trouble. Glory hooks up with Tenebra, which is super-cute and completely supported by Blackjack because Glory never deserved her argh D:< But yeah, like everyone shows up for this big shindig before they all go off to die, and for all that it's a "go around and talk to everyone" kind of scene, it's pretty neat.

I don't know if I mentioned this earlier, or even if it was from this book, but that whole prophecy about the Maiden of the Stars? What the Legate used to keep the Remnant on his side and fighting Blackjack? Totally made up by him. And we find out that Sekashi left him after discovering he was Starkatteri (because he fucks with the skull on, even), and that's why Lancer was sent to kill her. Also, she tells them the prophecy is made up and they're like, no, it'll definitely go like that, no worries.

So now they are all DTF, by which I mean down to fight, and go off to survey the front lines. There's a short fight scene to remind us that Blackjack and her friends are all badasses, Boo included. She names that new gun "Sexy" because Blackjack should not be allowed to name anything. Then they get to fight a bunch of Starkatteri witches.

I want to mention that, by this point, I was starting to visualize PH as a JRPG. Like, SNES-era, Final Fantasy III style or something. This was a very easy fight to RPG-ize. Anyway, there's like, a fire witch, an ice witch, a balefire witch, and a filly named Pythia who can see the future. And they, together with the Legate, are the last of the Starkatteri tribe.

Also, Pythia is best filly. :V I'm just sayin'. Scotch Tape has to smack her, but she can't. Well, until she can. :B BJ and co. win, no surprise there, we learn a bunch of stuff about the Eater and other things, and then the witches all fuck off because BJ has a rocket to catch.

But she don't. And at this point, I could feel my interest waning, because like, there's just no way they can catch up with Cognitum and stop her from launching a moon rocket. Not because Cognitum's so hard to stop or whatever, but because a climactic showdown on the freaking moon is not something you dangle over the audience's head only to cut it short. So it was obvious there was only one way things could go.

There's a great sequence where the Legate shows up and spouts a lot of "That's impossible!" and so forth. Blackjack uses the Maiden prophecy to get the Remnant on her side. The Legate punches apart a rocket tower because he is just that badass.

Also, she has a Raptor blast him to smithereens, which is the only thing that knocks his helmet off, revealing his identity as Starkatteri to all and sundry. And I just had to wonder, how did it even survive?

Oh yeah, and he's got the ability to remotely launch his balefire missile, which is now heading for the spaceport. They beat him by freezing him with liquid nitrogen and shattering him (he gets better, don't worry), and then they're all on a rocket to the moon. Well, except for Boo; she's sent back to help with something, I forget what. Also, she calls Blackjack "Momma", and not nearly enough weight is given to this, if you ask me. Like, that's a major character moment!

Oh yeah, and also Glory's not with them. Someone's gotta launch that rocket, right? So she's fighting off Brood in the command center, the rocket goes off, and Glory fucking dies because balefire bomb. :C This is that crow I told you I was eating. Like, that's a really, really good death for her, a last-minute sacrifice to ensure the success of the mission. There's something to be said for deaths like Steelhooves's in Fallout: Equestria: sudden, shocking and pointless. But this was still shocking, and it was a good death, epic, tragic and meaningful, and it made me feel really, really bad about calling her worst pony. ;_;

THE MOON

Then begins one of two sequences that… Look, it takes a while to get to the moon via rocket. And Somber was able to capture that sense of "this takes a long time and is boring" without it actually being boring. Because for their three-hour tourtrip, they have about three things to occupy themselves: grief, sex and the Perceptitron. So gear up for a whole bunch of scenes of Blackjack snooping into what's happening down on the planet! It was a good idea, but then again, I also have to say something against a couple of chapters of story where all the action involves none of the main characters.

Though maybe it's just a reinforcement of the "it's not about you" theme. Who knows.

Anyway, the tl;dr is "things aren't going well". There are strikes being made all over the place, but with the Brood able to infinitely replicate themselves, they don't care about casualties at all. They're unstoppable and implacable as a force. The only hope is to take out the Flux trees that spawn them. So we get to see Storm Chaser underestimating the Legate's tactical ability. We get a really cool action scene of a bunch of pegasi — and I want to mention this, bizarrely, includes one of Calamity's brothers and a trio of cyber-pegasi from Shadowbolt Tower, who Blackjack actually fought, because one of them was preoccupied with whether or not he still had a dick — led by Rainbow-Do-Well, fighting … actually, I forget where. But it was cool.

Scotch Tape tries to access Glory's Pipbuck, but gets the sensation of having no body, which is never a good sign. BJ and P-21 fuck some more, Scotch Tape reveals she thinks of Blackjack as a mother figure (poor kid), and we get the biggest fucking cocktease in this entire goddamn story: P-21's cutie mark is a decal. All this time, he had a real cutie mark under there somewhere. And he doesn't care what it is, because he is a cockhole. D:

One big event is Big Daddy dies. I mean, he takes a weird potion that makes him glow a whole bunch, punches a tank apart, and then dissolves into sparkles. It doesn't make a lot of sense, and even later on, it's questioned whether or not he's actually dead. We see Crumpets trying to convince Psalm to join the fighting. Boo is able to tell when someone's using the Perceptitron because of course she can. We get the first inkling that Glory might actually have survived. And one of the cooler things, a peek into Xanthe's group shows us that Snails is using dead Brood as zombies. :D Because I fucking would! Also, the Brood can talk now.

Lastly, Blackjack checks out Cognitum's Pipbuck, and Cognitum can obviously tell this is happening. Cognitum offers her a deal to back off, to save her babies, because, yes indeed, that dream about Blackjack having twins was in fact more prophetic than I gave it credit for! Blackjack says no, Cognitum kicks her out, they moon now. And Rampage is gonna kill her.

The fight is… how a fight with Rampage usually goes. Blackjack defeats her by jamming her horn directly into Rampage's brain, though, to commence mind-meld and tell her about being Peppermint. And despite this healing over the whole "Am I a real pony?" issue, Rampage still wants to die because of what she did to her foal. Like, I had actually forgotten about that by this point, and it felt kind of… I dunno, just, no matter what Blackjack does, Rampage is gonna be suicidal. How is that anything good?

But then we get some amazing bullshit. Blackjack complains about being in despair or something, luring the Angel of Death out into the foreground of Rampage's mind. And then not even she knows what she does, but she basically mind-fires the Angel until it's dead. Because that's a thing that can happen! When someone has multiple souls trapped in their body, you can jam your magic into their brain and burn the ones you don't like out. :D It's just science. But yeah, it was pretty cool, very climactic, as just about everything from this point on is going to be.

They go to an… astro-stable. <.< Because everything is cooler with sci-fi words tacked onto it. But there are ponies there, and they're friendly despite having been waiting for Luna's return. (Actually, I can't remember if it was Luna or Nightmare Moon. Probably Luna.) BJ tries to use the Perceptitron once more, and it fucking explodes. Which of course means she can now see people's Pipbucks at will because fucking I don't know, something something techno bullshit. :V

There is, at least, a reason for this beyond just keeping in touch with everyone back home. Blackjack has a fucking stroke (yes), and the images come and go without her say-so, so it really interferes with the next big fight. But she sees things like Grace maring the fuck up (and shooting a guy XD), Goldenblood getting his ass handed to him by the Legate, and Triage having it out with Morningstar about saving one life (read: Glory) over saving hundreds.

Oh yeah, and then she randomly develops telepathy because something something moonstone poisoning bullshit. :V

I will say I was interested by the whole lunar complex, which they quickly realize is a trap designed by Goldenblood for Luna. There's a hallway of crystals that hold memories of her being Nightmare Moon, and the throne with the launching console sits over the launching tube for Horizons, meaning she would be obliterated if she tried to use it. Kind of amazing.

So they end up falling down the tube, where P-21 goes into continual overhack mode to try and delay Horizons launching, while someone actively tries to route around him. Turns out that someone is Echo, aka the Dealer, and he's still trying to serve Cognitum to save his sorry skin. Then there's a booming voice behind them, and in the missile: the shape of an alicorn! "Call me Tom," says the star spirit, because that's what the missile is called and terrible show references. D: Amusingly, Blackjack is not impressed.

But they take a time-out to go into a mindscape where Tom explains the stakes to them. Remember, we've seen three outcomes if Horizons launches: destroyed by the Eater, who will eat the star spirit and go on to eat everything; blowing up the world; and caught by Cognitum, who will be able to enslave everyone with a perpetual source of energy. Tom's plan? Let him destroy everything.

No, really. See, the Eater, if allowed to gain full power, will eat everything. The explosion created by Horizons would wipe out Equestria, sure, but in a few hundred years, stuff would start growing again, better than ever, and they can all live on the moon in the meantime and repopulate the surface in a few generations. No sweat! :) And Tom will totally beat the Eater if he makes it down there because, contrary to the Eater's plan, he allowed himself to be captured instead of struggling against his bond all this time. He's at peak power, just waiting for a chance to exchange his existence for that of everything else.

Oh yeah, and if they stop Horizons, the Eater will remain dormant, but his corrupting influence will prevent Equestria from ever returning to anything like it was. Life will stagnate in a few hundred years, and nothing will ever get better.

Now, this was an interesting conundrum. Except for the part where the obvious choice is the one where they try to stop Horizons and then take those hundred years to also stop the Eater, trusting in their own ingenuity and will to live as panacea for all their ills. It's not quite put like that in the story, but I was pleased Blackjack didn't even give Tom's offer a second thought.

Still, I mean, outwardly, it's a direct refutation of the concept of an afterlife. Tom's talking about how, yeah, all your friends will be killed, but then they get to join the stars and sing in harmony forever! Isn't that great? If the Eater gets them, he'll make him sing his praises forever, which is the "scream" of Enervation. But instead of relying on some promised land of harmony, they're all, we determine our own destiny, it's more important to make life good now, here, in that which is real to us. And that was a neat little, I dunno, is that anti-theistic? There's probably a word for it. :B I appreciated it, anyway. Also appreciated: Littlepip's contribution is given lipservice, because at this point, it was starting to sound like all of Fallout: Equestria was going to be overshadowed.

So they tell Tom to fuck off. "Life matters," they say, in a statement of core philosophy, of which there are many in these last few chapters, some of which I even wrote down. :B And then Blackjack's literally like, "Hey, Princess Fuckslut!" because she is the Queen of Saying Things, and we almost begin the final battle, but first! Cognitum has minions! A Neighponese pony with a sword, because Somber loves his anime, and a guy with guns. Sword pony dies; gun pony, whose name is Bastard, is allowed to live.

Now it's time to fight Cognitum. Now, their original plan was to sneak in, blast her with EMP grenades so her systems would shut down, and then swap Cognitum's mind for Blackjack's. She just wants her body and children back, along with saving the Wasteland. This has, of course, not happened. But! Cognitum grabs them all in her telekinesis and she's like, who to kill first, and Rampage is like, "ooh, pick me!" even waving her hoof in the air, and it's hilarious. XD Then she finds P-21's grenade stash. Boom.

So they're able to do the mind transfer, and I swear to god, all I could think of was exchanging Pokemon. c.c; Blackjack complains that her body is "too corrupted" for her to "fit" in it anymore. So she has a little conversation with Nightmare Moon, like ya do, and no surprise that's just Luna self-flagellating, because who in this fic doesn't. It was some pretty good character building for Luna, though. So she and Luna make up and…

Blackjack becomes an alicorn.

Like, she's still mostly cybernetic, but her eyes are eyes again. She has a face. Her wings have feathers. Coloration aside, she has technically become Princess Luna, which is just all kinds of fucked-up, but c'mon, Somber finally made his OC into an alicorn, let's be real. :V

Meanwhile, Cognitum has a final form, too! Something goes wrong with the mind transfer and her mind is basically lost. What happens to it? Well, there's a bunch of tiny sprite-bots around that are meant to repair things by chewing up the rubble and spitting out whatever it was supposed to be. With a strangled cry of, "They're only supposed to eat metal!" Echo is reduced to a smear on the pavement. He didn't deserve it. :(

So Bastard gets to do something really cool, since he's a good guy now, and they suck Cognitum off into space. Except a bunch of rubble falls, and they're all adventurers, so…

I shouldn't joke. :( We lose P-21. This one really hurt.

He's impaled by steel rods through his body, using all his focus to keep Horizons from launching as Blackjack tries and fails again and again to figure out a way to extricate him without killing him. And Scotch Tape is there and she's beside herself. And Rampage helps hold up the rubble so he doesn't die faster. And they've got a very hard time limit. So they have to leave both P-21 and Rampage behind and get back to the rocket before Horizons leaves. At least we get to see his cutie mark.

So Blackjack, Scotch Tape, Bastard and Blackjack's Blank all head back to the rocket. The Blank, as it turns out, is now completely inert, but still has that weird-ass connection to all the Pipbucks from when the Perceptitron exploded. Blackjack makes Bastard promise to take care of Scotch Tape while he's with them. Also, Rampage does a really cool self-sacrifice after the missile launches, coming out and pushing them to the rocket terminal. There's no way to get her inside, though, so Blackjack swears up and down she'll come back for her. And they take off.

And it's all kind of ruined because Blackjack is listening to Johnny Cash's cover of "Hurt". :|

RETURNING HOME

So we find out that Bastard doesn't want anything about himself to be found out. (There is a spoilered comment on chapter 75, part 1, where Somber tells some of his backstory, if anyone cares.) And then we get the second scene where Blackjack passes time by checking out what's going on on the planet.

Short answer: Things are getting way worse. There's a big tornado over the Rainbow Dash Skyport. The Legate has ripped Goldenblood's legs off and is freaking out because Tom isn't flying directly at the planet. Sagittarius sacrifices himself to destroy a Flux tree, and Blackjack realizes the people she can see are dying left and right.

Xanthe, for instance is dying of radiation sickness, they're out of ammo, and Snails has no more corpses to use. So Silver Spoon takes Xanthe's Pipbuck and goes into the reactor to blow up the base they're in. Getting to see the way she sees the world was really neat, and then the last thing she sees before dying is Diamond Tiara and oh god ;___;

Remember how I said it's questionable whether or not Big Daddy died? Candlewick takes the last of his potion, trying to sacrifice himself to take out another Flux tree. And he does the whole glowing bright and becoming unstoppable thing, but he also survives. (Someone pours water on him. <.<) So I really don't know what to think about that.

Storm Chaser prepares to drive a Raptor full of balefire eggs into the Tempest, which is the big tornado thingy, but Rainbow Dash coldcocks her and takes over. And I'm kind of mad Somber killed Rainbow Dash off, but her last words are, "I call this one the Rainbow—!" and that's just fucking perfect.

Psalm joins the fighting and she, Crumpets and Stronghoof almost die. Chapel is under heavy siege, and Harpica and Deus sacrifice themselves to save it. Which made me sad, I wanted Deus to reunite with Rampage. (His last words are "I was a good pony" and oh god the tears, even right now ;______;) Still, the Chapel section was confusing, because a bunch of dogs show up and start tearing the Brood apart, and I'm like… Did they just get saved by Winona ex machina? Because she was a thing, way back in like chapter eight. c.c I still don't know what happened.

Grace is trying to lead the Society gracefully to its end while Triage is trying to get her to be the surrogate for Blackjack's babies, since they're, like, fifteenth cousins or something. Oh god, Grace is such a good character, though, and this final stand of hers show just what kind of a person she is. It was fucking epic, she gives this excellent speech, and then she just gets destroyed. D:

We get into a pony whose like, entire body has been burned off, and by now you should realize that is Glory. D: Not good.

Then Stygius makes a big mistake. He proposes to Whisper in the middle of a combat zone, she sings a song about how she's never been happier in her life, and then, like, everyone's really fucking surprised when he dies. Like, what the hell did you think was gonna happen? You basically invited the universe to shit all over you! Stupid fucking batponies. :| I'll say though that Hades, blind but still fighting with help from his wife, crying out, "You killed my son!" is one of those real heart-grabber moments. This is like two solid fucking chapters of heroic sacrifices; it's almost more than I can take.

(Aside, re: singing. The Legate makes mention of "pony combat rhythms", which is really excellent headcanon that I felt nevertheless felt was way out of place in this story. I mean, if you're gonna have a darker fic about ponies going to war, hell yeah they're gonna sing, and hell yeah it's gonna make them more combat effective. That's a great use of the show. But — and this is despite the fact that this apparently came up once before, long ago — it just doesn't fit here, the tone's all wrong. Maybe if it had shown up more, I'd be more used to it by now. So I guess it's a missed opportunity, is what I'm saying.)

The scene goes on for way too long, if you ask me, as she starts up a rendition of "Rise, Hoofington, Rise" that, because it's about the most badass song you could ask for at this point (you don't even have to hear the words, just look at that title), rouses pretty much everyone she can broadcast it too. But seriously, why is Psychoshy leading this?

Meanwhile, in the rocket, Scotch Tape is blaming everything on Blackjack because she won't use her bullshit princess Blackjack powers to save P-21. Then, she and Bastard have sex. There are a lot of warnings about this in this chapter, and the scene wasn't even in the audiobook. Me? I kind of didn't care. For one, I expected it; when Blackjack first gets that telepathy bullshit, all she hears from Scotch Tape is, "Don't think about having sex with Daddy, don't think about having sex with Blackjack, don't think about having sex with Rampage", which was hilarious. Scotch is a young teenager, she's a ball of hormones, and Blackjack keeps having sex while she doesn't get any. No surprise it would come out (pun unintended >.<) with a perfect stranger. And shame on Bastard for letting her do it, but I have to say, the entire scene is pretty damned funny, especially how he justifies it.

Of course, he's like, "You two need to fucking talk about this shit", and they do, and kind of nothing gets better. P-21 made Blackjack promise that if anything happened to him, she'd take care of Scotch, and she cannot, for some reason, communicate this at all, so she lies to her. And they basically reach zero understanding. Blackjack is bad at doing things sometimes. :|

Anyway, this is about the time when I realized, oh, the rockets are fully automated, it's heading back for the spaceport, and wasn't that obliterated by a megaspell? Thankfully they don't have to worry about that, because it gets cut in half by the Core defenses! :D

Because, in the last not-Perceptitron scene, we see a big final showdnwo with the Legate. His entire family is there, Whisper's there, Velvet and Pythia are there. And Majina's great and Pythia's great and then Sekashi dies and sad. :( And while the Legate is trying to raise the Tokomare to the surface, holy shit, it's Xenith! And she goes toe-to-toe with the Legate! And she holds her own.

Xenith was probably my least favorite character in FoE, but this one scene… Well, okay, it showed that she's badass, it doesn't really do anything for her character. Well, aside from her snappy fucking one-liner.

Anyway, after they mutually geek out about their dead fucking fighting styles, she pins him, and Whisper tears his fucking heart out. Now, admittedly, it's no surprise that this doesn't slow him down, there's flesh tendrils trying to reunite it with his body. But they find the moonstone control box that lets him use the Brood, and Psalm and Boo show up with Blackjack's star metal sword. You know, the one she lost back in Shadowbolt Tower? Or maybe even earlier? We are used to Boo doing things like this by this point.

So they give Velvet the sword so she can excise the control box like a tumor, and she's all, "I'm a pacifist, will this kill him?" and I'm like goddammit Velvet you are being very inconvenient right now, but if we're being honest, that's Velvet Remedy for you. :B

But she does the thing, the Brood go slack, and the Legate reveals his final form as ten thousand years of restrained growth catches up with him. He Akiras the fuck out, crushing Goldenblood to death in the process (last words: "Tell Blackjack I did better" ;___;), and he's totally defeated and there's no way he'll come back.

Meanwhile, daring midair rescue. It's neat. I've been writing this for five hours, I'm ready to skip a bit, brother. The Eater of Souls makes its appearance, and for now, just think "metal Sauron".

So they land, and Enervation is back because Eater, and it was luring people into the Core to try and kill a whole bunch at once so it could capture their souls. They land in Scrapyard, where it turns out the Highlanders actually are helping, and we finally meet Big Momma. She's big. And scary. c.c But they make their way to the Collegiate to see if Glory's still alive.

First, Blackjack gets a browbeating from Sky Striker. You know, your usual, how dare you put my daughter in danger, everyone you get close to dies, I wish we'd never met you kind of thing. Blackjack gets her Luna up, flings him against a wall, and calls him a peasant. This is funny, because word spreads quickly and no one can get over this. This is not funny, because…

Glory's still alive. Bandaged head to toe. In excruciating pain. They've doped her to the gills, run her through the machine three times, she's still going to die. And despite what she did to Blackjack? She didn't deserve to suffer like this. She's so goddamn placid, so noble at the end, though. They go into a mindscape together and Glory gives Blackjack a plan to stop the Eater: disable half its shields, instead of all of them, so that Tom can be caught and still fight back.

Then comes the single most heartbreaking scene in the story, oh god, I'm getting misty-eyed already. D: "There's nothing more precious," says Glory, "than to matter to someone." She confesses she messed everything up, which she did. She lied when she said she didn't love Blackjack, hoping it would make her stronger or something. There's this gut-wrenching "what if" scene that plays out in the clouds, of all of them living together, happy, getting everything they want. And then Glory fades away.

Augh, god, give me a second. ;_;

On the upside? It means that the meaning of her death was not cheapened in the least. I mean, I was a little scared of that, when it started sounding like she was going to live. But if anything, holding on long enough to give Blackjack the final piece she needed to win made it even more meaningful.

Another great scene is a climactic confrontation between Psalm and Luna-in-Blackjack. Y'know, Psalm, whose catch-phrase is "Luna forgive me, for I have taken the life of another"? And Psalm fucking forgives both of them. It was really touching, really great stuff. "Sometimes what we need is more important than what we deserve," indeed.

THE FINAL BATTLE

You know what? I don't even have to go through the final battles in any kind of detail. They literally cart the SPP in, Littlepip and all, to zap the Brood with lightning so the last fight can go down. The Legate tries to stop them from getting to the Eater. Lancer dies, which is a shock. Aries dies, which is not. Crumpets gets crumpled. Pythia is best filly. Blackjack wins, everyone else teleports back to base.

She goes up to stop the Eater, getting hit with a bunch of dream-state things trying to convince her she's succeeded in ways she could never imagine. The ways she gets out of each of them is pretty neat, even if they aren't all equally interesting. She almost stops the Eater before it literally rips her in half. Then she does the single most heroic, most badass thing you could ask for to take the last shield out so she gets a front-row seat to the interstellar beatdown of a lifetime.

Fade to black.

---

If there's one thing this story knows how to do… Okay, it's dramatic timing and tension. But if there are two things, the second would be dealing properly with heroes. Because, unless you're writing some kind of tragedy, the good guys are gonna win. You know they're gonna win. Sometimes, if you're cynical enough, entire scenes will pass you by because you know it's not going to matter; the heroes are gonna win.

So the questions you want your audience to be asking are not "Will they win?" but "How will they win?" and, more importantly, "What will they lose along the way?"

Her body. Her home. Her identity. Her lovers. Her friends. Cognitum says that victory comes with a price, and those are the price for Blackjack's victory. What will they lose indeed. I just wish it hadn't taken so goddamn long to get there, y'know? Time for some funny stuff.

okay, so, I've had it happen before where I have the same verbal reaction as a character at the same time they do, but this is the first time it's happened with a character I was voicing XD "Wow" indeed!

Rampage, stop being racist

so don't eat the moon or you'll go crazy, all right

genetic death is all that batponies deserve :V

"It's amazing how a burst of anger can give you the telekinetic strength to lift a bat pony and toss it down a hallway like a paper airplane"

"then she exploded" that's an odd way to attack someone

they're fucking teleporting in over the spaceport so they can parachute in? XD Project Horizons, brought to you by Michael Bay!

#notallstars

Dear Princess Celestia, today I learned stars are dicks

she got a 'mazel tov' for becoming an alicorn XD

so the moon is just made out of plot convenience dust, okay >.>

#notallstarmetal

"I'll personally get a dead star to piss on your wedding day" oh my god Pythia is the best

"There might be more ass in there than I can kick personally" that's the best thing she's ever said
"Fuck one-way trips. Life's a one-way trip. Your face is a one-way trip!" oh my god

Oh yeah, and if by some chance horizon read down this far, I want to know what he thinks about this comment. :V

Book Score: 3.5/5
Overall Score: 3.9/5

Bloated, but epic.

BUT WAIT

WE ARE NOT YET DONE

There is one more chapter to cover: the Epilogue, which has a lot going on in it that I want to unpack, and also I think 27 pages of review is plenty for this time around.

BUT ALSO

If you've read down this far, thank you! :D If you remember back in part 2, I asked folks to ask me questions (or, really, bring up issues) to talk about in the review. Well, I want you to do it again. Anything you think I skipped giving my opinion on? Anything you'd like more analysis of? Literally anything Project Horizons related, please ask it in the comments, and I will answer everything I can in a few days' time! UNTIL THEN

Comments

[PresentPerfect]

And that is around 15,000 words, 27 pages, took me about 7 hours to write, with breaks. >.> I don't get paid enough for this shit.

[PaulAsaran]

Man, I wish I had more time on my hands today to not skim this massive thing, but I've already read over 60,000 horse words today and think I've gone well above my quota. Still, congrats on getting through it all! From the general look of things and the score you gave, it seems our overall views regarding the story are roughly the same: epic, but epic doesn't mean perfect.

[PresentPerfect]

4596922
Part of the reason I'm doing one more blog is that that's also not my final score. >.>

Also, I mathed it wrong. :|

[Jake The Army Guy]

Meh, I'll stick with the original Fo:E. What you described—bloated, but epic—perfectly sums up the original. WHy read double the word count of the same thing? Based on what I've seen and heard, I would highly dislike Blackjack, to the point where I want her to lose/die. Fo:E had an adorable protagonist, whom I rooted for the entire time... except for the ending, in which she was kinda stupid.

So... yeah, thanks for reading it so I don't have to.

[Chris]

These are fun. Powering through the whole thing in three weeks last year was a ride, lemme tell you; your "don't try to bull-rush 1.6 million words head-on" plan is probably the smarter one.

You are, however, wrong about the cosplayers. They're the epitome of something that sounds dumb in summary form, but are both hilarious and a surprisingly insidious threat to Blackjack's psyche at the same time. And really, that's PH in a nutshell.

As for the thing about "you're killing them!" and you hating it... yeah, it's pretty cliche, but the thing is, the reader isn't supposed to think that the hero is actually at fault. Even the hero usually isn't, exactly. But the villain's point in these kinds of scenes is that 1) if you don't do what I say, these people are 100% totes dead, 2) if you do do what I say, there's at least a chance that I'll keep my word and spare them, and 3) all heros have guilt complexes, and now I'm going to ruthlessly exploit yours. I'm with you though, it's not my favorite trope.

I had trouble with some of the ending, because I legit couldn't tell when somepony dying was a big deal and when it was just an inconvenience. Like, I didn't get too worked up about Glory dying because it seemed like a classic "she's still alive!" setup, and it was... and then when she died again, I was still "...I don't know if I'm supposed to think this is for real or not," and I guess you're supposed to believe that this was her *actually* dying, but c'mon, how am I supposed to assume that when there have been, like, fifty different "you thought they were dead, BUT"s so far?

There are probably some other things I was gonna say, but I forgot them :B Nice reactions, they kept me entertained, on to the epilogue!

[PresentPerfect]

4596997
Blackjack is totes adorbs, what are you say. :V She and Littlepip are adorblest pones.

[Super Trampoline]

You're gonna do this whole thing with Austraeoh next, right? :D

[iisaw]

I am amazed by your... stamina, I guess. I love reading your reviews of PH, particularly because I don't think I'm ever going to read it unless I become bedridden for a couple of years. I can see why it's popular, and through these reviews I can enjoy the story without being bothered by the excessive gore or dis-likability of BJ, which I gather from most reviews would be a deal-breaker for me.

[Icy Shake]

Congratulations on making it all the way to the end! Or almost, anyway. :D

Weirdly, she doesn't know why she's so upset, which seemed odd to me since, y'know, she's carrying his child by that point, you'd think maybe there was something between them. Even one-sided.

I believe what happened here is that she'd already done the transfer of the baby to Marigold, and removed her memories of her and Macintosh being together, a la what Jetstream did of her memories of her time with Stonewing, or Rampage with her childhood. Not remembering sucks.

You know who else is one of the best characters in this story? Triage.

Astrobrony was also great as her voice actress.

Crumpets is trying to convince Psalm to get with Stronghoof and it is highly intimated that that's what Crumpets wants for herself.

This thing you're referring to here, it led to/was preceded by one of the best announcements in the history of announcements:

Retcon notification:
We have modified Chapter 57; Crumpets is no longer a lesbian. If you see anything in the story still indicating that Crumpets is a lesbian, please inform us. Thank you, and we apology for any inconvenience this may cause.

(Soon clarified as not exclusively gay.)

4597045
With you on both cosplayers and the "but you're killing them" thing. The latter is super frustrating because obvious BS, and half the time it comes up I can't help but just think that the villain is trying to play to exploit

[PresentPerfect]

4597139
you're funny

you are a funny man

4597209

I believe what happened here is that she'd already done the transfer of the baby to Marigold, and removed her memories of her and Macintosh being together, a la what Jetstream did of her memories of her time with Stonewing, or Rampage with her childhood. Not remembering sucks.

Oh shit. I tend to forget that memory orbs are memory removal. Or sometimes, at least.

This thing you're referring to here, it led to/was preceded by one of the best announcements in the history of announcements:

That's amazing. XD

[Fuzzyfurvert]

I made it to the The Brood War part of blog and just gave up. But now that you've finished with this, I never have to try and read it!

Way to be a bro, PP.

I mean, I like Fallout...but I don't like Fallout enough for this.

[djthomp]

The reading PH vicariously through PP's reviews plan is still working great. And man, so many deaths.

[Soge]

Man, it has been a while since I read the ending of PH, but just reading your retelling of the deaths left me misty eyed. Specially P-21 and Glory's. I had to take a break from reading at both those points.

By the way, and I know this is insane because it is just so long, but it would be really interesting to see your take on Fallout Equestria after having read Project Horizons.

[Fallen Knight]

Man remmeber back when i read ph, got to a point where it got so depresing that i just gave up, heck think the author just went and put their depression into the story itself.

At least i know thaz p-jack happened and that boo is best pony ( something i have been saying since she was put into the story)

[PresentPerfect]

4597456
Here it is, though to get the full experience, you need to start here and maybe budget an hour or so. >.>

[RTStephens]

Just wanted to drop a line and say congrats on getting through all this! It's quite the project (heh).

[Chris]

4597526

I refuse to read any side stories. I double-refuse to read any side stories that are longer than FoE itself

[PresentPerfect]

4597616
You cheeky bastard. >:V

[Salen]

You know, I don't know what to say about the ending, or the epilogue that is coming.

Everything kept getting bigger and bigger and I should have realized that it's weird when you get so large that you feel like the plot is just sort of trying to keep itself from exploding. And then... you get to the end and it's just.... I don't know. The epilogue was just so... Oh, I'm so f'n conflicted by it.

Do I like it because it wraps a bow around the story, or do I loathe it because I sort of wish I didn't know about it and it's sort of silly and sort of like "WTF?!" and I'm just sitting here thinking maybe a better ending would be to leave the whole last half of the epilogue jettisoned. I don't know. I'm not the pony to ask if it's better if it happened or not. Part of it just digs at the corners of my mind though. Sort of like the endings to The Lord of the Rings movie, with like 5 scenes and then you finally get to the final, final ending, with going to the West with the Elves... And it's just like... I don't know, I'm rambling.

The last book is super f'n emotional though. So many deaths. Such sad. Much not-wow. 4/5, would read (but maybe not again because I got other stuff to read... like all of the LotR books).

This comment brought to you by the Letter Muffin, and the Number C.

[Sypher]

Congrats on finishing this monster of a story, PP. Book 5 was unfortunately my least favorite book, so I thank you for doing a great job of both reviewing and summarizing it so I don't have to read 300k words to remember it again!

[Icy Shake]

As far as questions to cover in the last one goes:
Shipping! :D
What do you think were good ships, bad ships, and what ships that never happened would you have wanted to? Main or side characters; crackshipping both acceptable and encouraged. :V

ETA: 4597526
Related question to (or maybe the same as) 4597456: Has reading Project Horizons changed how you look at Fallout Equestria? Are there things about FoE you like better, worse, or which you just plain see differently now compared to before reading PH?

[Wanderer D]

4596997 if there was a FOE pony I would get a tattoo of, it's Blackjack.

[iisaw]

You really should have published these reviews/recaps under an alt account with the user name Cliff Notes.

[cleverpun]

I have a question that is more about fanfiction in general, but this fic is a good example of what I'm talking about.

I often avoid long fanfiction, for various reasons. One of the main reasons, however, is because always trust amateur authors to follow through on ideas, to plan long-term and execute ideas well.

When dealing with stories that have such huge word counts, what would you say is a reasonable timeframe to make judgements about a story's quality? Do longer fanfictions, in your experience, tend to be more disappointing or less so than other lengths? Is this something that is too subjective to even be quantified, to even be worth discussing?

What are the justifications for the word count this high? Is it in actual service to the story, or is it more of a lack of restraint? Is it because the plot actually has a reason to be that long, or is it just because people like having content to consume, and the author kept writing?

Obviously, since you called it bloated, I can guess at some of your answers. But I think this is a topic that is worth discussing more, and since this is one of the longest stories on the site, it is definitely a part of that discussion.

[Double R Forrest]

Reading your comments/review on one of my most favorite stories was both highly entertaining and intriguing, with several points that I agreed or disagreed with. As for questions for the Final Review, here's some for ya:

1. Since PH reads like a "comic book" as you say and not like a typical Fallout (Equestria) story, does that mean that PH shouldn't be categorized in the same group of stories in the FOE genre or does it even matter? (some people say it does)
1.5. On that note, does the increasing "comic book"-ness and anime/JRPG feel combining with the FOE universe bother you at all or no?
2. Why do you think that PH has gained so much attention within the FOE universe, and even in the FimFic universe, compared to other FOE side stories?
3. Overall, what are the strongest and the weakest points/qualities of this story?
4. Do you ever plan on writing about one of the story hooks in the epilogue (including the LP x BJ ship that you had expressed interest in before)? (that would be awesome btw)
5. How did PH impact you (or in simpler terms, how did you like it) compared to the original? (I've read your review of the original so I know you feel about that one)
6. If you could, how would you personally make this story less bloated?
7. In your opinion, what makes Blackjack a memorable/likeable character?

Thank you and I hope you enjoyed the ride as much as I did.
PS: Is this the longest review you've ever made or have there been other ridiculously long stories that you've tackled?

[horizon]

Oh yeah, and if by some chance horizon read down this far, I want to know what he thinks about this comment. :V

Frankly I'm tickled by the idea that Project: Horizons might be Versebreakers-compatible. (I almost said "a Versebreakers fanfic," but as noted, there's some convergent evolution going on here and I can't claim any sort of moral ownership.)

I'm sort of tempted to add PH to the Versebreakers group folders, if only because the actual Versebreakers canon would then be about 1% of the group's content by wordcount.

[MrNumbers]

4599020

It's about how well a story can reasonably maintain escalation while staying plausible or reasonable and not leaning too heavily against suspension of disbelief.

A longer story has a lot more room for that natural escalation and can breathe a lot more; a lot more setups, a lot more payoffs, a lot more interwoven threads, a lot more room for side plots. Because of this, you can have a story become epic with each step between normal and surreal feeling like a natural, logical progression. Thus, a longer story has a lot more potential than a shorter one.

What are the justifications for the word count this high? Is it in actual service to the story, or is it more of a lack of restraint? Is it because the plot actually has a reason to be that long, or is it just because people like having content to consume, and the author kept writing?

For the first two thirds of this story, I'd say, it was very justified; that slow and constant escalation would have felt too rushed otherwise, and it made for an immensity of immersion that you just can't replicate otherwise.

However, after a certain point there's no more room to escalate to, reasonably. In that case you get either stagnation -- stakes no longer feel meaningful, tension disappears completely, your epic action is now a slice of life desperately treading water -- or you get what happens with Project Horizon, where suddenly to even feel like the story is going anywhere you have a clone fighting her former body inhabited by a brainscan of Luna that's also Nightmare Moon that has her dead gay lovers' unborn child in it, on the moon.

Thus, a story should be as long as its core premise can sustain it, and no further.

[Icy Shake]

4600079
Well, if nothing else it sounds like the in the comment probably wasn't necessary.
Certainly glad you don't feel the opposite way.

[horizon]

4600184
Nah, if anything, I'm flattered that I even came up. I mean, how could I not be chuffed that I'm "a classic of the genre"?

[48625]

Metal Sauron was my first thought too