The chronicles of Project Horizons : Chapter 71 to 73

Let's continue this last trip down PH lane. We're reaching chapters that are far too long for what they actually say and we are really making it hard for me to not see things in a cynical way. Especially when it comes to the death fakeouts but more on that later. So without further distraction, let's jump right in !

Let's go !

And I'm already skipping the aftermath of the party. It's full of nothing but BJ's angsting and discussion of the romantic subplots (Tenebra and Glory are a thing apparently.) I could praise the "I'm scared to die last" aspect of that scene but let's cut to the chase : it's not something new. BJ wanting to die for her friends rather than having them die for her ? What a new and intriguing concept. Moving on.

Lancer, Sekashi and Majina (the zebra trio) arrives to tell BJ that the rocket of Cognitum is about to leave Earth far earlier than expected so the BJ team rush for the launching site. BJ and her small infiltration team are teleported and they paraglide towards the base. I suppose it is meant to be a funny scene but honestly, I am not the audience for the humor here so I'll simply mention that it's there. Then we meet Cognitum and the Legate. The former changed her skin to look more evil and she kept the kids... because she wants to have her own. Sure, but she also is aware that her body will crush her kids if she doesn't use a surrogacy spell... right ? I'm sure it's not fabricated drama to make it harder for BJ to fight against her.

Also, can I say how dumb Cognitum is to still think Steel Rain is alive ? For fuck sake : you have a Pipbuck that can communicate long range with other Pipbucks (as BJ did back in the day), just check if Steel Rain is fine and be done with it ! But noooo, she has to be "How strange that he didn't take care of that yet..." She's supposed to be intelligent enough to manipulate everyone and now she's dumb as a rock ? Yes, her weakness is that she has an inflatable ego but for fuck sake, it doesn't mean she can't reach the easiest of conclusion : either assume he is dead, captured or become a traitor. In any case, he is NOT simply late.

Skipping ahead, the A-team is led into a trap where four Starkatteri Zebras fight them in the name of the stars. One controls ice, another fire, another radiation and the last one is a seer. After a fight that is mostly just a gigantic waste of time, BJ wins by saying that the Legate is a servant of the Eater of Souls and wants to bring him back to life. When they learn that, they decide to leave and not fight for him anymore. Oh, and Scotch Tape was looking at the filly zebra seer's ass during the fight. Seems to be important for the fiction so I needed to mention it.

Then after discussing a plan to stop some rockets to leave the launching site, we have BJ going all in : discussing with Cognitum through an intercom to slow her down and make her monologue. The same thing happens with the Legate, they fight and he monologues about his accomplishments for the sake of the audience and because all the villains of this fiction needs to have an urge to tell their plans like James Bond villains. After The Legate realizes he is fighting the real Blackjack, he is revealed to be Starkatteri to his stallions and as such they turn on him. Woop dee fucking doo.

Chaos ensues and long story short, Cognitum rocket leaves the launching site and the Legate starts destroying the other rockets to prevent BJ to stop Horizons from firing. The Legate believes he destroyed them all but there is a secret rocket that is being taken care of and that will push BJ into orbit. When The Legate realizes that on top of BJ taunting him about being the Maiden of Stars saved by Discord, he decides to launch the last balefire bomb in existence towards the launching site. It's a desperate gamble made by a mad stallion to grasp victory. Then the Legate is beaten by using cryogenic liquid. He is not dead of course but his regenerative ability is stiffled by the cold and it allows for the BJ team to flee into the rocket.

All ? No, Glory is staying behind to launch the rocket and honestly, the scene is well written (even with all the obvious death flags that were raised during this chapter) and I can understand how it can make people emotional. I personnally don't care about Glory anymore for she became a parody of herself that existed to be a "love interest" and nothing more. She had some moments for her where she showed some characters but outside of those moments where she needed to be decisive, she mainly remained there to be pretty, fuck BJ and act as a love interest. So no, I am not personally invested in her "death".

Yes, you read it right. Glory isn't dead yet. Don't ask me how the fuck she survived being nuked but in a few chapters we'll meet her again. The Legate isn't dead either (I don't know how since I thought the balefire bomb was the ultimate way to destroy something but it seems that his runic heart can escape the flame of a Star.)

In any case, to the Moon we go.

***********

Here comes one of the most boring chapter. It'll focus far too much on characters no one cares about and I'll talk only if I have something relevant to say about what is showcased. So after the escape, Scotch, P-21 and BJ are dealing with their grief in the way they do best. They get angry and then they discuss on a tangent. BJ is also in denial and they help her in her denial for the time being. Anything to stay sane and honestly, it's a nice scene if it wasn't for Glory's death being a semi-fake-out.

First scene outside the rocket : Goldenblood & co deals with the Brood and starts their plan.

Second scene outside the rocket : Calamity's brother come helping fighting the Brood and the B team attacks an S.P.P. tower to jam the communication signals between the Brood. There's also the slight issue of all augmented characters being subject to instant death if the kill switch is activated and relayed through this tower.

Scene in the rocket : P-21 raises his first death flag and they have space sex. Then they discuss about the taste of mare's pussy and how horny Scotch is. Riveting.

Third scene out of the rocket : I'm skipping it. Those are characters that I don't care about and barely have anything interesting to offer. It's a C plot that doesn't even try to be interesting. Just know that Big Daddy dies after using some magical potion.

Fourth scene out of the rocket : Stronghoof and his side bitch are fighting but Psalm doesn't want to fight because she have remorses about how she lived her life. It's another romantic subplot that I will not grace with more words. Psalm IS NOT a sympathetic character. You don't get to kill tons of people and fuck up the whole landscape of the world to just cry and say I'm sorry. I do not care about your whinings.

Scene in the rocket : We get the first hint that Glory might not be dead through Boo talking directly to Scotch through the Bullshitron. As you can see, Somber didn't wait long to reveal his semi-fake-out.

Fifth scene out of the rocket : The C team (Silver Spoon, Xanthe, etc) is trying to destroy one of the Chimera Tree. Not much else to say.

Sixth scene out of the rocket : BJ talks to Cognitum and the latter... use her children as leverage ? Well, she didn't need long to change her tune about not using them like that and about wanting to offer them the world. Either this dumb AI is very flexible or she's damn inconsistent. Also :

“That is how long it took for ponykind to recover from the collapse following our conflict. Five centuries of fighting off all kinds of beasts and monsters. Five centuries of losing community after community, city after city. Even our home was left behind when Celestia relocated to Canterlot.” Her voice turned even harder. “I will not let anypony keep me from protecting my subjects. Not you, the Legate, or the stars themselves will keep me from achieving my dream.”

How the fuck do you know that if you were banished and if you learned it later... why did that happen ? Why would a pony civil war summon beasts and monsters that need to be fought against for centuries ? Care to fill us in or are you just going to through some kind of vague worldbuilding at the end of your fiction just for funzies ?

Then they land and meet with Rampage, ready to fight.

*********

Then we have a discussion with Rampage, BJ reveals who she is to her as well as the identity of her father and BJ suggests that Priest must have been the one to remove the memory from Rampage. May I ask "Nani the fuck ?" Priest would have removed such a specific memory from Rampage even though she didn't meet him right away ? IIRC, the first thing Rampage remembers was that she had been raped by ghouls and why would Priest remove the only memory of her identity and mother that sacrificed herself for her but not the years of rape and such ? Hell, when did a small kid that was swept off by sex with an unstable mare be able to do mind magic ? Hell, why would she have accepted when she was opposed to it with BJ ? Also, did she also forget the fact that he would have removed a memory from her ? Because that part isn't part of the memory orb that was removed from Rampage.

The only possible way that it could work would be to do it when Rampage falls asleep or was the instigator... and then again how did Priest knew to hide, from the mare he loved at the time, the memory orb in an old room in Miramare and that was never opened prior to BJ coming. BJ seems to suggest that Rampage was the instigator and she put the memory away herself in that room and that the other memories of her other lives swarmed her when she did remove that specific one.

Why ? Why did this specific memory holds more power over her sense of self than... All the others of her life that she had ? The amount of mind twisting logic that needs to happen for the pieces to be in their right position to make the story works is mind-boggling.

They fight and they are forced into the vaccuum of space, BJ being covered in Moondust as she crashed on the Moon soil. She teleports back in obviously. BJ forces the memory inside Rampage's head and... BJ succeeds in destroying JUST the Angel from Rampage's mind thanks to a Bullshit ex machina. I love when things are resolved through means I don't get. Somber just said "It just worked" and I have to nod.

Rampage now back in the team, they go towards the Astrostable (god this is dumb) and since BJ forced her tired self to use the Bullshitron, she is now having visions of her friends current actions. Hallucinations to be precise. I'll skip them.

They get BJ to the Astrostable and while this is happening she has a discussion with a strange voice that tells her banality about life. When she wakes up, we get to know who are the people inside the Astrostable :

I heard Scotch Tape’s voice from nearby. “...guys are the descendants of ponies who said ‘buck it’ in the last month after Goldenblood got the boot and snuck off Equestria and into this lunar stable?”

“Some of us are,” a stallion’s voice replied calmly. “Liaison Sapphire knew the O.I.A. was conducting regular launches transporting Flux to the Lunar Palace. She started sending members of the M.o.A. and O.I.A. that she trusted up here with each launch. She was our first overmare, too. She thought it was a terrible waste of a stable to just give it to blanks. Oddly, though, with enough time they stopped acting quite like mere blanks, even when the implants were off and they were supposed to be in a rest state. They became almost like normal ponies. You saw how they celebrated ‘Princess Luna’s’ arrival.”

Essentially, GB never knew that and apparently... the Astrostable was really built for Blanks ? Why ? Why would GB care about Blanks that he doesn't consider to have a soul ? Why would he use money to build a secret stable on the Moon for Blanks ? Why would he let people possibly tamper with Horizons ? How is any of this making sense ?

After another waste of time about "Bj you're staying behind" "No I'm not", they start to fight against their enemies and we discover that BJ can now read minds because of her almost dying of Moonstone poisoning. Because fuck you. And it's actually more than that, she just got the telepathy perk since people can reply back to her if they focus. It's splendid like that.

Then we see how the Nightmare Castle is built as to trap Nightmare Moon by appealing to her vanity. It would almost be interesting if it wasn't something completely secondary and even kind of counter-intuitive. Wasn't the goal of Horizons to fire and wreck the world, Luna included, if she was to become a Tyrant ? Why had a Looney Toons style trap to it all ?

Fight ensues and in the middle of it, hallucinations of her friends current situations are superposing themselves and while it would visually be interesting, it makes the scene quite disjointed and even confusing at times. I suppose that's the point but it doesn't change that it's not very... easy to read it and keep the situation BJ is in in mind.

Fighting continues, P-21 almost dies but doesn't and BJ is now talking to the Dealer, Echo, that had followed Cognitum and decided to help her since he is a fucking nihilist that thinks that the world deserves to suffer and be punished for how bad at fixing the world ponies are. I don't know why I'm talking about a character that's dead to me but here you have it.

Then we meet the big moon rock called Tom and it starts talking to the heroes, saying that he needs to kill the Eater of Souls... On that note, the chapter ends.

Closing thoughts : Bullshit ex machina, Death fake-outs and more lore collapsing onto itself. Somber is losing his grip on his own creation I'm afraid. Unless the generation of drama through easy means is the metric we use to evaluate his success.

Comments

[rainsilent]

If I may go back to Glory's death take 1. it sums up my issue with PH pretty much spot on. A handful of moments that potentially border on great that lose a lot of their impact due to a lot of meh around it including meh characters and a lot of things that don't make sense. To be honest I lost most of my interest in reading PH before chapter 20. Its just worse than the original in most every way in my opinion. The amount of rule bending and suspension of belief required for BJ alone is absurd. Beyond chapter 20 I have a hard time picking out highlight worthy moments that are just well written. The fact that you have to wait 50 some chapters for what I think is the best of the lot is not a positive thing either.

[The Amateur]

Like our incoherent, nominal heroes of PH, Plenitude makes a mad rush for the end of this story, nonsensical characterization and posterior pulls that stain all principles of storytelling be damned.