The chronicles of Project Horizons : chapter 22

Finally, the story is advancing ! Finally a real moment of intensity with stakes and even an actual dilemma that makes sense and isn't completely contrived ! Praise the Goddesses ! Sure, there are a lot of issues with this chapter as per usual but I will not lie that it actually does make the story advance and give some interesting challenges to the heroes. It is not perfect but damn does it makes the whole thing go somewhere for once.

Let's go !

This part of the story shows us a Blackjack who is forced to break down in front of the horror that is her home being defiled and her mom being killed and exposed as a trophy in front of the gates. Here, I don't mind the excess gore because it has a purpose. The goal is to gloat in front of a broken Blackjack and it's the crystallization of the Overmare's hatred for both Gin Rummy and Blackjack, it is even justified by the Overmare becoming a raider. Gore with a clear in-story justification AND another purpose than just use it as cheap shock value ? Somber can really understand the importance of certain literary tools sometimes.

The next scene while being another scene of "Carnage with a song" is actually interesting with basically Blackjack being so broken that she charges in a suicidal assault against the raiders, killing ponies she knew and feeling more and more broken as time goes by. Here, her lack of rationality is normal and expected and her friends will suffer consequence for her own rash actions. Sure, she's going to survive and even... not die from an armor-piercing sniper bullet to the head but quite honestly, she's just Miss Whiny Invincible so if you told me that she survived being crushed to death by a rock crusher, I wouldn't even be surprised.

The mindless killing of Blackjack made her kill even a child during her berserker's rage and I have good hopes that the fact she is now an executioner will make her stop angsting after every kill and let us move on towards newer and fresher horizons. Hell, she even removed the cutie mark, THE CUTIE MARK, of a dead Marmalade to use it as a disguise. Clearly, she has change but my natural cynicism makes me ask "for how long ?" Then again, let us hope it will go somewhere.

Now, let us talk about what I will call "Somber's voyeurism". I did talk about how gorefest and rape were two topics that Somber simply loved to talk about constantly and in this chapter, this voyeurism was cranked to 11. I talked about purposeful gore earlier and having a whole scene where Rampage is being eaten and BJ having to eat her heart to continue her disguise simply sounds extremely tacky to me. It could have been a nice intense moment in another fiction that uses gore with a bit more parcimony but here, it just feels like he was going full throttle to give us something utterly disturbing. It is not. It is simply long and boring and it really makes Rampage the author's fetish.

Likewise, P-21's treatment and the Overmare's backstory are simply too over the top for me to be shocked by it. So we essentially learn that the Overmare's mom was fucking her daughter with a strap-on and treated her daughter like garbage just because she could and the Overmare had to slit her throat to escape the pain and essentially transfer that hatred and pain towards P-21. You see, in a more measured story, it could have been an impactful moment. Here ? It just blends with the rest and tries to give a justification to a character right before killing her. It's the whole thing about Somber's treatment of villains : they are huge assholes up until they die and then we learn they actually were just little balls of pain.

Showing rape and gore needs to be a high point, not a constant state or it becomes the norm and nobody cares about the norm. Trying to have a sob story with the Overmare while she's fucking P-21 is really something I find more hilarious than disturbing. Somber needs to learn that sometimes, less is more and trying to one up oneself in the horror and fucked up department can quickly devolves into hilarity.

Maybe it was the sight of my friend, gagged with a bridle, chained to a bed, and being sodomized by the current greatest incarnation of evil I’d ever encountered in the Wasteland, but something about the scene brought out my inner Deus. I kicked open the door, snapped out the dragon claw, screamed “Cuuuunt!” and charged the bed.

This part for example is ridiculous. It is supposed to be a heavy scene where one of the protagonist is being raped and the paragraph is completely in the opposite tone with Blackjack referencing Deus' stupid quirk ! It is another example of a completely unstable tone and I don't understand why he made this choice because... he is completely capable of keeping a tone, see the beginning of the chapter. Side note : Lacunae mentions offering the Unity to P-21 but... the Unity can only be done to unicorns, male and female, not earth ponies. It's actually a fairly important plot point regarding the Goddess since it would explain why there is a rather low amount of alicorns compared to the overall Wasteland.

As for the fight against Daisy, it is a mixture of good and bad. I personally don't think that Daisy warranted the status of final rival in this chapter since she was just a bully to Blackjack and not much else. Hell, by the end of chapter 1, she was essentially pretty much okay. However, the SATS fight is really embarrassing to watch. Having Blackjack play with the clips of Daisy's gun like she did really fractured the tone of the scene and made it comical when, again, the goal of this chapter isn't to be that. It's supposed to be a moment where BJ is completely distraught and lost as she is forced to kill the home that was hers less than a month ago.

I can give credits to the final scene where her friends come to her rescue, even if it really feels a bit forced. It is a nice scene and it gives closure to what was a meaningful fight.

As for Blackjack and Glory having sex after the most traumatizing event of Blackjack's life and barely recovering from the death of her mother... I could see it work but it does feel a bit jarring for the sex she's having to be that happy after everything we saw. Perhaps I would have preferred a more... soothing the wounds type of sex but then again I could see some arguments for the both to happen.

As for how the Stable treats their savior, I honestly think it was quite well done and the only think gnawing at the back of my head is that is such a shame that BJ was not portrayed like all of those ponies back when she went outside for the first time. The gratefulness slowly turning into rejection as they are afraid of what they represent, a tremor in their former calm and stable life. Honestly, it feels pretty convincing to see them act as they act and see the resistance forms slowly over the course of days and to that I give full credits to Somber, really, bravo.

Now onto a less... nice topic. EC-1101, the route he has taken makes no fucking sense at all. Canterlot -> Fillydelphia -> Maripony -> Manehattan -> Back to Canterlot (Stable 1) -> Ponyville (Stable 2) -> Back to Manehattan (Stable 29) -> Hoofington (Stable 99). What is this spell doing ? It makes no sense to have such an important piece of software do so much unnecessary detour to go where it needs to go. As for the fact that the spell doesn't detect Fluttershy, I think poor Somber didn't know Kkat made her survive. I wonder how big of an issue it's going to be.

We do learn a bit about BJ's ancestry and while it is nice to see that she had a lot of mares in her family, I do find funny that no records of their husbands were ever kept. I mean, the whole change started 100 years ago, meaning there is at least 100 years of normal couples. In any case, a nice gentle scene.

Now let's talk about the whole deal about : They ate diseased ponies and so they are all condemed to become raiders. It is a very natural dilemma that occurs from the stubborness of Rivets and a growing distrust of BJ and her friends who are forced out of the gate and it is really interesting to see how the characters deal with it. Scotch Tape has apparently ate boxed lunch for three days straight hence why she would be able to be saved by BJ before she decides to kill them all. Here the dilemma does take some steps :

The realization of the dilemma. The different stages : Do I just leave and let them threaten the Wasteland ? Do I close the door for all eternity and let them eat each other ? Do I kill them all ? Then the execution.

The decision of Blackjack to kill them all is an interesting one and there is no actual right choice here with the knowledge she has. However, two things makes this scene less potent than it could have been.

First, Blackjack and her friends don't even try to find if they are others like Scotch Tape who didn't eat from the recycling. If one pony did, it would be surprising that there aren't some others in the same scenario. Perhaps were they all infected but here's the thing : she had decided to kill them all before making sure that they were all beyond saving and that's direct negative no matter how you slice it. She went for the easy road of saying they all deserved to either be trapped or killed, no middle ground, no active search from her or her friends.

Second... she tried to kill herself in the process, abandoning her friends. This aspect of her character is incredibly grating, especially when a few chapters back she didn't want to die and left her friends all alone. Hell, she just made love to Glory and she was already thinking about killing herself. This makes her go around in circles again and makes me think she's going to angst for the whole duration of the next chapter, explaining how a huge monster she is for the umptieth time.

She is only saved because the Goddess will make her keep her promise to find the copy of the Black Book.

Closing thoughts : A really important chapter far above the rest but with a lot of crystalized issues and repeated developments. Nice scenes peppered in but a strong voyeurism. Onto the next one !