The chronicles of Project Horizons : Chapter 2

Here comes the second one of these chronicles and I do have some things to say regarding this second chapter even if I'm not sure they'll be as positive as I would have wanted to say. Project Horizons seems to create some expectations out of me that I'm not sure it'll be able to capitalize on.

Let's go with the jumbled thoughts.

Without describing in too much details what happens, it is quite clear that the story beats of Project Horizons in those earlier chapters are quite shameless rip-offs of Fallout:Equestria. So our heroes, Blackjack and P-21, the fuckboi, went out of the Stable and as they ran away they are saved by... Watcher, who just so happened to be in the area. After helping to save them, he points them towards the west where they could find something interesting. People who read FO:E can see it : it's an exact copy, beat for beat of FO:E early scene in chapter 3. The comparison with FO:E of course don't stop with just the Watcher scene : we have a scene where Blackjack is scared of the sky (like LittlePip), a scene where Blackjack reads logs and cries for no real reason (like LittlePip), a scene where she destroys a raider camp soon after leaving the stable, etc.

Is it bad per se to copy so shamelessly the beats of the fanfiction this story is inspired of ? Well, yes obviously but for more reasons than "It's boring". First, it makes it so the story lacks a sense of identity and relies far too heavily on its big sister for now. This reliance implies, of course, that the same issue are repeated and more. Blackjack by looking like a LittlePip clone is starting to feel empty to me. It feels like a mere copycat and the few differences there are, are either grating (Blackjack's utter stupidity is dumbfounding) or simply inconsequential (when she kills raiders, Blackjack is more thrilled than virtuously wrathful like Pip.)

I really want to like Blackjack but the fact that she cannot even begin to grasp why he would try to kill her when he is obviously traumatized by something is beyond me. I know that Blackjack is supposed to not see anything wrong with him being a breeder and even find it quaint that he seems so angry about it but her obliviousness regarding all the signs regarding the source of his anger, frustration and fear makes her beyond stupid especially when the point being made is clear as crystal.

The fact that even when P-21 directly tells her that if he had a gun he would try to shoot her is something I don't understand that she can ignore. The guy even shoot her in the back but she thought it was an accident. How fucking oblivious can you get ? I mean, if the reason she finds it impossible to think that she could be betrayed (when the whole plot was kickstarted by the Overmare betraying everyone) seems odd to me. Is it that she doesn't even consider P-21 as a real equine being ? Treating him like a child ?

I don't think so because in the chapter she outrights ask him what the right thing to do is because... she trusts his judgement above hers ? I'm sorry but this scene is downright strange to me (aside from the graverobbing that I found distasteful and ridiculous.) Blackjack and P-21 don't have that kind of relationship yet. He is outright hostile to her, clearly unstable and the only reason she keeps him with her is that she is scared of being all alone by herself. Am I suppose to get that BlackJack relies on a male that are considered like animals by her Stable for moral advices ? (I'm not inventing the animal part : they don't have names but numbers, their whole life they are to be treated like walking fucksticks and they live in secluded quarters from the rest.)

As I said in my previous chronicle : special snowflake syndrome. Blackjack treats P-21 "humanely" when she shouldn't, especially since she doesn't even begin to understand why he would be so pissed about his condition as a breeder. And no, making Blackjack cries because she read seven paragraphs about a random who died and liked gardens isn't enough to make me sympathize with her.

Because, here's the catch : we still didn't have a scene to treat the importance of the first kill. An acquaintance of mine told me to wait a bit for that and so I will but I'll adress the issue here still. You can't make me sympathize for a character who read half a page about the life of someone she didn't even know or had a reason to care for and yet make her kill fifteen people with incredible ease aside from some time where she doesn't like doing it. I can accept it when characters have accepted that killing is a fact of life and as such have grown dull to it. Here it is not the case : it's been a day since she got out of the Stable for crying out loud !

The second issue that sticking so closely to the narrative structure, so to speak, of FO:E brings is that the fiction is now facing an even greater issue than FO:E. There is no goal, no plot. At least in FO:E, we had a plot up until chapter 7 or 8 with the rescue of Velvet Remedy but here ? Well, since they can't go back into the Stable (for a non-sensical reasons, if her mother is still alive and killed all the raiders, she just has to open the Stable door and closed it back and the raiders are shit out of luck since now, no one will fall for their trick another time and the door is nuke-proof.) they are now wandering the Wasteland, not unlike Pip...

Somber is playing really safe here. He is not inventing anything new for now story-wise aside from P-21's story and I have to say, he is the only thing that makes me a bit curious to continue. I mean, I already know that he lived like a walking fuckboi with no more rights than an animal but perhaps he can shed a new light on Stable 99 that isn't obvious yet ? I mean, if it's just killing the males when they're too old and worn, it'd be a bit underwhelming since there's this sense of mystery to it. Aside from that, P-21 has a lot of defining traits but so far, he does have a bit of a... how to say that : whiny deadweight trait to him. By that I mean that he constantly complains towards BJ, mostly because she's a passive Stable mare that essentially contributed to the abusive treatment of males, but he refuses to defend his or her life and she has to do all the work because he doesn't want to have a gun...

So on one side, there's an oblivious Duke Nukem that can't get her mind out of the gutter and on the other a whiny, somewhat determined deadweigth that wants to kill everyone, BJ included, if he was to have a gun. The former keeps the latter because she is afraid of being all alone in an unfamiliar place and the latter stays with the former because he'd die immediately if not. I don't mind dysfunctional relationships but for now Blackjack is empty as a character and P-21 has yet to do something cool other than save U-21's life.

I both like and dislike the attitude. One, he seems traumatized and that does affect his behavior... but two, it makes it harder and harder for me to understand why BJ keeps him. She's so afraid to be alone that she'd keep someone who hates her guts and shoot her in the back with her to save herself from being alone ? Well, she probably deserved to die. Wasn't she happy to go out in the previous chapter ? Didn't she initially ask to head out alone ? This piece of information seems to be a very contrived manner to keep them together.

As for the fight in Withers itself, I have no real thing to say about them. They are your standard fair of cool and badass and Blackjack does show a bit of resourcefulness in her way of fighting. I'm still not sure why she is so okay with transforming her enemy into mincemeat when the day before she hadn't killed anyone but I suppose that's the LittlePip syndrome settling in.

Closing thoughts : The story seem to be on a bad track but there are still some interest in the character of P-21 to see where this is going. Also, this story is really set in the same temporality as Pip's story. I think Pip must have went out of her Stable a week or so before BJ. I do have a lot of fears regarding this temporality but I'll wait until they concretize themselves.

Plénitude signing out.