Present Perfect vs. Project Horizons, the Finale · 8:02pm Jul 13th, 2017
BOOK 1: 1-16 || BOOK 2: 17-33 || BOOK 3: 34-49 || BOOK 4: 50-62 || BOOK 5: 63-77 || EPILOGUE
Like I said last time, I've left the PH epilogue for last because A) it's got a lot of fun stuff to talk about, B) part 5's review was getting too long, C) this is my blog and I don't have to be bound by the rules of math, and D) I should probably do some kind of analysis, right?
So this will be quick and dirty, from epilogue summary and maybe some analysis to the Q&A section. Thanks for sending me your questions! Here we go.
THE EPILOGUE
Like I said last time, Fallout: Equestria is canon to its own universe, published as the memoirs of Littlepip while she's stuck in the Single Pegasus Project, controlling the weather forever and ever. So it's perhaps no surprise that the epilogue of Project Horizons takes a similar tack, presenting us with the legend of Blackjack as told by some travelling (actually I'm not sure what they are), 200 years after the events thereof.
Now, of course, I don't take this at face value. One and three-quarter million words of deep character drama and epic combat sequences is not the kind of story you tell around a campfire. Even if PH was related over the course of several nights as these characters travel, it makes sense to consider the text of Project Horizons as the dramatized version. It's like those movies where a narrator starts out with "Let me tell you about" and then we get to watch your standard summer blockbuster. That narrator isn't explaining every line of dialogue, every action sequence, setting the scene with camera angles. It's the cool, shiny story behind the tale that's actually being told, and the same goes for the epilogue.
Pleasantly, it really is a legend. Numerous voices of dissent pop up, discounting the idea that Security or her friends ever real. It lends a lot of verisimilitude to the whole thing.
And then we start learning about the world, and it pains me that there aren't any stories set in it. (Yet!) Two centuries on from the Wasteland, things seem to be much more stable, if falling apart. The SPP Towers, for instance, have crumbled, but the pegasi have control of the skies again. Good, right? They have steam engines, but no way to machine metal, so what guns are left are antiques and generally in poor repair. Fighters carry swords more often than not. The characters bicker about politics, with the main factions being the Lunar Commonwealth and the NCR. (For those unaware, the NCR is an actual faction from the video games, the New California Republic; though it's never named here, I expect the C stands for Canterlot, maybe Celestial.)
This is really fuckin' cool. Like I said, I want to find out more about this setting and read and/or write stories in it!
In between all this brand-new world-building, we get some scenes of things that happen actually right after that final battle with the Eater. First, and perhaps most important, we see Scotch Tape and Pythia palling around with Majina in chapel, helping her get her mother's old stuff together. I say important because this is the lead-in to the official sequel, Fallout Equestria: Homelands. I'm very much looking forward to that, because it stars three of my favorite characters (Precious also comes along), and I am hoping for some more excellent zebra-based world-building and romantic entanglements. :V
Next, we find out what's come of Princess Grace. (Is she Queen now? I didn't actually catch that.) She's made up with her younger sister, who seems to be suffering brain damage. More importantly, she's raising Blackjack's twins as her own. I was rather surprised by the decision not to tell them who their real parents were, but it leads to an interesting detail later on.
There's an unfortunately brief scene that tells us the ultimate fate of Dr. Morningstar: still a mare, fused with a Flux tree, pumping out pony-shaped horrors until a team lead by Candlewick can destroy her.
And I had to wonder about that. I mean, for starters, it's a lot to take in for two lines of narration. The last we see of Morningstar, he/she is clutching a piece of one of the Flux trees; it's quite a leap from there to "fused with one". And I had to wonder if Morningstar really deserved that fate. I mean, when we meet him, he's kind of dismissive of everyone else's suggestions. Whether you read that as arrogance or being scatter-brained is likely up to the reader's own prejudices. Then he gets killing joked into a mare, and becomes a running gag for the next few scenes he shows up in. Yet, despite the fact they cured Glory of being Rainbow Dash eventually, he never goes back to being a stallion? What's with that?
And it's not like Morningstar is a major character. Maybe this is a case of "need to show not everyone gets a happy ending, so blow a bad ending on someone who isn't that important". But I mean, he was advocating for saving Morning Glory during the war; it was a fairly selfish motivation, and Triage was right for refusing him, but his heart was still in the right place. And this is what happens to him in the end? Unfortunately, there's just not enough to that scene for it to have more context. But look how much I just wrote about two lines. <.<
The final scene is perhaps the 'biggest', featuring Whisper going to visit Velvet Remedy and Calamity in Ponyville.
Okay, I'm going to be way honest: I do not like Whisper/Psychoshy/Fluttershy. Goldenblood is this big, important, gets-shoved-into-every-scene kind of character, and of course he got shipped with Best Pony. When she was introduced, she was a decent antagonist and a bad joke. When she showed up after that I never failed to roll my eyes. As a protagonist, she was oddly endearing (remember "SECURTY"), but only in small doses. I was quite happy when she flew off with Stygius; her becoming queen of the batponies was hilarious, because I hate batponies. :V It's all she deserved.
Yet, after Blackjack shows up at the Lunar Palace, suddenly Whisper becomes this central figure in the events of book 5. Like, she not only turns the tide against the Brood by broadcasting her singing across the Wasteland, she's instrumental in defeating the Legate not once, but twice. (Admittedly, given the choice of companions, I'd definitely have taken her for that last fight, too.) The way Pythia puts it, Whisper is all but prophesied to defeat him. And then we get to this scene and find out she's become the Element of fucking Magic, and I just can't. I'm sorry, it's stupid, and there's a whole story's worth of justification for it that gets glossed over in some dialogue.
A character like Goldenblood is your obvious author's darling. Whether or not he was planned that way, he becomes more and more important to the story because the author really likes him. We've all seen this, and you can track GB's importance from background, historical machinator through to him still being alive, culminating in that scene where he witnesses literally every detail of Canterlot's fall. And if we're being honest here, and I am, that's fine. Everyone's got that one character who suddenly takes over a story. We've got our darlings to murder.
But two characters like that, even in the same story, is one too many, if you ask me. And Whisper being Goldenblood's daughter only makes her worse. I don't like her, I never did, I wish she either hadn't been around or had died with Sanguine.
That said, she also gets the award for Most Improved, and it's thanks to this final scene. Because really, what character in this story changes so much? Deus maybe, but that's more the reader finding out his tragic backstory over the course of three or so books. Whisper starts out as a rude and crude dude, is flung into helping Blackjack through no desire of her own, and starts thinking with her dick once Stygius shows up. Then she gets a chance to help stop the end of the world and throws herself at it, in the process losing the pony she loves but finding a place she belongs. Also, she gets her wings sliced off. And by the end of the story, she's still pretty damned crude (I have to admit, I did enjoy how everything in the final couple of battles was "your face"), but she's become a mother. She feels like a whole person. Her feelings matter.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that her finally getting to meet her mother (to those who haven't read FoE, Fluttershy survives the Wasteland by having been turned into a tree for 200 years, because of course she did, and Littlepip turns her back) was a really emotional, satsifying scene for a character I never approved of, and I don't know how to feel about that.
Oh yeah, and there's a scene where Sweetie Bot breaks into Blackjack's tomb and steals her Pipbuck, but I did not understand the significance of it, which is likely why I forgot about it. c.c
Anyway, most or all of these scenes have a shared element: a "mysterious white mare" looking on from the background. No points for guessing who that is, and even fewer for guessing the identity of the cloaked unicorn who's been listening to the story this whole time.
Yes, Blackjack is still alive, 200 years later, by virtue of having been transferred back to her Blank body. How? Who cares. And what's she doing? Visiting Littlepip, of course, who's also still alive, because living for two centuries is the easiest thing in the world. Also, Boo is Mare-Do-Well. Not just Mare-Do-Well, but that's all I'm going to mention because I don't know how to feel about the rest.
Most importantly, it's revealed that Blackjack has been fulfilling a promise to Homage to take care of Littlepip after her death — and I do believe this is a quote — physically, mentally, and sexually. Yes, just like Adventure Time, Project Horizons writes its own fanfiction so I don't have to! :V I was very pleased by this outcome, even if it's probably no better a relationship than either one of them has been in.
BJ needs LP's help this to get to the moon. Yes, it's time to fulfill a 200 year old promise, and the reason it's taken her so long is, well, see above about old stuff being really fragile. The final sequence of Project Horizons is a trip to the moon to retrieve Rampage, and while I won't go into the details, suffice to say she gets a surprisingly happy ending. I was quite pleased with where this ends up; the epilogue really is a great way to finish everything off.
Well'p. Let's take some questions from the audience. :B
Q & A
Super Trampoline asked:
You're gonna do this whole thing with Austraeoh next, right? :D
Fuck you, Super Trampoline. :D
(No but seriously, I do need to read that.)
Icy Shake asked:
Has reading Project Horizons changed how you look at Fallout Equestria?
Yes. Specifically, I am going to have a really hard time from now on remembering what's not canon to the original story when reading sidefics. In fact, Project Horizons may very well have ruined me on FoE sidefics. :C
Are there things about FoE you like better, worse, or which you just plain see differently now compared to before reading PH?
PH did a very good job of putting more consideration into everything FoE did. I mean, I really just feel like my criticisms of the original are more justified now than ever before. Thinking of things like how characters like Celestia, Luna and Twilight would have acted and felt during the War, I'm just sort of disappointed in Kkat for not putting in more effort.
cleverpun asked:
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?
Part of me says "one chapter". I mean, I'm a busy guy, I don't want to have to read 20k words to decide if the next 180k are worth it. But you did say "reasonable", and I'd say "about 10%". A first chapter should set expectations, but when dealing with a long fic, chances are the author is growing and improving as they write it. I mean, you've doubtless seen stories on Fimfiction where the description proclaims "Early chapters under heavy rewrite!" So if you want to give the author benefit of the doubt, you really do need to ride that hard. Thankfully, PH's first chapter is pretty damned good.
Do longer fanfictions, in your experience, tend to be more disappointing or less so than other lengths?
Fanfiction can be satisfying at any length. All I can really say is that, if it's bad, I'll likely know early enough that I won't have lost too much reading the first couple chapters. If it's good though, oh man, a good longfic can be so phenomenally satisfying in ways one-shots never can be.
Is this something that is too subjective to even be quantified, to even be worth discussing?
Never! That's what we're here for. :V
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?
This high? There really isn't one. If you can't wrap your story up in under 200k, something's wrong. Granted, in FoE's case, the 'wrong' was a lot of side quests that were very transparently so. Sometimes they would serve the purpose of world-building, but often they just felt like faffing around and I wanted to get back to the real plot, already.
PH at the very least has the decency for its diversions to be interesting. Rare are the scenes that feel long. (And they tend to come in greater density in book 5.) Whether world-building, justifying character actions, or just letting us ride along with the characters we've grown to know, all those words are generally worth reading.
But they definitely didn't have to be there. I think there's another question about this later, so I'll go into it in more depth then. But speaking generally, stories get over 100k because the author can't or won't (in the case of Patreon-funded stories) stop writing. They usually lack a defined structure ahead of time (not something I can accuse either FoE or PH of), and they always come off as unfocused for it. Experienced readers can see the desperation of the author going, "Shit, what do I do now?" coming in through the cracks.
Double R Forrest asked:
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)
Nah. I mean, it's still a post-apocalypse comic book that's directly — almost too directly — tied into the canon of Fallout: Equestria. It's just an argument of genre, really, and there are FoE romance and FoE comedies, and I know the latter sometimes get flak, but if they're based off the original? They belong.
On that note, does the increasing "comic book"-ness and anime/JRPG feel combining with the FOE universe bother you at all or no?
Nope! I rather enjoyed that aspect!
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?
I'll preface this by saying that I've only recently gotte involved in the FoE community, and a very small portion of it, at that. I don't really have any sense of what the community does or doesn't like or do on a general basis.
But if I were to speculate, I'd probably point a finger at its length. I mean, Fallout: Equestria is a pretty monstrous fic. Over 600k words? That's a lot! Reading it is like a rite of passage. And then you get Project Horizons, and it's three times as long! That means it's three times the rite of passage! :V It's a mountain to conquer, is what I'm saying, at the very least.
I wouldn't be surprised if the genre had something to do with it. I mean, PH is way more over the top and dramatic than FoE ever was, and that means it's easier to mock. Something I've just recently become acquainted with is explaining PH to people in chatrooms: you type out a summary of the major points of an event, and it sounds stupid. But in context? It was way cool, man! That kind of attention, coupled with the length, makes it a talking point, something worth having an opinion about whether or not you yourself have actually read it.
Overall, what are the strongest and the weakest points/qualities of this story?
Geez, ask easy questions, why don't you. D:
If I had to just boil it down to one point, I would say the writing is the strongest quality. Somber is a good writer — as I always say, if you don't believe me, read Simply Rarity — and did a great job drawing me into the setting, story and characters. As the story progresses, he takes more opportunities to story-tell in novel ways, everything from the chapter in Happyhorn to the sequences of Blackjack watching the war via the Perceptitron while on the rocket.
The worst quality then would be the various references. Now, this is no worse than anything FoE does; the difference is, they're much more dilute in PH because word count. And while some work in context — Paladin Stronghoof — the problem with references in your fanfic is that they draw the reader out of the story. When I should be going, "Oh, wow, who is this character and what will they do next?", fully invested in the narrative, I'm instead going, "Oh, gee, that's a direct rip-off of X." For just one example, that sword-wielding mare who shows up in the same fight as Bastard. I don't know if she's a direct reference to anything — in some ways, not a bad thing — but by that point in the story, I'm well aware that Somber really likes throwing anime references into PH, and everything about her screams "reference to something". So instead of following the action, I'm wracking my brain to see if I can figure out who the fuck she's supposed to be, and that detracts from the experience.
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)
Thank you. :D
I do not have any plans for such at the moment. I no longer feel a need to write BJ x LP, thanks to the epilogue. (I can't remember what I was going to write about anyway. Actually, wait, that's a lie, it's called A Mare Worth Whining For, I have a HUGE document detailing my terrible idea, and I even got Pacce's permission to use the title! Now I'm conflicted, thanks!) I definitely would like to write stuff based on the epilogue's post-Wasteland setting, but that will almost assuredly never happen.
He said.
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)
How do I like it compared to the original? Much more. How did it impact? Honestly about the same. I mean, PH took a significantly higher investment of time to read, obviously, but both have protagonists I hate to love, both tell stories I got really invested in, both found ways to disappoint me. :V
If you could, how would you personally make this story less bloated?
Oh geez.
So like I said before, the side quests and whatnot of PH are, more often than not, interesting. If you excise just about anything, you're going to be losing something. But that said, I think there are things that could be excised, I'm just not sure what.
There are definitely a lot of plot points that amount to 'character doing the same thing again'. Sometimes, this can be used to reinforce "character is not learning from their mistakes", but a lot of times, it just adds to the angst fuel. Say something like Blackjack attacking Boing. It gives us the Happyhorn chapter, which is my absolute favorite, but is it crucial to a story where Blackjack has already killed 40 foals and feels terrible about it every waking minute of her life?
You could do things like cut down the number of souls in Rampage. I don't recall Razorwire or the cop doing anything in particular. I can't even remember the latter's name! You could definitely cut out a lot of extra space by not being so dead-set on redeeming villains. Characters like Sanguine and Horse didn't need to be redeemed, could have been allowed to just die (or in the latter's case, come back as a villainous Crusader mainframe or something), the story could have been written around their absence.
And like I said, there are a lot of scenes, especially toward the end, that feel stretched out, that could have been cut down. "After going to Miramare and getting Big Macintosh's old IF-88, we found Twist's office and some Harbingers." And then you're considerably further into starting that scene, without losing anything important. The scenes that take place on the rocket could have been cut down significantly; no reason why Blackjack can't just get an update from Storm Chaser by the time she's back on the ground.
As many words as there are in this story, there are about that many ways to cut them down. And I think you could easily lose a good 10% of them with no trouble, for starters.
In your opinion, what makes Blackjack a memorable/likeable character?
Her butt This is a tough one. I think it's how real she is, and this is likely why I like Littlepip as well. I think I could identify with Blackjack better, though.
I mean, I've praised Somber already for his depictions of mental illness in Project Horizons. Though it does get a little tedious from time to time, Blackjack's depression, codependency, self-doubts, occasional bouts of horniness… It's all things real people experience on a daily basis, and it's presented in such an up-front and candid style that it's hard not to go, "Yeah, I've been there," even if only once in a while.
Is this the longest review you've ever made or have there been other ridiculously long stories that you've tackled?
Nope, this is definitely the longest. I'm not sure how long the full "PP v FoE" live-blog series actually is, but I'm betting the six PH reviews total more words. If nothing else, they're probably about the same length.
And that, I think, is that! Thank you all very much for following me through this… I hate to call it an ordeal, I certainly did enjoy more of PH than I didn't, but there you go. Until next time.
FINAL SCORE: 5/5
A flawed epic that nevertheless delivers far more of what I wanted to see from Fallout: Equestria.
And "next time" is gonna be a while, I've got a couple large audiobooks lined up right now for some fucking reason. :|
This means you can finally read my own FOE fic ;)
Okay, I can finally say that this is the saddest and most depressing FoE story ever.
It's a huge tome full of the most unlucky, yet heroic, pony EVER!
I can't describe how depressed I was after I FINALLY finished the entire story after a month of putting my life on hold, only to see the end end how it ended!
Even the final chapter was more telling to the failing of Blackjack's life outside the stable.
Every event I the story makes me cringe at the true horror the Equestrian Wasteland potentially has to offer to those who want to make a change to the status quo.
I don't recommend the story to anyone under the reason that it isn't a 'good'
Well written, hell yes.
World building and immersion were on point.
But it's not a kind to the hero story.
It takes real life in the worst case and adds pain and losses that dozens feel into the life of one pony that does her best despite everything and everypony fighting against her.
>Last blog on Project Horizons
>1,499th blog
Somehow, I don't think I'll be producing a multi-million-word saga on Project Horizons in the near future. Or the far future. Or any alternate realities.
Just a small note: the NCR is indeed the New Canterlot Republic and was mentioned in the original as the town that Shattered Hoof turned into.
It's interesting reading your comparisons between FoE and PH, even if I mostly don't agree with them.
I also think it's worth pointing out that Somber was a fairly popular author even before he started Project Horizons.
Well, damn.
Up until this point I was going to let your blogs be my way to enjoy PH without having to read it. Now... I'm not so sure. I guess I will give it a couple of chapters. Like I need another longfic to soak up my time!
But, you're right; a good longfic is a thing of wonder. I was doubtful of both Silver Glow's Journal and Austraeoh too, but ended up really enjoying them both. So... who knows?
All reasonable points. Like you said, a lot of stories of this length reach that length because the authors don't know where they are going. But this is not a given, and it is unfair to assume that just because a story is so long.
Here's a followup question. You said one of the story's main areas of bloat was the 'sidequests'. You also mentioned that the story has a habit of mimicking anime and video game tropes to its detriment. In video games, the sidequests are optional. If the player feels they are bloating the experience, or wants to get on with the main quest, they can just ignore them. Obviously in prose, this is not an option.
Perhaps the mimicry could be taken one step further, and the sidequest chapters could be made into actual side stories. Lots of fanfics already do that, and it would be an interesting parallel with the mechanics of actual video games. Setting the sidequests as separate, self-contained stories would be more video-gamey, but that may not be a bad thing.
Would this be too much? Would it enhance the pacing or damage it? Would writing around this not be the worth the effort, or would it give readers more and better options in how they digest the story?
Do you think it would harm the story any if we swapped out Blackjack and inserted Hubert?
Awesome review series!
...Now do Murky Number Seven next.
4600657
You have one? <.<
4600665
What will the next be? I'm all a-twitter.
4600708
I hadn't read anything of his until like, the year I started PH, so. XD
4600720
It depends on the sidequest.
The sidequestiest one I can think of is Blackjack taking off from the Society to go clean out the plantations Zodiac (???) asked her to. She fails. It's never spoken of again. That could definitely have stood as a separate fic, a "here's what happened since nothing in here really impacts the story".
Or something like the Choir. Like, that image is so powerful, I cannot remember what the hell she and Rampage were doing down there. Totally worth reading because it's great body horror hidden in the middle of this story. Which admittedly means the tone is different. It comes up a few times, she compares things to it, but again, it otherwise doesn't have much impact on the story as a whole. And maybe having her refer to it -- I could see the segment being "We went down in the tunnels and I do not want to think of what I saw there ever again" -- would drum up interest in people going to check out the sidefic. But, yeah. :B
4600742
I still have my hopes set on the Pink Eyes audiobook. :B I've wanted to read that for a while now. But not anytime soon.
4600765
Yes I do. It's a short with an oc called Gestalt Trace. We should however, find the time to talk about Horizons some time with Somber
I think another point about why PH made such a big splash was the environment at the time it started. It was the first FoE recursive fanfic, or at least the first to get big/long, and definitely the first to be frontpaged at EQD (apart from I guess "A Mare Worth Fighting For," kinda, it got the 6-star rating (and the fact that it already had a bunch of people who'd been reading it before it was frontpaged after it was already over 50k long may have helped with getting the peak 4.5/5 rating on 100? or more votes), Somber's a good writer who'd already done some popular things in ponyfic, the S1/S2 gap and early S2 was a time when a lot of things in the fandom were being established and growing...
4600657
You mean besides Sweetie Chronicles? ;D
4600838 Yep!
I wish I had the time to read this one. I've read FoE, but I was on extended medical leave and had the time. I feel like it would take me a year to tackle this with my current schedule.
4600875
Took me two! No rush. :B
4600765
Thanks so much for the high praise. I really am thankful for the detail and hard work you put into this review.
Psychoshy and Sweetiebot... see... my editor Swicked really likes Psychoshy and Bro really liked Sweetiebot, and both of them really wanted them to have a bigger end than I planned. Swicked argued that Psychoshy should be magic and ultimately I just gave in. Sometimes you have to throw your editors a bone after they donate 4 years of work to your project.
Still, I'm glad that you enjoyed the read and I hope that Homelands (when you get around to it) is just as entertaining.
4600881
What was the deal with Sweetie at the end, though? Like, why'd she steal the Pipbuck? O.o (I'd ask how she got back to being functional, but that's not really important.)
--
Oh wow, I wasn't expecting you to give a perfect rating for something you called good but flawed! Thanks a bunch for answering my questions by the way!
4600917
Bro was think of writing a story with Sweetie Belle where residue of cognitum made her obsessed with EC-1101. She'd eventually seek out where EC-1101 was programmed to try and make another control megaspell while wrestling with the contamination of Cognitum, Horse, and a few others that Horse had 'wiped' from her databanks.
This was a fun series of blog posts to follow along with.
4600945
Thinking about it for two seconds, my original idea could be slotted in right when Homage dies. It'll be stupid, but then, what isn't? :V
4600985
Might've been neat. I take it we won't be getting that, however. :B
I don't think I have anything to say that hasn't been said better by someone else.
The epilogue has good points, it has bad points, and overall I'm not sure I could suggest a way to make it better. Most likely anything I'd suggest would just be worst.
Blanks not aging just seems weird though. I can understand them changing depending on what soul got shoved into one, or why Flux didn't do jack to them, but the aging part... that's just one of things that made me scratch my head. At least with Alicorns, that has some canonical understanding to it.
But those are nitpicks, nothing more. Don't mind me.
4600663
It's not even luck. After a while it becomes obvious that the world doesn't have it out for Blackjack, the author does, and thus nothing can ever go right. It's like having Discord follow her around changing every situation for the worst for amusement.
It got old fast.
4601504
Discord did follow her, and even he made her life better...
💥
4600663
Horizons asks the question: what is the price for saving the world. The answer: ungodly, unimaginably high. Horrifically high. Impossibly high. And she still tries to pay it anyway, despite the toll it takes on her. Horizons is a deconstruction of the Christ story. She's born of the chosen bloodline, touched by higher powers, and is run through a gauntlet of trials. She loses everything, is betrayed by her friend at the end, only instead of ascending to heaven she is doomed to walk the earth for eons until the stars have their answer: are mortal souls ultimately good, or wicked? And in the end, she fails to save everyone. She can't just die for the world and make it all better. The price is higher than that, and she will pay it. No matter how much it hurts, she pays it. And she goes on paying it.
And in the end, when she's heading home, she states the simple truth: that for all the pain and misery, the world and the people in it are WORTH the price she pays.
I hope the story's a little more uplifting with that. If not, just conclude the author sucks.
4601184
I don't think so. We'd probably have to co-write it, and I'm busy on my own projects to do that.
4602160
Nowhere does that come through more clearly, I think, than in her refusal to follow Tom's plan to stop the Eater. :)
4602160
I won't say the author sucks by any means, or that your interpretation of the story is wrong.
My point is the author wrote a great story that has the protagonist have far too much loss for me too associate with.
With Little Pip, I could understand her struggles and trials through her adventure.
Her rage at the town, her adoration of Velvet, her struggle against a darkness that could be overcome, and the loss of what she cared about the most; a piece of herself.
Blackjack goes through tell a dozen times, literally, at least, loses everything and everyone, gains immorality so she has to watch almost everyone she knows die before she ages a minute, gets tortured, raped, has to kill her entire stable with chlorine gas, mutates, dies, mutates, cyborg, dies again change bodies, kill, lose all her friends and lovers, die again... And the whole way she, Security, becomes the most terrifying body in a place that can barely handle her apparent wrath at any and all wrongdoing.
She's essentially a hero that's sent through hell and comes out as a perceived Devil incarnate.
The story is masterful, but the main character was tortured far too much to be relatable, is my problem.
4602264
Psst. I'm pretty sure Somber's interpretation of the story is right, because Somber's the writer of the story. FYI. There might be OTHER, additional ways to interpret things. Works of fiction can have multiple meanings. That's what makes art, be it drawings or literature or film, great.
4602290
Well I stand by it.
I forgot the authors name but it's my feeling and I like the story, I just don't relate to the Blackjack and feel she has it too rough.
I'm nota religious person either, but I do understand the premise. Perhaps that's why I didn't relate to her losing everything and everypony for the greater good.
I don't feel everything had to die so suddenly to send a message, she could have outlived them or left them to their own fates, choosing to hide away in a blank body for all the years.
I know it's senseless and annoying for me to feel this way, I can't change the story or is final two chapters' outcomes.
I don't want to.
It's still a great story, start to finish. Feels everywhere and it wrapped up SO MANY QUESTIONS I had from the original.
Just the loss was too much, too fast, and to an extreme i can't relate to, as a reader..
The cost IS too high.
Saving the world shouldn't cost the lives of all you love just so you can live forever in torment.
That's not a riotous sacrifice, it's torture.
4602334
I just wanted to point out that the author has the right to basically think the story is about what they wrote it to be, nothing more. It just seemed... odd... with what you said is all, since Somber wrote it.
And yeah, Blackjack does seem to suffer... a lot. And frankly, I can understand how that can turn the story off for some. At times, it is very, very oppressive. So yeah. It's fine.
4602160
It's a relief to hear that from the author. I mean, in the last lines, when Littlepip asked Blackjack if did she ever regret of all she had sacrificed and Blackjack lies saying "Not a bit of it", I felt extremely sad, because I understood that as if Blackjack's feelings were: "I regret of everything I've given up. The price of saving the world is too painful to worth it. I wish I hadn't saved it". Hearing from you that Blackjack thinks the world and it's inhabitants are worth the price of saving them puts a smile on my face.
The only thing that still confuses me is: why does Blackjack have to live until the end of time? I remember that she promised Glory she wouldn't try to kill herself never again, but if the pain of living forever gets too high, I know that Blackjack knows that Glory would happily let her rest in peace (commit suicide, indeed) and reunite with her, P-21, her children and the rest of her friends and family. Maybe is there something I've misunderstood or forgotten?