The chronicles of Project Horizons : Chapter 4 · 4:43pm Oct 26th, 2018
Let's go for chapter 4 and as an introduction to this one, I'd like to mention that Project Horizons is definitely more fun to read than FO:E, mainly because the heroes aren't self-righteous assholes crying each time they see a scraped pony somewhere. It's refreshing to see something written in a most correct fashion. However, this chapter like the others have some good and... some bad too. Some things are worrying and some are encouraging to say things plainly.
Let's start with my one of my most pressing issues with this chapter : the humor regarding wounds. PH so far is far more... Indiana Jones style in terms of fighting than gritty and dramatic and while it does have some cool factor, I need to mention the elephant in the room : Blackjack has been shot in the face at point blank range by a magical energy weapon and it's considered a moment of levity, a funny moment by the fiction itself. P-21is already trying to excuse the pegasus and we have a grumbling Blackjack that will quickly forgive the poor scared mare.
I know some people are going to disagree but... this scene doesn't work. I'll even go as far as saying that it borderline breaks the fiction. Magical energy weapon have been shown in this fiction to potentially disintegrate on contact (more on that in a moment) and even then BJ was shot in the head at point blank range by one of the deadliest weapon to exist. Even if I can somewhat accept that the gun was damaged, that still doesn't work. There was a lot of other way to make this scene actually funny : BJ could have avoided the shot by a hair, perhaps used the VATS to do so, or the gun could have misfired but not that...
This issue is not an isolated incident in the sense that Blackjack doesn't really fight smart, a lot of time she relies on her armor and she is hit a lot of time. She doesn't really try to avoid damages and that is a major issue when she is facing magical energy weapons especially. Speaking of which, let's talk about the huge change that Somber did to the rules of magical energy weapon. First, they now only disintegrates from time to time and not systematically, which is a much needed change and a welcome one. I still find deplorable that Blackjack seems completely uncaring about the fact that magical energy weapon can disintegrates. If I had been her, I would have been "Okay, this thing is dangerous." and get a lot more careful. However, she doesn't seem to care that much.
Second change, now the burns inflicted by those weapons can be healed by healing potions ? That's... different and not a change I am hugely a fan of. The idea that there was one type of wounds that actually mattered in FO:E was something that, while badly handled, had the merit to generate tension. So, all in all, it's something that PH does worse than FO:E (didn't think it was actually possible.)
If we are to continue with the MASSIVE change made in the lore by Somber, the Enclave. In my critique, I mentionned that this Enclave was barely a faction worth talking about as they had been essentially reduced to evil, bad guys without a shred of depth. So, I am welcoming the character of Morning Glory (which really does sound like a metaphor for a boner) and the lore behind her but... it is clearly not the Enclave of FO:E. It is not a negative per se but it does make me question if I should read PH as a derivative of FO:E or just something loosely inspired.
The Enclave, in all their one-dimensional existence, had a few things that were absolute : they had betrayed Equestria, closed the sky and were essentially propagating the idea that Equestria betrayed them and that they cared for their own hence the rebellion. The idea was that all pegasi left hence why there was no pegasi in the Wastelands who didn't come from the Enclave in FO:E, the only two Dashites will ever meet were initially born in the Enclave. So, while I am not against the ideas of pegasi left behind by the Enclave... It's going to be extremely hard to justify why there was no pegasi in any Stables now that it is canon that they didn't all flee for the sky.
Another thing that's going to be hard to justify : The Enclave is sending some Volunteer, Red Cross-like, ponies to the Wastelands when their propaganda is that all ponies that lives under are utter barbarians hungry for blood ? I might need to reread that part but why would the Enclave finance a suicide squad ? To prove their point that the surface isn't good ? What for ? Isn't there a huge risk that if any Volunteer was to come back up, they could fight the false narrative with facts, like Calamity did ?
Or are we going the full Evil route of "We can spare a few ponies to strenghten the idea that the sky is the best place for everyone." ? Because, if that's the case... It's even more cartoony than before. And I hate it because Morning Glory, in and of herself isn't a bad character but her existence takes the risk of being an easy "traumatized" pony route.
Speaking of that, two traumatized ponies in the group now ? I already found P-21 constant whining and uselessness to be a bit grating (fingind healing potions isn't a skill that BJ couldn't learn to have.) but I'd like to avoid to have a P-21 redux with Morning Glory, especially since BlackJack needs to grow because by god is she a dull protagonist. Sure, she kills a lot of raiders with ease but it's been what ? Two, three days at most and she already finds killing raiders fun ? I mean... way to skip ten steps to make her a Punisher.
She isn't all bad though as she did stand her ground and told that Morning Glory would have to fight since she can't defend them all. She also reacted quite strongly to the fact DJ Pon3 tried to groom her as a hero like she did with LittlePip. What I find amusing is that it only confirms that Homage tries to force her vision on the world and basically tries to create LittlePips whenever she can. A bit too similar to FO:E in structure... again.
We also learned that Sanguine is the one behind the attack of Stable 99 and for now, I don't really care. BlackJack goes to kill Sanguine by principle as if it was obvious but... what then ? She kills them, hoping that no second in command or another chief replaces him ? And even then what would come after killing them ? The fiction indeed suffers from tunnel-vision : killing Sanguine is hardly a deep objective and I don't even get why P-21 would like to help her... help the Stable he can't shut up about ?
Yeah, I get why BlackJack would like to attack Sanguine (even if I don't understand at all how he would enter the Stable now that it is locked from the inside. He wouldn't have so manipulative if he could just open it easily and kill everyone.) but P-21 ? I expect him to ditch Blackjack as soon as they get into a new town.
Closing thoughts : So yes, we really need strong motivations for our heroes and we need them quickly. The fiction is 1.8M word long but I shouldn't have to wait so long to have a solid motivation, goals and objective for a story. Let's try to not copy FO:E in that regard.
Plénitude logging out.
On the subject of magical energy weapons: even in FoE they only rarely caused disintigration. I don't remember if Blackjack has even seen any yet before this--she certainly hasn't been trained with them, so she just might not know that can happen. As to the non-healability from them, I don't remember that being a major feature (came up once, didn't affect anything?), so I wouldn't be surprised if it was just forgotten or relegated to the specific type that came up in that case.
You are probably right about the damage thing in general, though.
Regarding the Enclave: publication history is important here again. There just wasn't all that much established about them until ~ chapter 39, by which point Somber would have been almost 20 chapters into PH. And almost all of that (apart from a memory of their beginning) came from Calamity, who could have been biased in his descriptions and definitely was out of date in his knowledge. Basically, I think Somber assumed they were going to be a more nuanced or less monolithic entity than they ended up being, and wrote along those lines. So there ends up being a fair amount to try to reconcile/justify the differences later on. IMO it's preferable to them just being content-free sky Nazis, but it's a major area of departure.
On subject of traumatized ponies, this is not the end of them. I also see the "fun killing raiders" as part of her initial reaction to the stable invasion and violently killing people herself, as opposed to rounding up, potentially forcefully, not-always-willing males to be executed. Her delivery to Glory seemed a bit forced to me.
Maybe somewhere in between. A lot of the content of FoE was back-loaded, and though Somber tried to maintain consistency (with certain relatively rare exceptions along the way, and perhaps less so after maybe some point past ~chapter 63), there are definite departures due to things just not having been established before Somber wrote, with the Enclave example being probably the most prominent.
4958805
As I wrote in my critique : KKat says they rarely disintegrates but in application they do it 75%+ of the time. I advise you to re-read this part, it's one of the most damning part of FO:E.
As for the non-healability, it is a feature of FO:E's magical energy weapons. It's why they are actually very dangerous. Trust me on this, it was supposed to be something quite important but then again, I'll accept the changes as they come along. I noticed the differences but it is an issue only from the point of view of a fanfiction of FO:E. It's not an issue as long as it remains consistent but still, it's a huge difference.
As for the Enclave, I agree. I still find the idea of a fanfiction done at the same time of the main source very strange to me. I can't see that behind a very sound foundation for a story.
And for Blackjack's actions... I'm sorry but really, we still didn't do the "first kill" treatment to BJ and that's a huge no for me. She considers killing as easy as breathing and she doesn't seemed fazed by it at all which is highly jarring when she suddenly sobs each time she reads half a page of logs about some randos.
But more on that on the coming Blogposts
4958870
But that's completely normal when the source is serialized. It's why this site exists at all--after all, FiM isn't over yet. There are a lot of stories that have been rendered incompatible with canon (e.g., pre-S3E13 "future" fics that don't factor in Twilicorn), yet it would be unreasonable to say they were unsound. You work with what grabs you when it's relevant, and I think it's a reasonable speculation that the FoE ecosystem wouldn't exist in anything like the form it has (perhaps had, as it seems like it may be well past its peak) if everyone waited until almost 2012 to begin creating derivative works, especially bearing in mind there was a major slowdown in chapter releases towards the end.
4959417
I wasn't talking about MLP since it is a Slice of Life type of show without any overarching stories and no specific promises on what will happen later. FO:E is and honestly, starting to talk about the Enclave without having any info yet was bound to create some heavy dissimilarities. I don't disagree that it is a sound marketing technique to attract viewers but if your story relies on informations that have yet to be told, I don't see your work remaining a fanfic of a fanfic. Then again, it is a personal opinion of mine not a condemnation.
4959426
Sure, FiM might not be the best (but it is the most immediate) comparison point. But the same situation has arisen for works that decidedly do not fall into the SoL/no overarching story category, such as Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Homestuck, and many more, including probably Fallout.
4959428
Yes but, counter arguments, many of those fanfictions don't rely on undisclosed informations to exist. Usually, they take one thing that they know and work around it. I didn't read Pink Eyes but it works from the Pink Cloud hitting Canterlot and makes a story based on that and from what I've heard it doesn't try to go too deep into the lore because that's not its goal. PH is trying to be a FO:E 2.0 without having all the keys in hands to make sure this huge overarching stories doesn't hit a conceptual wall.