The chronicles of Project Horizons : chapter 29 · 2:09pm Nov 20th, 2018

What happened, Somber ? How can you go from making interesting little moments to something so... absolutely convoluted and unnecessarily dark ? Nothing in this chapter works ! The sex tape memory orb ? The massacre of a settlement just for the damn sake of it ? The fact that despite having one eye and four braces, there is NO difference in how BJ acts or in the things she can do ? She fucking lifted a pony in a power armor with her bare hooves ! I'm stunned.

Let's go ?

First, we start this chapter with a good session of self-convincing on the part of Blackjack who essentially tells herself that things like trying to help Glory find her wing back or erasing the memories of Scotch Tape were the right thing to do and that it didn't matter if she suffered in the pursuit of their happiness. Let us forget that the last chapters were quite impressive in their rather one-sided reflection of "Let us erase the memories of a little filly without telling her because I know better" or BJ's little crippled escapade that couldn't have been dumber if she tried to make it so.

"I had to do better" seems to mean "I know I am in the right, so I can do what I damn well please." and this chapter is definitely not going to tell me otherwise.

What I can give this chapter credit for is trying to set an atmosphere with things like the moving building that scare the shit out of our little group or how the sky is an enemy for our heroes too. Hell, the addiction of P-21 to Med-X to kill the phantom pain in his leg is another thing I liked, even if it's so obvious that no one seems to point out that, it's a classical thing. Glory just get shut down by Miss "I know better" and the issue isn't mentionned for the rest of the chapter. It's a nice touch but it's really a shame those moments are drowned by more fundamentally worse ones.

Worse like... the memory orb we're going to be subjected to. A sex tape memory orb. A bit of a history lesson but when I read the similar part in FO:E, I was impressed by the level of tackiness we had reached. It was not funny, it was immature and it didn't serve any purpose except to be an awkward start to explain that there was an assassination attempt on the life of AJ and fortunately, there hadn't been any sex and this part was mercifully short.

PH decided to even do that one "better" by making so Rarity and Vanity are fucking for a good hour or so and she came seven times. It's not exactly clear in the text if she's in Rarity or Vanity because if she's in the forme, she shouldn't have been able to see Blueblood and if it was the latter, I'm surprised she didn't mention how weird it was to be in a stallion's body for that kind of thing. Then again, it was Vanity's memory orb so she must have been in him. This is not funny, this isn't even cute. It's just... there.

On a deeper level, I really have to ask when all those Ministry Mares had time for love. Fluttershy with Goldenblood, Rarity with Vanity, Twilight with Big Mac at the very least Steelhooves and AJ made somewhat sense in that her friends had pushed AJ to have a boyfriend in order for her to get her mind out of the dark place it was after the death of Big Mac. It could be argued that it was meant to make her focus on the task at hand but you know what AJ and Steelhooves weren't ? A secret couple.

How did Rarity and Twilight have time during the war for secret flirting out of sight exactly ? Especially with Hoofington under a constant assault ? Out of sight and precisely without Pip ever knowing about it, not even Fluttershy with Goldenblood even though the guy simply was just stuck to her at all times. Another thing, are we going to see why she decided to fuck Vanity aside from him being a beautiful stallion ? Next thing I'll know, it's Goldenblood who would have pushed him to do so to have dirt on Rarity. Because can there be anything in this fiction without it being Goldenblood-related ?

Oh, and we also know that Fluttershy had her heart broken by little Goldie too. Because, as I said before, even when Goldenblood isn't the focus of an orb, he ends up becoming it. Unless of course seeing Rarity having sex is what fascinated the readers the most.

And BJ came from the memory orb multiple times. And everyone is laughing at her. Yeah, what a splendid joke based on characters and not on cheap thing like... bodily fluids. I'm sorry but if you liked the sex joke, good for you but I'm utterly spent on them after Kkat did them in FO:E and PH doesn't do them particularly well either.

The whole Enervation scene, however, was far more interesting and a much more fascinating trap than the usual "Here are some raiders, kill them". It had a bit of tension and hell, even the not smart pony once again saved the day by her resourcefulness. It's even interesting to see that mystery get a bit more clarified and honestly, Somber should cherish more the few original ideas that make Hoofington cool and not at the expense of FO:E. Sure, talk about the core, Enervation Fields or even the different gangs like the Reapers... Less time on Goldenblood being the center of the fucking world. Even if I smell a "secret last boss" trope coming our way to explain how GB seemed to be so perfect at knowing everything and anticipating stuff he couldn't possibly know.

Now, for the change in lore regarding the Alicorns. Honestly, while I would have loved to see FO:E with tons of unique spells and powers, it simply not how it is. They all share the same spells with just the purple knowing teleportation, the blue invisibility and the green some better shields and potent telepathy. That was how it is in the mother fiction but I can at least say it's a minor change that I can allow... even if that means that Lacunae literally became a "Spell on command" type of character and I'm not sure I like what it can imply in the future but let's appreciate the tasteful change in lore for now.

Okay, for the next scene, I'm going to be a bit more detailled and try to explain step by step what is wrong with it. However, I'll first explain that I am deeply confused by this scene : this scene is clearly written with a will to show both sides of the argument to the point of even trying to show how Blackjack seems to be in the wrong. At least that's what it seemed because... there's no consequence to it. BJ isn't even chastised by her friends... Nothing. It's a scene that is on Arbu-level of bad but which seemed to have been written to show that... BJ was in the wrong even though she convinces herself that she did the right thing even though she felt guilty ?

Step 1 : The Approach.

In that part, there is a discussion between ignoring or not the settlement with P-21 wanting to destroy it and Glory being the sensible kind and say that there is no point in picking a fight with every single pony they don't like the look of. BJ simply decided to tell her doormats (or friends) that she'll go to see them and if they attack her then she'll know they're bad ponies.

Here, we see an obviously stupid plan being offered to characters that are just... going along with it because they can't be bother to actually have agency over BJ. And... here's a quote I don't know if it's written in an obvious manner to show that they are horrible people for doing what they do or if it's a genuine belief of BJ and Somber :

This just screamed ‘bad idea’, but what could I do? Somepony had to pry into other ponies’ business. Might as well be me. “Well, let’s go say hello…”

What's really strange with this quote is that, again, it seems to know that she's going to do a bad thing and the whole shabang is simply stupid on every conceivable levels. Besides, for someone who don't consider herself a hero, she certainly does love to act like someone who has to judge everyone else by her moral standards.

Step 2 : First contact

BJ arrives in front of the door and essentially give them an ultimatum : Open the door or die. She doesn't know what they are doing in there but she is using her reputation of mindless killer as a tool to go into the settlement like some kind of holy savior and now I have to see her as a fanatic on the same level as Pip. When you go out of your way to go into a settlement, to judge people you know nothing about and then leave. You're just doing what America did to the rest of the world : consider itself the World Police, fuck up entire countries government and created the most impressive collections of fuck-ups ever seen since the Irak war.

So the scared slavers let her enter, visibly trembling in fear of the Punisher coming into their town. When she notice they are slavers, she essentially becomes dumber than ever. Collar is acting very calm and very reasonable, yes, he calls the slaves property but that is to be expected. And then we go into the most dumb line she ever said : "Find another way ! A bette way !" How very... simplistic a mindset. Let us stop there for a second.

It is not normal for BJ to be that dense. It has been a month since she's in the wild but has she forgotten Dusty Trail and Rose ? The two characters whose whole purpose was to show that there can be understandable reasons to do bad things, to show that even if you're doing something horrible, it doesn't mean you're evil. Those characters were supposed to show our stupid bitch that there are more layers to people than just black and white and that their environment pushed them to that extreme. Here, the fiction is actually trying to do the same with Collar explaining his position as such :

“This is the better way!” he retorted. “For generations we fished the scum out of the river, salvaged what we could, and hunted what we found in the marsh, and still it wasn’t enough! I watched my grandfather get consumed by disease and my father taken by famine! Finally, we sold our surplus population and purchased enough food for the rest to survive. I sold my daughters myself, rather than see them starve. We rent our females, or sell them, to sustain the community. To sustain civilization. We’ve done what we must to survive.”

Am I trying to say he's in the right for being a slaver and selling his own family ? No. What I'm trying to say is that it is utterly childish to condemn and seek holy retribution on people for what their environment forced them to do. It is utterly childish to scream "Change or die" to people who have no way of changing their ways durably. She isn't even listening to the fact that they are desperate. She is simply in the mind of "There is no good reason to do bad things" and instead of saying that she can help them rebuild, change their ways, she just decide to destroy and kill. She isn't interested in change and saving the Wasteland, she's interested in feeling like a hero and killing the bad guys.

Step 3 : The Massacre

After she caused the death of Clover by continuing to intimidate people that were desperate to survive, BJ goes in full Arbu mode. She is just despicable.

But I’m not an executioner. I didn’t kill Roses. I wasn’t going to kill this one. But Celestia save me, I wanted to

Stop saying you're not an executioner, that's exactly what you are. You're harming defenseless ponies that beg for their survival, you kill for your own fucked up sense of justice and you consider yourself the arbiter of what's good or not. You're fucking LittlePip. Later, she even dares to say that she's ready to pay Collar after she killed his son and daughters incredibly horribly. The hypocrisy drips from every single word she utters and it's incredibly hard to watch. Eventually, she tries to shot him in the head but he has time to make all the slave collars explode in a form of desperate revenge.

Then we have this scene :

And the sounds of popping filled the air outside. I stood petrified as Collar’s decapitated body swayed and collapsed. I stood there, spattered with blood like rain water. My lip trembled. “I would have let you live… I would have paid you… damn it...” I clenched my eye shut and covered my face. “Damn it!” I yelled into my hooves.
No matter what I did… no matter what I tried… the Wasteland won. It killed a little more. It cut a little deeper. The Dealer just looked on at the far side of this little hovel, and I screamed as I pointed the shotgun and unloaded every round into him. When the gun was expended, I loaded explosive rounds next; I didn’t give a damn what they did to the condition of the weapon. Again and again the shotgun roared as I destroyed everything in sight. I didn’t care if there was life’s supply of Wild Pegasus in here. Everything was blasted. Incendiary rounds lit the bed on fire. The stove was soon ablaze.

Hypocrisy... Childish tantrum... I am just impressed by the degree of stupidity of this scene and again, all could have been somewhat justified if her friends did look at her in horror. Or if she hadn't said that she was justified in her fucking massacre simply because being a slaver is such a horrible thing, it gives her every right to kill them until they are paint.

Step 4 : The Aftermath.

There is nothing. P-21 apologizes to BJ for failing to save the slaves, he grow new limbs thanks to Hydra being such a convenient drug and the corpses are disintagrated. Does anyone say something to her ? Nope. It was a senseless massacre born of an utter stupid decision and who basked in the short-sightedness so typical of heroes in these fictions. You want to to be a supermare that saves the Wastelands, aim for what makes this place the way it is. For now, this massacre is incredibly self-serving in the sense that aside from giving more angst to BJ, it doesn't do anything. No character moment, no real change, this scene is barely even in the head of BJ when things continue.

It's utter garbage.

What about the next scenes ? Well, apparently, BJ can lift a Steel Ranger with rubber legs and braces if she put some drug into her. Sure. It's not like it would massively damage your muscles but who am I kidding, Somber wants all the angst with none of the consequence. Hell, those Steel Rangers are dumb enough to actually tell random strangers the weakness of their armor to shock grenade, shock mine and the likes so I'm not really surprised by Somber's writing anymore.

We get another scene of BJ being scared for her friend and doing another numbe of "Leave me alone, this road is only for me to go through." which gets tiresome after they essentially told them 100 times that they are responsible for their choice to follow her. So this scene continues the vagina licking of BJ with Glory saying that she's nothing without her, P21... same thing and Scotch Tape has to follow them if she wants to survive and have a life with familiar faces.

Also :

I could still see their bodies. Lacunae blown to pieces. P-21 hanging from that wire. Glory’s wing coming off. Scotch Tape lying so terribly still. “Alright. Well, let’s learn from Fallen Arch. Get a good look at the place and see if we can come up with a real plan that’s better than trotting up and saying ‘Hello, I’m Security. Mind letting us through?’” See? I can be taught.

Fuck you, fiction. You don't get to treat Arch like some kind of joke a few words after it ended. You didn't write it nearly good enough to be allowed such a tacky display.

For the rest, it's quite boring. They infiltrate a facility, we hear about the Mane 6 trying non-lethal solutions, we heard Goldenblood saying that taking care of setting up the ministires is something only HE can do apparently, because Somber wants to show how damn important his shitty OC is. Yes, I'm being vulgar, I'm fed up with this OC and the author constants masturbation each time he pops on screen.

We learn that the Enclave works with the Filly Rapists for some Talismans and after a dumb plan involving sending P21 in drags to access the office of the boss, we essentially have a history lesson on Flash Industries and BJ being dumb enough to ask to a security robot about a top secret project, setting the alarm of. We get a few cool action scenes that ends with a "Goldenblood ex machina" (quite literally even if it's not GB himself but something trying to pass off as him) and then we have the whole scene with Glory and BJ falling down the shaft and Glory finally falling to her death.

Yeah, right. As if this fiction had the balls to kill the love interest of the heroine not a third of the way in. Yes, I am not on the edge of my seat because the author didn't give me any reason to.

Closing thoughts : ...