The chronicles of Project Horizons : Chapter 3 · 2:21pm Oct 25th, 2018
On to the third chapter of this wild ride and also the shortest chapter of the entire fiction but I have to say, not the worst and should I even say that this is the best chapter so far for a few things already and it is the character that will cement an affirmation that was already pretty obvious : Project Horizons is a better story than Fallout: Equestria. Is it without serious faults ? God, no.
Let's open the curtain.
And let's start with the positive this time, I really liked that the stubborness of Blackjack lead to a damning consequence (the death of Scoodles, who had raised a red flag by having spewed all the exposition Blackjack needed) and to an actual moment of character development. It's something that FO:E sorely lacked even if I can't shake the idea that the death of Scoodles in PH is the same that the death of this filly by the Enclave in FO:E (the one so memorable, I only remember her as dust in a bottle of Nuka Cola). Yeah, the similarities with FO:E are starting to get more and more distant with time passing but I don't believe in coincidences for this fiction in regards to similar events with FO:E. Aside from the obvious comparison, I like that this stubborness of Blackjack can actually even be called arrogance : she killed raiders and the likes with such ease that she basically felt like she had nothing to learn.
I can't stress enough how much I value an organic progression for characters to adapt through trial and error to their environment and not be an already perfect being who could dominate the Wastelands by virtue of being written that way. Blackjack isn't totally safe from that comparison but it's a far cry from the Deus Vult LittlePip.
Another thing I liked is that P-21 and BJ... sat down and fucking talked ! Sure, P-21 is starting to get on my nerves with his constant whining (more on that in a moment), but Somber actually made them discuss and allowed us to get a bit of a peek into their personalities, dreams, etc. I have to praise this by virtue of it being almost absent in FO:E, especially at the start of the story unless you really want to count the banter Calamity and Pip had in Chapter 5.
Oh, and I'd like more of transformative use of FO:E like Silver Spoon : not copying FO:E but actually taking into account the little tidbits that KKat actually told us and make use of it. Making Silver Spoon such a terrifying Alzheimer zombie is actually a good idea and I do like how Blackjack only survived through resourcefulness and the ghoul being almost blind. More of that please.
Now let's get to the... less good parts and let's start with P-21 because the guy constant whining is starting to get on my nerves. During the little talk that he had with BJ, he mentionned that a stallion couldn't ever refuse to go fuck a mare if she asked and that some of them tried to hurt themselves to have some rest. I am honestly a bit disappointed that Somber didn't want to make it more horrible than that like "Do you know how horrible it is to be fucked by 10 mares a day and being injected drugs in your dick just because you can't refuse someone ?". I mean, there's such an idea of horror surrounding Stable 99 and his trauma that I actually expected something a bit more hard hitting that "I couldn't refuse someone if I wanted to."
I get that this is to go hand in hand with the idea that the Stable robbed males of their rights to be actual equine beings but after the Overmare being raped to death and the likes, this revelation, on top of being obvious for the reader doesn't sount that terrible but I'm sure we'll have more tragic stories of males being raped in the future.
Now why does P-21's attitude irks me ? Shouldn't I be thrilled to see such a dysfunctional relationship with a male that dislikes the protagonist and doesn't pull his punches, following a character trait that makes him repeat the hurt he suffered on others ? Well, while I appreciate that, P-21 is not yet a character for me : he is a victim. Let me elaborate.
P-21 did nothing in those three chapters that could be considered a helpful action aside from throwing a grenade towards raiders. He is constantly either whining about how he is traumatized or actively being a dick to BlackJack when she saved her life each time they met raiders. He is such a selfish and egotistic dick that he even tried to kill BJ for essentially saving their lives, just to protect U-21 (a character whose evasion seems quite surprising to me but I'll wait until he comes back.)
Sure, P-21 is traumatized and hates mares from Stable 99 but for fuck sake, he is whining to the special snowflake ! I know he wants to say that, by being a passive abider of the rules of the Stable, she's part of the problem he suffered but why didn't we hear about how BJ could have treated males like dirt at the very least ? Perhaps punching one in the dick because he couldn't make her cum or something ? BJ is suffering his abuse like a beaten wife and she is almost... thankful for it ?
And here comes a bigger issue, the reason that makes them stay together is incredibly shaky. I said it before and I'll say it again, the sudden "Oh by the way, she's utter scared of being on her own." is not something I like, especially when her initial plan was to run all alone in the Wasteland. Sure, now we know that P-21 wanted to be a teacher, which in itself is an issue because why would you educate males to begin with if the only important part is their dick, but yeah... for now, P-21 really needs to do something for the well-being of their group that isn't just helping reluctantly BJ to not die when he knows that he wouldn't survive ten minutes on his own.
Sure, he finally thanked her for her resourcefulness but it really was too little too late and BJ, keeping with her general beaten wife attitude, doesn't even try to put P-21's face in his own shit.
But there was another issue for me in that chapter : Watcher. My god I can't bear this version of Watcher spewing his sanctimonious bullshit about not giving up and owning your mistakes all your life to one day perhaps make up for them. You're a fucking dragon who did jackshit of note for 200 years ! You convinced yourself that not doing shit except playing hackerman with Spritebots was the only thing you coud do so don't even fucking start acting like an all-knowing sage giving life lessons, you didn't experience shit from your cave and if it wasn't for Pip, you'd still be in your fucking hole moping around. God this scene grated on me...
And what does he mean "Yeah I did something that cost a lot of lives." No you fucking didn't. The whole point of your "character" is that you slept against your will because you were growing up and you missed the last part of the war. You can regret being useless all you want but you didn't "do" anything that could have cost people their lives. Unless Somber rewrote his background that is ? Even then, the reader doesn't have that information yet if that's the case so excuse me if Watcher's advices as good as they are are not told by the good person... Really not.
Closing thoughts : A really good step in the right direction. Here's hoping that P-21 is going to become more than just whine central.
Plénitude signing out.
I think that in the case of the similarity between Scoodle and the Sparkle-Cola-bottle filly from FoE (her death anyway), it really is a coincidence.
While I don't have the exact dates for the relevant chapter, 39, FoE chapter 36 was published August 7 (and for the previous few chapters had only been updating every 3-6 days--and the next date I know is chapter 40 on October 5), and Project Horizons chapter 10 was released August 9--I don't think that even in the very early days there were multiple chapters published per day (average of first 10 chapters was one every four days starting on July 2).
4957838
Fair enough, I guess they simply both thought that killing a child would make for a good trauma for their main character. Then again PH makes it one of the foundation of BJ's evolution when for Pip it was far too late in the story. It was simply an interesting coincidence then. Although, are you sure that Somber didn't read FO:E back when it wasn't on FimFic ? It would be surprising that Somber started writing PH before the end of FO:E.
If you have a bit of history to give me, I'm genuinely curious.
4957874
All of those dates were 2011, and were when the original GDocs versions were reported on EQD. I assume that Somber was always up-to-date on FoE, but am not aware of him having access to unpublished chapters. A lot of people started writing recursive fanfics of FoE before it was over, and Somber was one of them. (Though it looks like he probably made the call of not writing new chapters for a little over a month right as FoE was wrapping up.) One of the other major stories, Pink Eyes, had its third to last chapter published two days after FoE was completed.
Kkat established a policy that basically went they wouldn't read recursive fics, none (except optionally chapter 20.5) would be canon to FoE, and made no guarantees about what direction the story would take (thus what would or wouldn't be Jossed), and in return basically anyone could play in the sandbox.
I have a pretty complete publication history of the chapters of PH and their relationship to the air dates of episodes and publication dates of FoE chapters I assembled for Present Perfect a few years back. I'd link to the comment, but it contains other spoilers and I don't know to what extent you'd want that. Could also recreate here if you want it.
4958049
Sure, try to keep it spoiler free as much as you can since I want to give my honest opinion on things. As much as I can that is. Aside from my coincidence remark, any other thing you'd like to interject on ?
4958278
For other interjections, I guess just that I don't think it's very hard to imagine how Watcher could be responsible for a lot of deaths, even without changing much of anything from FoE. Basically, he could have been doing his Watcher thing (which I think it was established he'd been doing a long time, trying to find/put together a new Bearer set) and something or some series of things go bad following his advice.
For the most part, even in cases where I don't share your feelings, I don't think you're basing them off of mistaken readings, so there's not much to add/argue over unless you're specifically looking for that. I guess it's worth saying I did think Silver Spoon was a very good part of the chapter.
Publication history: Parentheses indicate episodes aired and FoE chapters published since the prior chapter of PH was. Dates taken from EQD story update posts, nightly roundups (until sometime in Aug or Sept 2011), and the PHCC forum in one or two cases. PH wasn't separately tracked by EQD until chapter 10.
1: 2 Jul 2011 (Season 1 over; FoE probably in mid to late 20s)
10: 9 Aug 2011 (FoE 36)
11: 10 Aug 2011 ()
13: 15 Aug 2011 ()
14: 19 Aug 2011 ()
16: 27 Aug 2011 ()
21: 28 Sep 2011 (S2E1,2 Return of Harmony)
24: 16 Oct 2011 (S2E3 Lesson Zero; FoE 41)
25: 23 Oct 2011 (S2E4 Luna Eclipsed)
26: 30 Oct 2011 ()
27: 13 Nov 2011 (S2E5 Sisterhooves Social, S2E6 The Cutie Pox)
*Revision of chapter 1: 5 Dec 2011
28: 16 Dec 2011 (S2E7-S2E10: Best Pet Win, MMDW, Sweet and Elite, Secret of My Excess; FoE 43, 44, 45)
29: 23 Dec 2011 (S2E11 Hearth's Warming Eve)
30: 31 Dec 2011 (FoE Epilogue, Aftermath)
31: 8 Jan 2012 (S2E12 Family Appreciation Day)
32: 15 Jan 2012 (S2E13 Baby Cakes)
33: 22 Jan 2012 (S2E14 The Last Roundup)
34: 30 Jan 2012 (S2E15 SSCS6K)
35: 5 Feb 2012 (S2E16 Read It and Weep)
36: 13 Feb 2012 (S2E17 Hearts and Hooves Day)
37: 19 Feb 2012 (S2E18 A Friend in Deed)
38: 3 Mar 2012 (S2E19 Putting Your Hoof Down [on March 3 exactly])
39: 18 Mar 2012 (S2E20-S2E21 It's About Time, Dragon Quest)
40: 25 Mar 2012 (S2E22 Hurricane Fluttershy)
41: 1 Apr 2012 (S2E23 Ponyville Confidential)
42: 15 Apr 2012 (S2E24 MMMystery on the Friendship Express)
43: 29 Apr 2012 (End of Season 2: S2E25/26 A Canterlot Wedding)
45: 3 Jun 2012
46: 17 Jun 2012
47: 7 Jul 2012
48: 22 Jul 2012
49: 13 Aug 2012
50 (reported as 49 on EQD): 9 Sep 2012
51: 14 Oct 2012
52: 24 Nov 2012 (Start of Season 3: S3E1-3 Crystal Empire, Too Many Pinkie Pies)
53: 14 Jan 2013 (S3E4-9 Bad Apple, Magic Duel, Sleepless, WB Acad, Apple Fam Reunion, Spike at Your Service)
54: 18 Feb 2013 (End of Season 3: S3E10-13 Keep Calm & Flutter On, Just for Sidekicks, Games Ponies Play, MMC)
55: 29 Apr 2013
56: 21 Jun 2013
57: 12 Jul 2013
58: 6 Aug 2013
59: 1 Sep 2013
60: 23 Sep 2013
61: 14 Oct 2013
62.1: 10 Nov 2013
62.2 (reported as 63 on EQD): 14 Dec 2013 (Start of Season 4: S4E1-4 Princess Twilight, Castle Mane-ia, Daring Don't)
63 (reported as 64 on EQD): 13 Jan 2014 (S4E5-9 Flight to the Finish, Power Ponies, Bats!, Rarity Takes Manehattan, Pinkie Apple Pie)
64 (reported as 65 on EQD): 10 Feb 2014 (S4E10-13 Rainbow Falls, Three's a Crowd, Pinkie Pride, Simple Ways)
65 (reported as 66 on EQD): 31 Mar 2014 (S4E14-20 Filli Vanilli, Twilight Time, Breezies, Somepony to Watch, Maud Pie, For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils, Leap of Faith)
66 (never actually updated on EQD): 27 Apr 2014 (S4E21-23 Testing Testing 1 2 3, Trade Ya!, Inspiration Manifestation)
67: 8 Jun 2014 (End of Season 4: S4E24-S4E26 Equestria Games, Twilight's Kingdom)
68: 13 Jul 2014
69: 5 Aug 2014
70: 14 Sep 2014
71: 2 Nov 2014
72: 29 Dec 2014
73: 1 Feb 2015
74: 8 Mar 2015
75.1: 4 May 2015 (Start of Season 5 S5E1-6 Cutie Map, Castle Sweet Castle, Bloom & Gloom, Tanks for the Memories, Appleoosa's Most Wanted)
75.2 (actually as 75b!): 19 May 2015 (S5E7 Make New Friends but Keep Discord)
76: 18 Jul 2015 (last episodes before PH completed: S5E8-13 Griffonstone, Slice of Life, Princess Spike, Party Pooped, Amending Fences, Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?)
77: 29 Aug 2015
Epi: 29 Aug 2015
FOE:
33: 25 Jul 2011
34: 31 Jul 2011
35: 3 Aug 2011
36: 7 Aug 2011
40: 5 Oct 2011
41: 14 Oct 2011
43: 24 Nov 2011
44: 7 Dec 2011
45: 13 Dec 2011
Epi+Aft?: 25 Dec 2011
4958320
Well, I do appreciate that you give credits to my own interpretations, haha but please do share your own. I love to discuss.
As for Watcher ? I really never got the feeling he caused the death of people doing his work but if Somber did add some aspects to that, I guess I'll have to wait to see them. I never write stories for the author.
Thanks for the enlightening list.