/mlpol/ - My Little Politics

>>376421
Go kill yourself, you inbred furfag sonichu britcuck.

>>376463
Is that loli-obsessed cringetard you're badly impersonating actually still alive? I'd check if he is by checking if he's shilled for his loli asset flip consoomer kusoge on reddit recently but I can't be arsed. It'd make you feel weird if he moved on to a happier more fulfilling life that doesn't involve you, right? Honestly it would be pretty funny if he turned his life around and made meaningful friendships outside. Heartwarming too.

Man, isn't it gay that the author of this gay fic hates the Enclave?

The Enclave is America as seen by liberals who thought the jewish anriwhite (but I repeat myself) Starship Troopers film is an accurate and hilarious mockery of american white conservative "fascists" and "their" neocon fascist military and "their" deep state. They get out their flamethrowers and miniguns and violently slaughter anyone who is not like them because hurr durr, fascists hate everyone who is not like them. They even have Frank Horrigan, a Super Mutant in power armour, because of course they do, of course these fascist humanists with strong opinions about mutants and poor people and tribals not being human would do the hypocrite transhumanist bit. You can't talk him into fucking off or killing himself but you can hack turrets to get help killing him and talk guys into helping you kill him. Weird, huh? People praised how you can talk The Master to death in Fallout 1 and end his dream of forced globalism and the new master race of mutant slaves unified under mandatory assimilation by telling him his master race is sterile and showing proof.

To a liberal, fascism is a vague idea. Unity, force, assimilation, control, order, the man, loss of individuality, self improvement, having standards, wanting living space, opposing authority, being authority, this is all fascist. Britain is fascist because it wasn't eager enough to start killing Germans sooner. America is fascist because sometimes it acts against communist regimes instead of for them. The Enclave is fascist because they wear power armour and go mwahaha and slaughter the innocent and helpless for no real reason. It doesn't matter if the fascists are objectively right to be "racist" against Ghouls and Super Mutants. It doesn't matter if democracy is such a shitshow in Star Wars everyone wants to go back to the Galactic Empire and reform it by any means necessary. Truth doesn't matter, only ideals, but the only ideals that matter is the herd, and the herd hates fascism because the herdmaster says fascism is collectivism but bad and also individualism but bad.

Even though in the Fallout Equestria setting they are just Pegasi who got sick of the surface world and its wars, they are shoehorned into the role of the Deep State Bad Military Men Serving Fake Presidents On Oil Rigs. Blackjack irrationally hates them because the author irrationally hates them. How dare those Pegasi not die to the last man fighting for a liberal shithole Equestria full of satanic zebra nuclear suicide bombers. How dare they suck at protecting charity workers. You know, as if they were obligated to try harder to feed and clothe and civilize the violent wasteland. But not with too much force of course, that would be fascist. No, you have to do it with extreme violence while saying it's for liberal democracy, that makes it okay. That makes everything okay.

More like ogay. God I'm hilarious.

>>376485
Anon, you seem to be doing better for yourself and I'm happy for you, just wanted to say

>>376485
Hi, I haven't talked to you since, but just wanted to say, welcome back, friend.

Kkat is fucking deranged.

He might not realize it, it might not motivate him to hurt others in real life through any method except voting for evil, but Kkat's story is one where a narcissistic murderhobo kills and robs and kills again until all the "inherently bad" are dead and all the "inherently good" get to enforce a liberal democracy where the grass is edible again and scarcity is gone. Ponies stop shitting in their beds and making guro art on walls for fun because they can eat grass again. Littlepip's plan for defeating the "fascists" was to take from them their superior capacity to feed themselves and others in the hopes that it forces them to rely on the surface world scavenging 200 year old ruins for food and they never resent the surface world for this... and nobody ever questions her assumed moral right to do this but her plan ends up being irrelevant when the author lets her noclip into the dev area and undo the apocalypse at will.

What libtardism does to a mf.

There's a masterpiece of a game that says it's morally wrong to try to read into an artist through what they create. Making dark violent art isn't necessarily a sign that you're mentally in a dark violent place, maybe you just want to make something dark and violent for fun or think it will sell well. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes it's not that deep. Maybe that chick made that shooter game full of advertisements of hot babes because she's saying something profound about advertising and art and maybe it's there because she's a victim of a body image disorder that causes her to resent hot babes in ads. Maybe that guy who made beautiful robot chicks die horribly in a shooter full of guro shit actually likes guro shit and maybe he's intentionally trying to make people uncomfortable by contrasting the beautiful with the grotesque, but either way that doesn't make his game any less of a coomer game than the shooter one where you're a hot buff demon chick.

And then there's chatoyance, a smug spoiled brat of a liberal boomer who, despite supposedly being in a loving relationship with two men, only bitched at me about how much he secretly resented them for feeling like their adopted parent when we talked about them, and every day he goes to his hugbox on fimfic to rant about hating Trump, wanting whites to be genocided, claiming antifa doesn't exist and did nothing wrong, loving the feeling of being lonely in No Man's Sky, ranting about hating humanity, crying about not being in Star Trek or the Friendship Is Optimal setting where humanity was so pathetically obsessed with escapism, an AI was able to talk most of humanity into killing themselves while uploading bad copies of themselves to Pornhub's VR Chat server's Equestria section. Or the Conversion Bureau setting where Equestria warps into Earth and forces humanity to choose death as soulless meat automatons or assimilation into ponyland while abandoning everything the author sees as toxically masculine about whites and humanity as a whole. You don't get to marry Twilight Sparkle, unless you're someone very lucky you become one of countless nameless faceless nobodies sent miles away from the ponies to figure Equestrian culture out from fucking books with no real pony friends because the author has terminal Scifi Brainrot and one of the earliest symptoms is Accute Dyscalculal Scaleosis, the inability to understand numbers when it comes to any sense of scale. He didn't grow up surrounded by crackhead wiggers in a slum in the ass end of nowhere, he had it too good and always felt he deserved better and humanity failed him for not giving him better. Every time his father forced him to move around the country that was a fresh chance to start over and make new friends but he chose to see evil in masculinity and white normalcy and this alienated him from most people and drove him into the manipulative arms of libtardism. He poisoned his loved ones with the killshot, the clot shot, the vax, call it what you want. And he's so fucking angry over the failures of his ideology. He wrote liberal propaganda taken to such an extreme it alienated other liberals and caused them to hate him for being different because that is liberalism's true face even when you're not a threat to its power, even when you only accidentally did a heresy against the liberal idea that liberals in power with sufficient power and technology can cure anything ever without needing any help from non-liberal ideologies or non-liberal alien friends or non-liberal gods. He has it so good he can go anywhere and do anything and he still rants in his hugbox about wanting whites genocided while he could be spending his final years offline surrounded by loved ones. Why love when you can hate? What libtardism does to a mf.

Fallout Equestria Project Horizons is so inconsistent in quality and full of holes because it's trying to fix Fallout Equestria by treating the symptoms (nonsense worldbuilding, bad main plot, invincible narcissist protagonist with uninteresting one-note gun drones for NPC allies) and ignoring the disease of liberalism. And being a manchild who doesn't get economies or people or storytelling but I repeat myself. And the fundamental incompatibility of ponies and Bethesda's Fallout. Ponies in Dark Setting works when you look at Dark Souls and admire the way goodness and kindness shines brighter in hell and struggling to hold on to what matters and do what's right has value. Bethesda's Fallout is a shooting gallery for children who wish they were playing Borderlands 2 right now.

>>376610
Literally the last two posts were praising your restraint and development, and then

>>376613
They were glad I was back and doing better than ever. If I was still a kid I'd rant about how great things are for me right now thanks to my own hard work but that was always a stupid thing for me to do.

Libtardism is the mind virus responsible for the fic sucking gay asshole. If I can't say that here because "post too long, how dare you not restrain yourself for me" where can I say it? Project Horizons exists because the author wanted to fix what personally frustrated him about this mediocre overhyped shitfic and prove to the fandom he can do better, yet his libtardism stops him from recognizing the Enclave in Fallout is objectively right, and his stated admiration of kkat (and desire not to alienate his fanbase by rewriting the dumbest parts of kkat's canon, making the fic niche within a niche within a niche) keeps him from rewriting shit.

Pegasi shouldn't be conscripted by an incompetent government directed by six young adults, one incompetent ruler who's been on the moon for a thousand years, and one mindbroken ruler, and sent to die killing a force your own country is importing and desperately trying and failing to civilize and integrate. Not one pony should have to fear a Zebra caravan full of rapefugees using military-grade chemical weapons against their foals or anyone else's foals just because the automated turrets activated when the hungry ziggers broke in to rob a school in the middle of fucking nowhere. pony columbnine/eleven's consequence: Mindbroken Celestia, Luna in power, Zigs malding harder.

>"bUt OnLy A fAsCiSt WoUlD oPpOsE wAr!"

The Enclave is painted as "evil and fascist and jingoistic and ruled by a transhumanist cultist madman who wants to become God" because this is what Evil looks like to the pozzed western mind. You don't draw devil horns on someone to show he's evil, you draw a SS uniform and a hitler moustache on him like the "Fascist Authority" in Rage. Making him a fat ugly diseased Trump "parody" like in Rage 2 is an option, but he wasn't relevant when FOE was written and Hitler will continue to be the enduring satanic Archetype of the new world order's satanism until they are destroyed.

I didn't feel like saying this until now but if Princess Luna walked into Zebrica and offered up her head, the Ziggers convinced "Nightmare Moon is Luna and the stars are eldritch abominations out to get us" might have stopped being pure evil in the name of respecting their own objectively evil morally and scientifically inferior backwards religion's beliefs. Or maybe not, who knows?

Just imagine a Fallout Equestria fanfiction where a Mare at an Enclave rally cheers, begs for them to bring her boys home before this war kills them, and then the jackbooted government thugs of Pinkie Pie's secret police show up to put everyone in re-education camps.

>"the jackbooted government thugs of Pinkie Pie's secret police"...

This is too divorced from reality for anything serious to be taken seriously. FOE fans would get mad because "How dare you humanize the Enclave" and "The Enclave didn't exist at that point in canon, they weren't a political movement, they were le ebil secret fascist sympathizers in teh govt".

Fanfictions have to take the "Yes, and" approach to writing if they don't want to alienate viewers by saying "No, actually" instead. It comes with the territory. If you say "No, that's fucking retarded" and substitute your own headcanons for "real" canon you alienate fans of that shit canon even if your own story ends up better for it. There is no salvaging this shit, it's just too fucking retarded.

Twilight suddenly has a brother and he's married to a third alicorn with a whole kingdom, Discord is friends with Fluttershy, Twilight runs a retarded school to teach foreigners ethics yet sucks and requires these kids to figure it out for themselves through trial and error, and Pinkie Pie is married to Weird Al's self-insert? Yes, and... Any story just has to deal with that, ignore it, or provide an excuse for why certain show elements don't show up when they should, or alienate fans of this nonsense by rejecting it entirely and saying no, there are two Alicorns, Twilight doesn't have a brother, and nothing after season one is canon.

Fallout's world went to war with itself and nuked itself because "We started running out of resources, especially oil, let's invade Canada for fucking OIL" even though nuclear power can produce more than enough energy for everyone's energy needs, and Fallout cars have their own nuclear reactor engines that go boom when shot enough.

It's been 200 years and that bitch running a trading post out of a pre-war diner can't be arsed to clean the Environmental Storytelling Skeletons from her living space. The new Fallout TV show came out and said it's Canon(tm) that Vault-Tec nuked the world to create instant demand for nuclear shelters instead of being paid to make more and also so they can have all the money ever, and Shady Sands was nuked so the show can contain nostalgiabait memberberries without the NCR getting in the way of being bootleg Borderlands but gayer.

Fallout Equestria let the ziggers in, they attacked because "the night is evil", they were given Healing ICBMs because Fluttershy thought if nobody could be hurt nobody would be evil, the ziggers detonated hellfire megaspells in Equestria because "I'm not letting Nightmare Moon win". Fluttershy's "kindness" led to the downfall of Equestria but she gets to survive this shit and live happily ever while her friends get horribly killed and Celestia gets trapped in a fucking machine to powerlessly watch this meat grinder of a world keep churning..Luna's skull was worn by a red and black Alicorn OC and bronies call this shit "peak".

To make a good coherent story you have to let go of the past and learn from its mistakes.

Can't keep coming back to these died-up old wells. There are older stories, ancient stories, with better lessons to teach.

"Let go, and begin again" was what FNV wanted to teach.

>>376616
If you weren't a self-absorbed twat you would realize (it's obvious, look at the poster ID) that I was one of the people trying to give credit for ny dong what you are now doing in spades
>To make a good coherent story you have to
When have you ever made a good coherent story?

>>376616
>If I was still a kid I'd rant
>proceeds to rant
Congrats on growing up my dude

>>376263

Anyway, the party is in some old high school for some reason or other; I think they're here to search for old computer parts or something. They head to the Library and poke around a little.

>he looked down at a textbook showing two red-striped zebras. I thought they looked a bit like hooved candy canes myself. I looked at the caption beneath. ‘The Proditor, or ‘traitors’ in the zebra tongue, were those few zebras willing and allowed to fight for Equestria against their own kind. Using talismans to permanently alter their stripe color, they fought with distinction until being phased out due to security concerns after the Battle of Shattered Hoof Ridge.’
Always kill a traitor before an enemy, Jim Jam.

>I noticed the Crusaders were looking a bit nervous. “What’s up?” I asked them. “First day of school jitters?”
Wait, the Crusaders? Why are they here? Have they been here the whole time?

I went back to the beginning of the chapter and found this:
>The seven of us had stumbled onto the grounds and been ordered to report to the office or face immediate vaporization.
This is literally the only indication we are given that the party is larger than its usual three members.

This is why setting the scene is important. This is also why it's important to make sure all characters are active in any scene they appear in. If you can't handle this, or you've got too many characters in a scene to keep track of, then you need to tailor your scenes so that only the essential characters are included. The reader can't see what's in your head, so you have to paint as complete an image for them as possible.

I re-read the beginning portion of this chapter, as well as the end of the previous chapter, and here is what I think is going on:

The four Crusaders, whose names are Adagio, Medley, Sonata and Allegro, are apparently tagging along with the party for some yet-unexplained reason. They are a hold-over from the previous episode: the ranchers had accused them of being cattle-rustlers, but it turned out that the dragons were the real culprits. After the dragons were dealt with, the party left the ranchers' land, and the Crusaders went with them.

To the author's credit, on closer inspection I see that he does explicitly note the presence of the additional party members. In the culvert scene that ends Chapter 8, he briefly describes their sleeping arrangement and notes that there are seven ponies in their group.

However, this is not enough to reinforce the presence of the new characters. For most of the adventure so far, the party has either consisted of Blackjack, Morning Glory and P-21, or just Blackjack and P-21 traveling as a duo. The four foals are a new addition, and they haven't really done all that much to distinguish themselves. What's more, the closing scene of the previous chapter didn't focus on them at all; they were apparently sleeping in the culvert while the fight was going on.

It was also not made explicitly clear at the end of the chapter that the seven of them would continue to travel together. There's no obvious reason why they should, and there's been little mention of them. I had assumed the party and the Crusaders would have parted ways by now, so I haven't been imagining them as part of the scene.

Again: this is why it's important to properly set a scene. The last two sections of Chapter 8 were mostly focused on conversation, with very little attention paid to the party's surroundings. The second to last scene, where they are all listening to the radio, I had envisioned taking place back at the bunker where the party first encountered the Crusaders, but upon closer inspection it seems like they were all on the road together. The opening scene of this chapter just dumps us unceremoniously into this school, with absolutely no explanation given as to what even the three main party members would be doing there, let alone four ancillary characters who have no obvious reason to be tagging along.

Things like this shouldn't be ambiguous. If the dialogue in a given scene is more important than the action then by all means focus on dialogue, but at the same time it should be clear to the reader where the characters are and what they are doing. Moreover, if you're going to have seven characters in a scene, then all seven of them need to be actively involved in whatever is going on. Characters who stand in the background and don't speak are quickly forgotten. Even if the main focus is on P-21, BJ and MG, the four crusaders should either be interjecting lines into the conversation periodically, or doing stuff in the background that reinforces their presence. Remember: the reader can't see what's in your head; they need to be told what's going on.

Anyway, the party is in the Library of this old high school for some reason or another. The author has at least established that much. It seems that the Crusaders at least have some general knowledge of this place, so maybe the idea is that they're acting as guides or something.

>“It’s just…” Adagio muttered, “…there’s supposed to be ghosts here.”
>I would have laughed, but then again I laughed when Scoodle had seemed afraid in the boneyard. Not again. Besides, with the Wasteland, who knew what you might run into? “Well. If there are, they’ll have to get through me first!” I replied
Ghosts are by definition incorporeal, so getting through her shouldn't be all that hard. Just sayin.

>Using their hall passes, P-21, Glory, and the Crusaders dispersed from the classroom and set about looting anything edible, drinkable, or medical they could get their hooves on.
>This left me alone in the second floor of the library and looking out at Brimstone's Fall.
Yet again, we see the after-effects of poor scene-setting cascading downward and causing ripple-effects that ruin enjoyment of the story. Are they in the library or a classroom? Or is the entire building a library? If so, then does that mean it's not a school? Things like this shouldn't be ambiguous.

>>376645

>And we were doomed because I was going to have to come up with a plan. Me. The not a smart pony.
First of all, this sentence:
>The not a smart pony.
is bad and you should feel bad. In fiction it's permissible to play fast and loose with grammar for effect, but your prose needs to at least be readable. Simply adding a few hyphens would make all the difference:
>The not-a-smart-pony.

Second, it's not clear why the task of coming up with a plan should automatically fall on Blackjack's shoulders. Actually, third, it's not even clear why anyone needs to come up with a plan, since it's never even been established what the fuck they are doing here in the first place.

>Brimstone's Fall wasn’t much to look at, really; just a round, jagged hole punched in the badlands’ surface. It had been a gemstone mine. Then, during the height of the war, a dragon had fallen right on top of the mine workings. The ‘Shadowbolts’ pegasus strike force, along with heavy ground support, slew a powerful dragon allied with the zebras, but hundreds of soldiers had died before the dragon perished. I knew all of this because there was a framed news article hanging next to the window.
>In two hundred years it hadn’t changed much. It lay right beside rail lines stretching to the southwest, towards Fillydelphia. On the surface were a large administration building and two long barracks-style houses. Since I didn’t see any slaves, I assumed that they had to be quartered underground. Two nested chain link fences topped by razor wire surrounded the hole and the three buildings, with a guarded hoof bridge built over the rail spurs where they passed through the fences. A chain link gate blocked the space under the bridge. Maybe we could find--
Fascinating, but my original question still stands: why the fuck did you come here and what the fuck are you trying to achieve?

If I remember correctly, back at the Wal-Mart BJ mentioned something about going to Paradise or Belcher's Grove or wherever Bottlecap's sister is supposed to be running her slave operation, to try and put a dent in the slave trade because slavery is icky. Maybe that's why they came here? The above paragraph mentions slaves, so for the sake of my own sanity I'm just going to proceed on this assumption.

Anyway, while she's staring out the window, she gets a weird feeling and spins around, but sees nothing. Her PipBuck also doesn't show any enemies. However, she keeps seeing mysterious movements out of the corner of her eye, and the Crusaders mentioned ghosts earlier. Presumably, this is meant to foreshadow whatever monster-of-the-week is going to appear in this episode.

P-21 returns to whatever room BJ is in, apparently finished with whatever area he was exploring of whatever building they are in. He tosses her a Sparkle-Cola.

>I caught it with my magic and deftly popped the top. It was warm, but it was Sparkle-Cola.
As an aside, is there any logical way she would even know what Sparkle-Cola tastes like cold? Seems to me refrigeration would be a lost science by now. From what I understand, they've mostly been getting their soda from old vending machines, but I would assume that the only way to do this would be to break into them. Unless they're powered by some kind of self-sustaining magic, the machines themselves logically ought to have stopped working by now. Details like this aren't going to make or break a story, but putting thought into them will go a long way towards making your setting believable.

>“Yeah. Just trying to figure out how to get in there,” I said as I scanned the mine once again for some chink in their defenses. The guards moved in threes and fours. There wasn’t the slightest bit of cover to use to approach from the ground. And then there were the neighbors. Along the highway between the mine and the road was a strip mall. Most of the shops seemed more or less intact and there was a large gathering of ponies there. At least twenty or so. “Allegro? Who’re they?”
>He trotted to the window and I held the binoculars for him. “Oh, them. Pecos. They’re just a gang outta Flank. Not as crazy as raiders. They usually work protection for the slavers.”
>Great. Between the Pecos and the slavers I was looking at forty or fifty enemies. “They’re not slavers?”
Seriously, wtf are you guys even trying to accomplish here? From context, we can more or less piece together that this location is some kind of slavers' compound, and our little group of three seven friends is trying to infiltrate it because reasons. However, I must once again protest that no actual goal has yet been established. We can see what these characters are doing, but can only guess as to why they are doing it. This was one of the most pervasive problems in the first story.

>>376646

Thanks to my old friend Ctrl-F, I was able to find this in Chapter 7:

>“Are you able to?” Bottlecap stood and walked to me with a probing expression. “Because if you want to do something in the Wasteland, somepony is going to get hurt. Maybe you. Maybe your friends. Maybe somepony who deserves to hurt. Maybe somepony who doesn’t. Can you handle it?”

>Then I realized what she was asking me. Could I hurt? Could I kill? Could I handle paying the price for being a killer, or would I keep breaking over and over again till there was nothing left? “I don’t know,” I replied. “I thought I was. Now I don’t know what to think.”

>“Guess we’ll find out,” Bottlecap said softly. “You already struck a blow against her, thanks to DJ Pon3. I’ll never know how he got that recording, but I’m sure every slaving band is wondering just how much of a threat you really are. The more you disrupt supply, the better. But, eventually, you’ll have to tackle the demand. Some, like Red Eye in Fillydelphia, probably wouldn’t stop unless he died. But there are others, like Brimstone's Fall, where the slave operations are smaller and more manageable.”

>I glanced at my PipBuck and noticed that it had added a square far to the south and west of Megamart. How did it do that? Bottlecap noticed my look and smiled. “I can’t, of course, offer you a contract for this. If my sisters thought I was deliberately undermining them, it would be all-out war within the Finders.”

>I looked back at her. Do better. Could I? I had to. Otherwise I’d be nothing more than a killer. “Know of any contract work in the area?” I offered a tense smile. “After all, trouble seems to find me easily enough. When it does, who can say what’ll happen?”

The idea here seems to be that Bottlecap is asking Blackjack if she would be willing to take down her sister's slaving operation. She can't outright hire BJ to do this, since she can't be seen publicly moving against her sister, but she is clearly suggesting it. What's more, BJ seems to be willing to take the assignment, more for moral reasons than practical ones. This is the first time Brimstone's Fall is mentioned in the text, so presumably this is the answer to the question of why they would come here.

This at least provides BJ with a clear goal, and the dialogue does a reasonably good job clarifying her reasons for undertaking it. Everything would be fine and dandy, except in the very next scene we have this:

>The jobs were simple and legitimate. Patrol the Sunset Highway between Megamart and Flank, poke through the Miramare Air Station for some electronic parts, and deliver some mail to Flank’s residents. The route would also take me within spitting distance of Brimstone's Fall. If something should happen that put a dent in the demand side of the slave trade, then it’d not only help the people of the Wasteland but Bottlecap as well.
The implication here is that BJ & Co. are taking on three new contracts to replace the previous three which they completed. While the near-term goal is still to get to Brimstone's Fall, we should expect that these three tasks will need to be taken care of beforehand.

Generally, the best way to tell a large and complicated story is to break it into small episodes. There is a grand adventure that serves as the main plot of the story, but the journey is long, and will consist of many smaller quests that take place along the way.

Consider Fellowship of the Ring. Gandalf tells Frodo the legend and origins of the Ring, then instructs him to take it to Rivendell. However, first they are going to have to make it to the nearby village of Bree and meet up with Strider. This is Tolkien laying out the story and telling the reader what to expect: the main plot of the novel is going to focus on the journey to Rivendell, but the first episode is going to focus on the journey to Bree. The Rivendell trip itself is implied to be only a single episode in an even larger journey that is hinted at but not yet fully fleshed out.

The idea is to break the main story into episodic microstories so the reader isn't overwhelmed. This is especially important in large, complicated stories that involve a lot of locations, events and characters. Each episode should have its own clear beginning, middle and end, with each episode itself serving as a waypoint in the larger story. You should not begin a new episode until the previous one has concluded.

However, Somber has given us a bit of a rug-pull. He's already set up a couple of long-term goals for his character: defeat the wankers who invaded her Stable, and get macguffin.mp3 decoded. He then adds a medium-term goal to the mix: take down the slaving operation run by Bottlecap's sister, because morals or whatever. To accomplish this, he assigns BJ three short-term goals, which are basically just one-off quests that serve the dual purpose of earning the group some money (essential to the long-term goal) and bringing them closer to the slaver group (essential to the mid-term goal).

One would thus expect that the next item on BJ's agenda would involve one of these three short-term goals; however, they were sidetracked by the episode with the dragons, due to an unexpected encounter. That's fine, but now that this side-quest is complete, we should expect the party to return to its original goals.

Patrolling the highway is kind of an open-ended quest that could be done concurrently with the others, so logically, in the next major episode, BJ should either:
>poke through the Miramare Air Station for some electronic parts
or
>deliver some mail to Flank’s residents

However, instead of doing either of these things, they are suddenly in Brimstone Falls, exploring some previously-unmentioned school for some yet-unexplained reason. The effect is jarring; it's like Gandalf telling Frodo that he needs to go to Rivendell, but then in the next chapter they're suddenly in the Misty Mountains.

>>376647

Anywho, BJ stands at the window watching the slavers and plotting her next move. It's a pretty standard FoE setup: the slavers operate in some kind of underground tunnel network called the Mines, and use trains to move their cargo. They have a semi-organized bandit gang called the Pecos working security for them. Lots of guards, probably monsters and whatever too, going down there would be certain death, yada yada yada she's going to go down there anyway, because reasons.

She decides that the best way to infiltrate the compound is to disguise herself as one of the Pecos and sneak in. This seems like kind of a dumb idea, since she is now one of the most recognizable figures in the entire Wasteland, and on top of that she has a huge bounty on her head. I think she's well past the point where taking off her stable barding and putting on a hat is a sufficient enough effort to disguise herself. However, I will once again give Somber a few points for improving on kkat's formula here: this plan is slightly less ridiculous than Littlepip's Rambo-style one-mare-army infiltration of the slaver compound, and considerably less ridiculous than that trick she used where she made herself suddenly invisible by hiding behind a bedsheet.

>The sun was just starting to set when the train returned. Lots of empty boxes and crates; apparently the trade was all one way. Did the gems go back to Paradise, or somewhere else?
Apparently, the Mines are literal mines, and the slavers are using the slaves to mine gems for some reason. I had assumed the slavers were in the business of simply catching and selling slaves, not putting them to work, but it seems I was wrong. At this point I don't expect the economics in this or any FoE story to make even a lick of sense, so I'm just going to roll with it. The slavers round up slaves and have them mine gems, which are apparently valuable, but not as valuable as the worthless bottlecaps these retards all use for currency. Got it; let's move on.

Anyway, since the conversation is apparently over for now, P-21, MG and the foals run off once again to scavenge more supplies or whatever, while BJ stands pondering the futility of her latest undertaking. However, she can't quite shake the feeling that she's not alone in the room. It turns out that her suspicions are justified:

>Something shimmered faintly as hooves clattered on the teacher’s desk top. Then a long, thin rifle barrel appeared from thin air, pressing right against my forehead. This close, I could make out the faintest of blurs in the air.
Yada yada yada, it turns out to be a zebra sniper wearing some kind of invisibility cloak.

>I had to admit I was impressed and scared out of my gourd at the same time.
This sentence is bad and you should feel bad.

Anyway, BJ correctly deduces that the zebra is not a threat, since he has an obvious advantage and could have easily killed her multiple times by now if he'd wanted to. He introduces himself as Lancer.

>“Okay, Lancer. Like I said. I don’t think you want to kill me. I’d rather not kill you.”
>“Liar,” he said quietly. “All ponies do. It is what you live for.”
>“Of all the shit going on my life, you’re telling me I’m going to get killed over a war that was over two centuries ago?”
>“The war is not over. The Remnant persists,” he answered.
Is there any particular reason BJ would assume the war is Lancer's motivation for thinking this way? Given everything we've seen in this setting so far, it's not hard to imagine a casual non-pony observer reaching the conclusion that killing is what ponies live for, with or without any knowledge of the war.

Anyway, BJ doesn't really want to fight this guy, but at the same time, he's holding a gun on her. When MG and the foals return to the room for the second time in like fifteen minutes, BJ takes advantage of his momentary distraction and disarms him. However, he recovers quickly, and they end up in whatever the equine equivalent of a Mexican standoff would be. She proposes a truce. The zebra reluctantly agrees, and they both lower their weapons.

>“Right. So. Like I said. I don’t want to kill you. I’m pretty sure you don’t want to kill me.” I looked out the window and gestured to the mine with my head. “In fact, I bet you’re here for the same reason I am: free the slaves?”
I get that she's trying to reassure him of her good intentions, but is there any plausible reason why she should assume this? The most likely explanation for his being here is that he just wants to loot supplies.

Unfortunately, the conversation gets rather silly from here. Lancer asks Blackjack if she "serves the stars." Naturally, BJ has no idea what the fuck he's on about, though we can probably assume it has something to do with that wacky zebra religion from the first book. She tells him that no, she doesn't serve the fucking stars. He then asks her whom, if not the fucking stars, does she serve? She explains that she serves the idea of making things better. The zebra accepts this explanation, and agrees to help her free the slaves. Glad we got that all sorted out.

Anyway, at this point, P-21 returns with the cowboy hat and jacket that BJ asked him to fetch. She now explains her moronic plan to disguise herself by putting on a hat, gain the trust of the Pecos, and then something something free the slaves. However, in her defense, she's not completely retarded: she tasks this zebra she just met, whose loyalty she has absolutely no reason to trust, with sitting on a nearby roof and covering her with his sniper rifle.

She now asks everyone in the party to turn over all of their booze and cigarettes, and then heads for the door. On her way out, one of the foals warns her that the zebra is not to be trusted:

>“He’s a bad zebra. The Remnants… they do terrible things, Blackjack,” the filly said as she shivered.
I'm assuming the "Remnants" are another one of these goofball factions, probably some kind of holdover from the war.

>>376658

The foal continues:

>“We can’t stay here. Soon as we can, we’re gonna run. Robots won’t chase us far if they catch us at all.”
>“But where will you go?”
>“We got a place over near Chapel. We’ll head there.” She pointed with a hoof along the railroad tracks.
I will once again protest that there is no clear reason why these foals are tagging along with the party in the first place, or why any of them came to this school. If the foals have a hideout in Chapel, wherever that is exactly, then logically that would have been their destination after the dragon episode concluded, just like the party's next logical destination should have been either the Miramare Air Station or Flank.

>I stepped back and let her run down the hall towards the stairs. The other three peeled out of their hiding places to follow her. Great. And now my mane was itching again.
What is the deal with her mane always itching, anyway? Does she have lice, or is it supposed to be some kind of indication that she senses danger? Since she is almost constantly in danger and her mane is almost constantly itching, it's a little hard to tell.

Anyway, whatever; the Crusaders take off, so I guess we don't have to worry about them anymore. I'm still not sure why the author decided to include them in this episode at all, since there's no logical reason they should even be here and they didn't really contribute anything, but we'll put a pin in that for now. The scene ends in a page break.

>I was not a smart pony. For example, none of my plans were completely pulled together. There were little gaps here and there that I had to fill in on the fly. Actually, if you looked at all my plans, that’s how they generally ran. Nice strings of improvisation piecing together a tiny bit of solid reasoning. This plan was simple: send the Pecos off on a wild parasprite hunt to the north. It wasn’t always just because my brain was being lazy, though. Sometimes, it was because that no matter how well you plan, you’ll always hit that point where everything falls apart.
Wait, the plan is to do what now? Send the Pecos up north? I thought the plan was to put on a hat and pretend to be one of them while the zebra you just met trains a sniper rifle on you. I'm hella confused rn. Oh, whatever; her zany plans are still better than any of Littlepip's.

So anywho, BJ leaves the school, presumably dodging the killer detention-robots somehow, and makes her way towards the strip mall where the Pecos are hiding out. On the way, she hears gunfire, though it is not directed at her. However, in addition to a penchant for zany, convoluted schemes, it turns out BJ also share's Littlepip's inability to avoid sticking her nose where it doesn't belong, so she diverts herself off course to go check it out.

It turns out that the gunfire she heard was a fight between two ponies and a radscorpion. The ponies are having trouble aiming because it's getting dark out. However:

>Me? I had enough radiation in me that I knew exactly what I was aiming at!
So...I guess she's still radioactive for some reason or other, and...being radioactive somehow improves her aim? I'm hella confused rn.

Anyway, whatever; there's a brief scuffle, but ultimately the radscorpion is dispatched without incident. One of the ponies is stung during the battle, but as luck would have it BJ has some antivenom on hand, so she administers it.

>I pushed the mirrored glasses a little further up my muzzle as I checked the earth pony’s breathing.
Wait, she's still wearing those sunglasses? At night? Why?

Anyway, whatever. At this point, a searchlight on one of the guard towers suddenly lights up, and one of the guards jokes that he shouldn't have bet on the scorpion. The implication here is that the guards could have intervened in the fight, but chose not to.

>There was laughter, and then the voice warned, “Get back to your hole, Pecos.” A bullet smacked into the dirt at our hooves.
Wait, aren't the Pecos and the slaver guards supposed to be on the same side? I'm hella confused rn.

Anyway, whatever. Blackjack introduces herself as Marigold, which is the same fake name she gave the robot principal of the school that she was just exploring for some still-unexplained reason. So, I guess the plan is still to put on a hat and pretend to be a Pecos? The two ponies who had been fighting the scorpion introduce themselves as Dusty Trails and Tumbleweed. They also provide a bit of explanation for what is going on in...wherever the hell they are, Brimstone Falls I guess:

>“Well, you want my advice? Keep walking. Being a Pecos is hell out here. It’s fun enough when you can strut around in Flank, but we’re getting screwed in the worst ways here.”
>“Oh yeah?” My mane prickled like crazy. “How so?”
>“You just saw it. Sidewinder’s got his protection racket, but he gets the caps and we get left out here for weeks. We’re supposed to deal with the trouble, but all we really get is bashed around by those bastards at the mine, the critters in the waste, and any slaver looking to up their quota.”
From the explanation earlier, my understanding was that the slavers were conducting some kind of gem-mining operation, and the Pecos were providing protection. It's sounding like that's still more or less the case, but there seems to be some animosity between the two factions. This Sidewinder character I'm assuming is the leader of the Pecos, and it sounds like he takes the lion's share of the profits while the grunt soldiers get stuck doing all the fighting. However, if that's the case...why even stick around? If they're not getting paid, and the slavers are so unappreciative of their efforts that they casually shoot at the ponies who are supposed to be protecting their operation...what exactly is the incentive for the average Pecos to keep putting up with the abuse? Why not run off and find another faction to join that pays better? Why not just murder the slavers and take over their operation? This makes very little sense.

>>376659

Blackjack and the two Pecos ponies make their way to the strip mall:

>The strip mall had to be getting its power from somewhere, as neon light poured into the cracked parking lot. It wasn’t a town, per se. I couldn’t see ponies raising families here. It seemed more like a glorified hangout for the Pecos.
Yeah, I mean...isn't that exactly how it was described earlier? What were you expecting to find? According to the Crusaders:

>They’re just a gang outta Flank. Not as crazy as raiders. They usually work protection for the slavers.
So what exactly was BJ expecting to find here? A permanent settlement with families and kids? Does not grok.

And speaking of things that do not grok:

>“Yup. We’re not ‘licensed’ with Paradise, so better not be near the mine on your lonesome. They’ll invite you in and then never let you leave.” She sighed, “But being a Pecos is better than being solo, or so I keep telling myself every damned day.” I gave a grin and prayed to Celestia she didn’t ask me why I happened to be on my lonesome.
I'll once again restate my objection that this whole arrangement seems like a pretty bad deal for the Pecos. They are underpaid, underappreciated, and they run a daily risk of being captured and enslaved? Seems like there are easier ways to make a living out here.

Also, Blackjack brings up a pretty good point: why aren't these two more curious about her origins? I mean, there are all these reports on the radio about a mysterious unicorn mare with a black and red mane who goes around murdering slavers, right? And then one day, this mysterious unicorn mare with a black and red mane suddenly shows up near the slaver colony and is all like, "Hello there, fellow Pecos, could you please explain everything about being a Pecos to me, even though I am a Pecos like you and should already know all of it?" But no, this mare couldn't possibly be a suspicious character. I mean, she's wearing a cowboy hat, right? That means she's a Pecos, even if we know every Pecos around here and have never seen her before. Makes perfect sense.

>“I’m gonna go lay down, Dusty,” Tumbleweed said, the brown mare giving me a grateful smile.
Is she gonna go lay down the law? If not, then Tumbleweed is gonna go lie down.

>There was something in her vacuous eyes that bothered me. She kept… twitching. And swallowing.
Oh, you say that about everypony with vacuous eyes who's always twitching and swallowing. How about a little trust?

Anyway, they all go into the saloon, and BJ joins a card game. As they play, Dusty Bottoms tells BJ her life story. It's a pretty standard deal: her parents were caravan traders, until one day her father did business with some raiders who slipped a landmine into his backpack. He kerploded, and after that Dusty was captured and enslaved. She spent her formative years as a sex slave/housekeeper for some kindly old mare, who willed her to her granddaughter after she died. However, the granddaughter didn't have much use for a sex slave/housekeeper, so she set her free. Dusty then ran off to pursue a life of being a rootin' tootin' outlaw.

Once she finishes telling her story, the rest of the Pecos at the poker table tell theirs. They're basically all just variations on the same theme, so there's no need to go into detail here. However, the author slips in a seemingly-important tidbit of information: apparently, there is still a functioning power supply somewhere in this city, which one of the Pecos was able to hook up to the strip mall. This seems to clear up the mystery of how the neon lights were functioning. More to the point, this power source seems to have something to do with The Core, which has been mentioned a few times now.

This part seems especially relevant:

> “But yeah. They buried all kinds of stuff underground. Folks might not realize it, but Hoofington’s a fucking fortress. The whole city was designed by the best minds at the M.W.T. and Stable-Tec. The zebras seemed so dead set on destroying the city that they had to. At the end of the war, Hoofington was getting attacked by the hour. Zebras wanted it bad, but they never took it,” she explained as she drew four cards with a soft hiss of disappointment. “Now the underground is ghoul territory, and worse. Drives the Steel Rangers crazy, not being able to get at all the tech buried down there.”
Presumably, BJ will end up exploring this area at some point.

Anywho, it turns out these rootin' tootin' outlaws aren't quite as retarded as they seemed at first. They manage to guess that Blackjack is a Stable pony, yet for some reason don't make the connection that she's also the famous Security mare with the 10,000 bit bounty on her head. Maybe they're not quite as rootin' tootin' as they seemed at first, either. In any case, BJ manages to bluff her way past them with a mostly-true account of her backstory, which they seem to accept.

>“So why’d you join the Pecos?” Dusty asked me.
>Technically I hadn’t. “I dunno really,” I said, thinking. If I had to join the Pecos, why would I? Then I looked at the bottle of whiskey, the cards, and the ponies around me. “Guess so that I wouldn’t be lonely any more. Have a life like I did in 99.”
You know, this actually brings up a pretty good point. Why doesn't she just join the Pecos? They seem to lead a merry life, apart from the radscorpions and the shitty wages and the constant threat of slavery dangling over their heads like the sword of Damocles. And on top of that, this gang clearly isn't all that hard to join. From what I can tell, all you have to do is show up at their hideout wearing a hat and they immediately accept you as one of their own. Seems like joining up with them would be a fair sight less complicated than...whatever she's trying to do here, exactly.

>>376658
>At this point I don't expect the economics in this or any FoE story to make even a lick of sense, so I'm just going to roll with it
You'll spare yourself by doing so
>>376659
>she's still wearing those sunglasses? At night? Why?
So she can so she can keep track of the visions in her eyes?
You knew it was coming
Without knowing your method of drafting these posts, would you consider it disruptive if someone were to occasionally step in and summarize sections? I can't imagine you're in a hurry to take any longer than necessary in scaling the entirety of this

Can Crapflap and her friends really claim killing Slavers is "Self-Defense" if they go to the Slaver place full of Slavers with the explicit goal of shooting Slavers and freeing their property, maybe even collecting bounties put on Slavers for being Slavers by anti-Slavers in another location where Slavery is illegal?

It all seems rather videogamey. That location on your map is full of bad guys who love doing bad things and if you shoot them all you're still a hero.

No consideration given to the economic forces behind slavery. No consideration given to the setting's resource scarcity. Are the Slavers people forced into working for slavers because the alternative is to raid civilized places for your daily food and water, or scavenge areas full of enemy scavengers? Have the anti-slavery poners tried to build a functional society where people can find honest work and learn valuable trades without needing to be wandering thieves, armed organized thieves, slavers, or slaves? Are the Slavers working for the greater good of the Wasteland by forcing the weak into back breaking labor to solve post apocalyptic problems and build a sustainable future long term? No, the slavers are ugly edgy bad guys who go mwahaha and Littlepoop- I mean Crapflap is totally justified in going on the warpath and invading their territory and gunning down every last one of them and sending caged poners on their way like videogame NPCs who vanish when out of view.

>>376750
>No consideration given to the economic forces behind slavery. No consideration given to the setting's resource scarcity
GG just came around to "the monetary system is retarded, just go with it", don't you start on. Besides, Somber at least has the presence of mind to separate the slavers from the Pecos, giving insight into the idea that "hey, not all the antagonists and non-heroes are mustache-twirling comic book villains".
You might consider having nuance like that, ya know. If you were a writer that is, just saying.

>>376663
>Without knowing your method of drafting these posts, would you consider it disruptive if someone were to occasionally step in and summarize sections? I can't imagine you're in a hurry to take any longer than necessary in scaling the entirety of this
I don't have any objections I suppose, though I will probably still continue to slog through the story at my own pace. I don't expect to finish this any time in the near future one way or the other.

>>376662

>A bit later, the game broke up as Big Red and Harbinger left. I needed a little bit of air, so I stepped outside… and into the faint drizzle. Not even really rain. I looked down at my hooves. Was there still power underneath me? Even after two centuries and the bombing? Hoofington was like a country within a country. Lots of secrets are buried here. Hoofington’s a fucking fortress. I looked to the north at the faint green glow in the distance. Secrets. Why did it feel like EC-1101 was burning a hole in my leg?
We're reaching levels of foreshadowing that shouldn't even be possible.

>A buck lay on the porch outside Twister’s, his muzzle pressed into a filthy plastic bag reeking of dung. He inhaled deeply over and over again, twitching.
Apparently, the Pecos have discovered the magic of jenkem.

Anyway, Dusty and Blackjack step out of the saloon, and their conversation continues:

>“So, guess you’re not one of Sidewinder’s more clueless spies.”
>“You thought I was a spy?”
>“Showing up in the middle of the night? Asking questions like you do? You’re something,” Dusty said with a grin as she looked up at the clouds.
Swing and a miss, Dusty. It seems that Somber is continuing yet another of kkat's established tropes: if you have an extremely dumb protagonist who needs to get away with doing something that is extremely dumb even by her already extremely dumb standards, just make sure that everyone else in the story is slightly dumber than she is.

On the other hand:

>“Dusty, how do you feel about slavery?”
>“Why do stable ponies ask the dumbest questions?” she asked in turn with a sigh and a frown. “It doesn’t matter how I feel. Slavery happens. It’s not even the worst thing that can happen to a pony. Ghouls losing their minds? Going crazy and turning into cannibals? Mutating into some creature? Being torn in half by waste critters? There’s a thousand and one ways to die. Wearing a slave collar is somewhere in the middle of that list.”
>“But is it okay?” I pressed.
>“It happens. Who cares if I think it’s okay?” she retorted with a frown as I pressed my luck. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”
I'm actually going to go ahead and revise my previous statement. I'm sure the author didn't intend it to be read as such, but Dusty's speech here is honestly the closest thing to a common-sense worldview I've ever come across in the Fallout: Equestria universe. Ten points for Gryffindor.

Unfortunately, though:

>“What if you could?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
>She stared at me, now looking scared. “Who the fuck are you really?” I just looked at her, pulling off the glasses to look straight into her eyes. She shook her head slowly. “No… fuck… no… no you’re not… no fucking way…”
It seems the last horse has finally crossed the finish line, so to speak. The hat might have fooled her for a few seconds, but Dusty can no longer deny what is right in front of her: the mysterious stranger who showed up out of nowhere, looking exactly like the "security mare" everyone is talking about is, in fact, the security mare everyone is talking about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8Kyi0WNg40 [Embed]

So anyway, despite the momentary glimmer of sanity, this conversation is back to being a "who is the biggest retard" contest. So: who is the biggest retard? Dusty, the rootin' tootin' outlaw, who is just now figuring out that the stranger who showed up out of the blue wearing an obvious disguise is actually the infamous Security Mare? Or Blackjack, the infamous Security Mare, who went to the trouble of disguising herself as a rootin' tootin' outlaw, only to end up immediately blowing her own cover just because she can't shut her fucking yap about the ethics of slavery for thirty goddamn seconds? Cast your vote now.

>“No… I can’t… fuck… no! How-- how the fuck can you do this?” she hissed as she paced back and forth. “You saved my fucking life. You saved Tumbleweed’s too. How the...” She clenched her eyes shut as she sat and thumped the sides of her head. “This is some fucked up booze dream and I’m going to wake up right the fuck now.”
>I put a hoof on her shoulder. “It’s not a dream. It’s a chance to do better. I can’t guarantee it’ll work. In fact, given how my plans usually go, I’d be fucking scared to death. But it’s still a chance for a free life. For you. For those slaves in the mine.”
>Dusty Trails closed her eyes, raising her face to the clouds as the rain drizzled along her muzzle. Finally she pulled off her hat and sighed as she glared at me. “Fuck…”
My apologies to anyone who actually voted. As it turns out, they're both completely retarded. Blackjack, having just blown her own cover for no good reason, now proposes to Dusty that she betray both her employer and her fellow rootin' tootin' outlaws, in order to join this insane pony she just met on her non-paying quest to liberate some slaves or whatever, because morals and stuff. Dusty, whose mind appears to have been temporarily short-circuited by the revelation that Blackjack's hat was a lie, decides to do exactly that. Though, to be fair, it's not exactly like she is giving up an especially glamourous life or a lucrative career; she's basically just abandoning one bad deal in favor of another.

There is a page break. When the new scene opens, we learn that the entire Pecos gang has heard about Security's infiltration of their camp, and have rushed off to collect the bounty. However, it seems that Blackjack somehow fooled them into thinking she had gone east to Flank, when she actually went north towards the mine. So, they are all off on a wild goose chase and will apparently pose no further threat. The author provides no explanation for how she managed to pull off this little ruse.

Anyway, she follows one of the trains into the mine, accompanied, apparently, by Lancer, Morning Glory and P-21. Not sure when they joined up with her or how, but whatever; I guess we'll just roll with it. Lancer snipes some guards, and they sneak inside.

>>376771

P-21 and Glory go off to loot stuff or whatever, and BJ sneaks upstairs to some room where some guard is typing something on some terminal. He has what appears to be a slave mare chained up next to his bed, presumably so she can read him bedtime stories and help him wake up in time for work in the morning.

>He turned to spot me in my security barding and his hoof reached for the band.
So she changed back into her security barding? When did this happen? In order for BJ to get from where she was at the end of the previous scene to where she is now, a lot of stuff would need to be happening off-camera.

First she had to trick the Pecos into running off to Flank, and while the author never clarifies it one way or the other, I would assume she employed Dusty for this. Next, she would have had to go traipsing across the radscorpion-infested desert, go back to the school, sneak her way past all the robot guards again, find her friends inside, and change back into her barding. Then, all four of them would have to sneak past the robot guards yet again, go traipsing back across the radscorpion-infested desert, and then sneak up to the railroad tracks, which is where they are when the scene opens.

Granted, most of this is fairly rote and it makes sense for the author to skip over it. However, it's also a lot of action; Somber really ought to have at least included a brief summary explaining how they made it from point A to point B.

Anyway, whatever. She beats up the guard but doesn't kill him. Through their conversation, we learn that the mines have actually been taken over by someone called Gorgon, who has apparently made slaves of the slavers. Everyone involved in their operation, including the guard and his bedmare, have to wear bomb-collars that kerplode if they stray too far from the compound. He also has the power to turn anyone he looks at to stone; hence the name "Gorgon." Oh, also: the slavers appear to have some connection to Sanguine, the boss behind Deus and his crew.

>“So. Strong. Bulletproof. Turns ponies into stone. Anything else?”
>“He can fly?” the mare offered. I facehoofed. I just had to ask, didn’t I?
Every time a fanfiction writer uses the word "facehoof" in a story, a cute little pony is savagely beaten, raped and murdered. Only you can prevent these senseless tragedies from occurring.

Anyway, BJ goes back downstairs to where P-21 is trying in vain to pick a lock. BJ uses a key she found on the guard she just beat up to make the job a little easier. Inside the closet is a huge cache of weapons, to which they naturally help themselves.

>There were energy cartridges for Glory and a strange pointy pistol-like object that smelled of ozone, so I guessed it was an energy weapon. I tossed it to her as well, and she gave a little squee as she immediately swapped out one beam pistol for the new weapon.
Every time a fanfiction writer uses the word "squee" in a story, an adorable little doe-eyed filly is brained over the head with a rock on her way to school, abducted, and passed around by Haitian migrants. Only you can prevent these senseless tragedies from occurring.

Anyway, if anyone is interested, the gun she just found is a disintegration pistol. So they have that now. BJ asks if any of them have ever heard of this Gorgon character, but none of them have. She then explains that he is a horrifying monster with big, nasty, pointy teeth, who can turn you to stone with a look. She suggests being prepared, because presumably they are about to fight this thing.

>I looked at P-21. He nodded. “Zappy zappy disintegration fun from above?” Glory, still embarrassed, gave a nod.
Every time a fanfiction writer, or anyone at all, uses the phrase "zappy zappy disintegration fun from above" in any context, your waifu is splashed in the face with acid, stabbed in the eyes with fondue forks, skinned alive, salted, slow-roasted over an open pit barbecue, splashed in the face with acid again, and then forced to watch all of the Haber episodes in one sitting, with no snack or bathroom breaks. Only you can prevent these senseless tragedies from occurring.

Anyway, they strap up, and head down into the mine proper. On the way, they pass a bunch of unsettlingly realistic-looking pony "statues." Eventually, they come to another guard station. They murder all of the guards and continue onward until they reach a gigantic pit mine, where a bunch of zebra and pony slaves are digging up gems and whatever. There is a big dragon skeleton in the center of the room.

From his description, Gorgon appears to be a giant cockatrice. He is sitting on a pile of bones and gems and stuff, watching his minions toil, when he suddenly notices the interlopers and attacks them. They all scatter and begin firing while trying not to look directly at him.

For some reason, Gorgon is also bulletproof and explosion-proof. They keep shooting him and throwing bombs at him, but nothing seems to kill him. Morning Glory gets turned to stone at one point. Then, Lancer and P-21 are turned to stone as well. Things are looking pretty grim for our intrepid heroes. Well, actually, we're down to just one hero now.

BJ spends several schizophrenic paragraphs pondering what she should do. Ultimately, she concludes that since being reckless and stupid got her into this mess, then continuing to be just as reckless and stupid should get her out of it. She shoots out all the lights in the room, there's another scuffle, and then yada yada yada, she pushes him into a rock crusher and that's the end of him. Fortunately, all the ponies he had turned to stone turn back to normal after he's dead, including BJ's friends.

>>376772

So now, all that's left to do is to rescue the slaves. Since the slavers were themselves turned into slaves by Gorgon, they appear to have had quite enough of slavery for the time being, and don't put up any resistance. BJ & Co. leads the entire group back out of the mine, where they are met by a bunch of the slaver guards, whose views on slavery don't appear to have changed. There's a big fight. Then, the Pecos show up out of absolutely fucking nowhere, and for some reason or other decide to attack the slaver guards. Yada yada yada, the slavers are now dead, and the day is won.

Believe it or not, things get even stranger from here. There were several zebras among the slaves, and for some reason they are all deaf. BJ is attempting to communicate with them, when suddenly Lancer appears and shoots her in the back. He then proceeds to gun down the other zebras, accusing them of "treason against the fallen Caesar." Apparently, loyalty to salad is a pretty big deal in the zebra kingdom.

Anywho, after this bizarre spectacle, Lancer looks BJ square in the eye, informs her that "the war is never over," and then he puts on his wacky invisibility cloak and disappears. The chapter ends here. Alrighty then.

>Footnote: Level Up.

>New Perk: Tough Hide (level 1) - The brutal experiences of the Equestrian Wasteland have toughened you. You gain +3 Damage Threshold for each level of this perk you take.

Nine chapters complete... That's 113,509 words total out of 1,780,334 words.

113,509 is 6.37571% of 1,780,334.

Let's start around the 113,509 mark.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain 118 804
Thus Spake Zarathustra – A Book for All and None by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche 115 632
The Confessions of St. Augustine by Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine 114 915
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle 107 605
Gulliver’s Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Jonathan Swift 107 293
Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery 106 294
Grimms’ Fairy Tales by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm 104 228
A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe 98 034
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne 86 897
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett 83 705
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde 82 222
Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 78 100
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling 77 423
Meditations by Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius 75 055
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain 74 772
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson 72 036
Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche 66 835
The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells 63 194
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle 62 297
The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana by Vatsyayana 62 155

20 books, and they're all less than 113,509 long except for the top three. Add it all together and you have 1,757,496. Still less than 1,780,334.

What if we double what we've read so far?

113,509x2=227018

The Republic by Plato 220 117
Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes 216 349
Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville 215 839
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky 208 016
The Iliad by Homer 193 536

1,053,857 words. Let's add two more.
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky 354 098
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra 430 269

1,838,224 total. A bit more than 1,780,334, but if you add the length of And Then There Were None, a mystery novel by Agatha Christie (54,324) to Project Horizons it's less again.

Alternatively...

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo 568 751
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy 567 246
The Lord of the Rings, the novel written by J. R. R. Tolkien 564 187
Metamorphosis by Franz "Man in the streets, cockroach in the sheets" Kafka 25 189

1,725,373 words. Still less than 1,780,334.

According to a google search "The average reader can read 238 words per minute (WPM) while reading silently. When reading aloud, the average reader can read 183 words per minute (WPM). Previously, it had been thought that the average adult reads at a rate of 300 words per minute."

Reading at 230 words per minute doesn't take into account the time spent writing commentary while also reading the fic, and most people write at 40 words per minute, but instead of calculating the amount of commentary vs fic read and how long it takes to write, let's just assume the process of reading and commenting on this story means it is read at 100 words per minute.

1,135.1 minutes out of 17,803.3 minutes complete.

Or 18 hours out of 296.72 hours.

>>376935
Do one hour of this a day and this will last 81% of a year. Almost a whole year. Miss a day here and there and it can last a year, maybe more.

The main story of Fallout New Vegas is 27 hours long assuming you aren't skipping dialogue or using speedrun tricks. Main story and side stories? 59 Hours. Completionist time? 132 Hours.

It's a competently written story, so after the prologue in Goodsprings that serves as a microcosm of the world and foreshadowing for the finale and tutorial for the gameplay, and tells you your greater goal (Recover the Platinum Chip Benny stole from you) and next objective (Learn why it was so important) you quickly experience NCR incompetence and imperialism at Primm(their chain gang escaped and caused a problem the NCR will only help with if they can take over the town) and Nipton's fall. You can get there in under an hour. You didn't need to play more than 6% of Fallout New Vegas to learn enough about the game to understand all the major factions and what their deal is, and from there getting to Vegas where you get vengeance and learn of the Chip's true importance is quick enough to keep the momentum up. Though you need to get 2000 caps or a favor from the Kings (forged passport) or do a high Science skill trick (hack the bots) to get past the guards at New Vegas's door, most already had more than enough by the time they got there.

Crapflap is on a mission to make sure the baddies don't get the Platinum Chip she started with, and figure out what it does and decide what to do with it, but to say why this is retarded and why what it does is retarded and how retarded every faction is being over this in the name of letting the author waste time "level grinding" in a novel would spoil 1.7 million words of suffering.

The author stole this and inverted it without understanding why it worked. The villain didn't steal a MacGuffin from the hero, the hero stole the MacGuffin from the villain. A rich powerful heavily armed faction, not in a semi-civilized powderkeg where all factions are gearing up for a major war, but in a child's toybox full of random crap. A rich powerful heavily armed faction with nothing better to do and nothing it wants more than what Assslap has. Flapjack can be a bounty hunter. The villains didn't think to make going there and level grinding impossible by offering a colossal bounty on her dead or alive. The radio can praise Rattrap and tell the whole continent exactly where she was and where she is. There is no titanic army of murderhobos and slavers surrounding her and swarming after her forcing her to stay on the run, making every second a tense life and death decision, maybe even forcing her into an uneasy partnership with The Enclave giving the author a chance to humanize them and what they would do with [REDACTED]. We can't start this story off with a bang, that would be unfamiliar with our goomer target audience who expect to go to a hub city and do menial chores for meager pay while numbers go up and villains patiently wait for the hero to be ready for the plot. We have to show off the "original" content: killing bandits to level up and Fluttershy's Foal Torture Dungeon. The goomer doesn't want a tense experience, the goomer doesn't want certain things to be impossible to complete because of story reasons, the goomer wants to grind easy content forever to feel the pleasure of easy victories. Edgy grim darkness is an aesthetic the goomer author cannot allow to get in the way of a story that amounts to public masturbation.

I hope everyone here has a wonderful time reading and reviewing all one point seven million words of this story.

It's a microcosm of the brony fandom, really.

>>376935
>The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
Technically this is a collection of short stories, not a novel.

>Grimms’ Fairy Tales by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
This is also a collection of short tales.

These two aren't really fit for comparison against a single work like PH in terms of word count. If you tallied up the entire word count of Hemingway's short stories it would probably look pretty hefty as well, but most of his stories individually are only a couple of pages long. Also, most of the books on your list are in the ~100,000 range, which is pretty standard length for a novel.

>Thus Spake Zarathustra
>Beyond Good and Evil
>Meditations
>Kama Sutra
>The Republic
>Leviathan
These are philosophical and/or religious texts, not novels, and are also not really fit for comparison technically Zarathustra is written as a story and could arguably be considered a novel, but it's usually classified as philosophy, not fiction.

Nice job using google, though. There are some good books on this list. You should try actually reading a few, if you ever decide to take a break from gargling autismo YouTube content and screaming your opinions about games into the void.

>The main story of Fallout New Vegas is 27 hours long assuming you aren't skipping dialogue or using speedrun tricks. Main story and side stories? 59 Hours. Completionist time? 132 Hours.
This is gameplay, not reading time. Not sure what you're trying to prove here.

>The author stole this and inverted it without understanding why it worked.
He stole what and inverted what without understanding why what worked? As usual, you make no effort to clarify what the fuck you're talking about.

>I hope everyone here has a wonderful time reading and reviewing all one point seven million words of this story.
I'm having fun so far, thank you for asking. I usually enjoy doing these, though I'll admit that this one is probably going to take awhile, and I may not actually end up finishing.

>It's a microcosm of the brony fandom, really.
Your point being?

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to palm-mash out another big glob of your unfiltered thoughts, Nigel. I'm sure everyone was anxious to read them.

>>376773

Chapter 10: Ante Up

>Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons
>By Somber
>Chapter 10: Ante Up

Today's Fortune Cookie(s):
>“Oh yeah. You think you can do better, cowgirl?”
>“I know I can... Oh for Pete’s sake!”
These seem to be making less and less sense the further we go.

Anyway, the chapter opens with the usual monologue from Blackjack. She is mostly just lamenting the senseless death of the zebras, her own powerlessness in the face of the horrors of the wasteland, and so forth and so on.

I'll once again note that Somber does a reasonably good job of building on kkat's basic formula. While this book doesn't really break any new ground, it does occasionally throw us a curveball and subvert reader expectations. For instance, I was more or less expecting Lancer would become the party's token zebra from here on out, filling a similar role as what's-her-name from the first story. However, his sudden execution of the zebra survivors was a twist I didn't actually see coming, even though if you look back it was mildly foreshadowed (the text mentioned zebras who fought on the Equestrian side of the war). As ever, the lore is a bit muddled and hard to follow at times, for instance I'm not really sure how Lancer connected these enslaved zebras to a group of perceived traitors from 200 years ago, but we can put a pin in that for now. Point is, while this book doesn't really stray too far from the territory already covered by its predecessor, it does do a reasonably good job of expanding and improving on the original formula.

Anywho, there's a page break, and when BJ awakens she is on some kind of operating table, having surgery apparently. There is an implication that she comes close to flatlining, however we only get BJ's heavily-drugged and near-death point of view, so it's hard to tell what is happening exactly.

After a second page break, we rejoin BJ post-surgery and in recovery. P-21 and Dusty Trails are arguing about what to do next. P-21 wants to chase down Lancer for what he did to Blackjack but not the zebras, apparently. Dusty argues that it's a waste of time, and they have more important things to worry about. Apparently Sidewinder, who is the leader of the Pecos, is upset about the mass defection that Dusty somehow engineered, and is on his way with a posse behind him, fixing to lie and/or lay down the law. If they are all still here when he arrives, he will likely take over the mine and collect the bounty on Blackjack.

>“Please keep your voices down. Blackjack needs to sleep. She’s lost a lot of blood,” Glory said in concern.
Well, it's always in the last place you look.

Anyway, the basic thrust of the situation is that they need to amscray, but BJ is in no condition to move yet. For the next several sections, BJ alternates between dream sequences and moments of lucidity. In one of the lucid periods, we learn that Sanguine was apparently supervising the mining operation, or something. Whoever was running it originally, the leader of the slaver band I guess, had some kind of arrangement where he was to deliver gems to whoever Sanguine is ultimately working for (it seems that Sanguine himself is just a go-between of some kind). However, the slaver-boss was ripping off Sanguine or skimming off the top or something, so Sanguine sent Gorgon to whip the operation into shape.

After this, P-21 and BJ argue back and forth for several tedious paragraphs over who deserves the most blame for getting all those zebras killed. Then, she goes unconscious again.

>I couldn’t help but smile as he walked away. Leg brace or not, P-21 sure had a cute ass.
>“What do you want?” P-21 asked, with that skeptical smile.
>“You.”
BJ seems to be developing an attraction to P-21. Not sure how significant this will end up being, but it's probably worth noting.

After another brief dream sequence, BJ wakes up again and has a short conversation with Glory. They discuss her old teacher, Dr. Morningstar, and how she developed her healing skills. It seems she used to be one of his star pupils, until they had a falling out over her decision to join the Volunteer Corps. Apparently there were many such cases. Every now and then a pegasus will develop a rebellious spirit and leave the Enclave, at which point they are barred from returning.

>Once you’re a Dashite, you are banned from the Enclave forever. Worse is the shame you bring to your family. Parents can lose positions. Siblings can become pariahs. It’s not something that should be done lightly.
This actually seems to contradict some of kkat's canon. As I remember it, Calamity was a Dashite, but both his brother and father were high-ranking fleet commanders or something. To my recollection, his being branded a Dashite didn't lead to them being disgraced or demoted; it just meant that Calamity himself was.

>“Sekashi and her filly Majina both survived. They’re injured, and it was touch-and-go a bit with Majina, but they’ll survive.” Glory smiled at me. “Lancer was a murdering monster, but even he couldn’t make thirteen fatal shots in ten seconds flat.”
As an aside, it looks like a couple of zebras managed to survive Lancer's massacre. One of them has a name that rhymes with vagina.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FlRFBTeYKY [Embed]

At this point, BJ asks if she can delve back into Big Macintosh's memory orb. Glory fetches it for her, and that's the end of the scene.

>>376935
>>376936
Real shit, have you ever been tested for Adhd?

>>376940

However, it would seem she grabbed the wrong orb by mistake. Instead of Big Mac courting his sweetie under a calm canopy of stars, BJ suddenly finds herself in the middle of an aerial dogfight between a couple of pegasi and some griffons. However, Big Macintosh is present as it turns out. After downing some beakies, they descend to the ground and join some earth ponies at a fortification, where they are holding off an advancing army of zebras. Amusingly enough, Twist makes a brief cameo:

>Twissssst! Reload!” he yelled.
>A red-maned mare with a buzz cut ducked down and ran to the gun’s spent ammo feed box with a fresh box in her mouth. She kicked the almost-empty container aside and dropped the new one in its place.

Anyway, it's a little hard to follow what's going on, but the basic thrust of it is that a small number of ponies are attempting to hold off a large zebra force, and are mostly succeeding. Big Macintosh does a pretty convincing Rambo impersonation.

>These were heroes I could not have imagined. This was valor and courage I could never hope to match. I was so in awe of what I glimpsed that I forgot my fear of heights and the sky. Even my host and Jetstream amazed me. Remembering it was not actually me flying, I marveled at their skill and grace and peril. Jetstream was faster, my host stronger. I had more of those griffins try and attack, only to have Jetstream pick them off while their attentions were on me.
My only real criticism here is that this seems like an out of character reaction for Blackjack. For most of the story she's done nothing but bitch and moan about the horrors of the Wasteland and all the death she's witnessed; however, here she's watching carnage on a much grander scale than anything she's yet seen, and all she can do is remark on how badass everyone is. Maybe seeing it play out secondhand through someone else's eyes lessens the tragedy somehow? I'm not sure. Either way, it's a bit strange that she was rending her clothing over the zebras that Lancer killed just moments ago, and then a short time later she's cheering on these orb-ponies as they gun down zebras by the hundreds.

Anyway, this goes on for quite awhile. Rainbow Dash and some other pegasi show up, there's a big fight involving some dragons, and then eventually the pegasus BJ is inhabiting gets struck on the head or shot or something, and the memory ends.

When she wakes up, Dusty Trails is there. She informs her that, even though she is not fully recovered yet, Sidewinder and his merry band of hooligans have almost reached the mine, and she'll need to be moving on unless she wants to be caught by bounty hunters. She recommends following a long, circuitous route to Manehattan that will take about a month. I'm not sure why BJ is going to Manehattan all of a sudden, but we'll put a pin in that for now. In any case, BJ isn't having it; she insists on taking the faster underground route, through the ghoul-infested tunnels that were (I think) mentioned earlier.

Page break. BJ is getting her plans finalized I guess, and is waiting for her friends to return so they can set out. She hears a pony coming up the stairs, and is relieved to see it is only Tumbleweed. However, Tumbleweed seems to be in rather a bad way:

>Tears ran down her cheeks as she slumped, and the most horrible laughing, sobbing noise rose in her throat. There was blood smeared across her lips… fresh and red. Bite marks covered her legs. Hooves shook as she stared at me with eyes that were already yellowing.
>“Help… me…” she begged, giggled, sobbed... all at once.
I assume the fight has started and Tumbleweed was injured somehow.

>“Turkey… I like turkeys... tastes good…” she whimpered, and I could only lay there in horror as I saw her raise her leg and suddenly spasm, biting down hard. As fresh blood spilled, I watched as she started to swallow. “Tastes… good… tastes so good…” she said a moment later. She gave one last sob, choking in the back of her throat. “Help me…” she whimpered before resuming giggling, long and slow, but building.
Nope, looks like she's just hungry. Seriously though, I have no idea wtf is going on at this point.

>Rolling onto my back hurt like mad, but it was the only thing that let me push her away as she tried to turn me into lunch. Unlike other raiders, she wasn’t half-starved and raw. She was quite a healthy pony, and she was trying her hardest to chomp on my belly. I pushed her snapping, giggling, biting maw aside with my telekinesis and forelegs, but it was so hard. Every motion made it feel like a drill was working in my spine. And if it was true that she had a disease… rabid raider Blackjack! No thank you!
I guess Tumbleweed caught that brain thing? The disease that turns ponies into raiders? That's my best guess.

Anyway, BJ looks around for something she can brain her with, but there's nothing useful at hand. Hoof. Whatever. So, she does what any sensible pony would do in that situation: concentrates her telekinesis into a single point until it becomes a physical force, and then drives it like a bolt into Tumbleweed's eyeball. This seems like the kind of thing that ought not to work, so naturally it does. She does it again, driving the telekinesis-bolt into her skull this time, and Tumbleweed goes down. Aaand...that's the end of that, I guess.

There's another page break. We rejoin BJ a short time later. It seems they have rigged up some kind of mining cart or something so they can wheel her through the zombie-infested tunnels without her needing to walk. However, she doesn't want all the liberated slaves and whatever to see her as a cripple for some reason. So, she dopes herself up with Buck, which I guess is some kind of cocaine-like substance, and Med-X, which I guess is some kind of morphine-like substance, and then walks outside, where a large crowd of ponies is gathered.

>>376945

The crowd cheers Blackjack for being stunning and brave, then she climbs on board the mining cart.

>“Thanks. And I’m glad you were able to get the collars off them safely.”
>“I’m glad I didn’t have any accidents while doing it,” he answered with a strangely smug smile. “And I’m glad they won’t be going to waste.”
This is from a conversation between BJ and P-21. The slaves were all wearing explosive collars as a way to keep them in line, but P-21 managed to get them off (somehow) while BJ was unconscious.

We soon learn what he has in mind for the collars:

>I looked back at him in worry. “What… you’re going to use them in the mine?” I rubbed my twitching mane. There was something being set up on the one of the flatbed train cars. The crowd began to back away.
>“Better,” he said as the movement of the crowd revealed the fat pony. His forelegs were swollen to the size of melons and he’d been beaten till he looked like he was part bloatsprite. But what really chilled my blood, despite the heat, was the sight of him wearing dozens and dozens of explosive slave collars. “For justice.”
I've forgotten who the fat pony is; I'm assuming he was the boss of the slavers. More to the point, though, is that this is just sadistic overkill.

Blackjack seems to agree:

>“This isn’t fucking justice!” I hissed as I stared at him, unable to touch that button, unable to look away. “It’s murder.”

P-21, meanwhile, is shocked at her reaction:

>P-21 would have killed me right then if he could. Cold rage burned in his eyes as he leaned towards me. “Do you know what fucking justice is? It’s giving to others as is given to you.” Be kind. “It’s killing the fucker to make sure that she never does it again.” Be kind. “It’s making sure every bastard who even thinks of copying her crime hesitates because they know they might face the same punishment.” Be kind. “It’s what’s fair!”

One of the most irritating aspects of kkat's book was its bizarre take on morality, and unfortunately Somber seems to have taken up the same theme. While I will at least give Blackjack some credit for being far more introspective about her own actions than Littlepip ever was, the way she (and by extension the author) thinks about problems like this still aggravates me. Characters in this world are either recoiling in horror at the very idea of killing, or are sadistically reveling in acts of righteous slaughter. Usually they are flipping schizophrenically back and forth between the two, sometimes within the space of a single scene.

In my view P-21 and Blackjack both miss the point here. P-21's take is that justice means punishing wrongdoers in the most brutal way possible. This has more to do with sadism than justice. However:

>These ponies needed justice. Was this it? Killing him wouldn’t bring anypony he had killed back. Would it even bring peace? Or would somepony else decide that it wasn’t enough and drag one of the former guards up there next?
BJ's take is equally unrealistic and silly. She's basically chosen to go with the corny old "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, let's all just try to get along" schtick.

Justice really isn't that complex of an idea. In any given society, regardless of how it's organized or what its values are, there are going to be certain behaviors that are considered harmful and unacceptable. People who violate the social compact and engage in these behaviors are punished. The punishment puts a stop to the bad behavior, recompenses the victim's suffering, and also serves as a deterrent to anyone who might be considering engaging in similar behavior. That's pretty much all there is to it.

One interesting thing to note here is that, according to the albeit nonsensical and poorly thought out rules of this setting, it's actually debatable whether or not this guy even did anything wrong to begin with. He had a license to practice slavery after all, which means that his operation was basically legitimate according to the Wasteland's wacky rules. However, BJ has taken the stance that his actions are wrong, so whatever; if he did a bad thing, then killing him would be justice. If that's what she honestly believes, then it's hypocritical for her to be having a crisis of conscience here. By the same logic, if the idea of killing this guy bothers her this much, then she ought to have just left him alone and not interfered.

Meanwhile, P-21's attitude is just edgelord-tier silliness. The slaver boss is a bad guy who was doing bad things, moreover he's a vanquished enemy that could potentially cause more harm if permitted to go free. Killing him makes sense, both from a practical and a moral standpoint, and as the victors of the battle BJ & Co. have every right to do it. However, strapping eighty bomb collars to this fat faggot's neck and then detonating them all at once is, again, just sadistic overkill.

If they've determined he needs to die, then they should just take him out back, put a bullet in his head and be done with it. If they need to make a public spectacle out of it so that the slaves can feel like proper justice was done, then fine: slap together a gallows and hang him, or put him in front of a firing squad or something. Subjecting him to this elaborate, violent method of execution is just pointlessly cruel. It's even more pointless when you consider that there is supposed to be an army of Pecos and bounty hunters charging towards the mine, and these guys are wasting time torturing this poor idiot instead of preparing defenses.

However, nothing is as pointless and silly as what BJ ultimately ends up doing. She makes a huge speech about how murder is icky and they should all strive to "do better." Then, she refuses to blow the guy up, opting instead to just walk away and let someone else do it. The end result is exactly the same as if she'd pushed the button herself, only this way she gets to claim some imaginary moral high ground.

*sigh*

Whatever.

>>376972

Anyway, this is basically the end of the chapter. There's a page break, followed by some more tedious monologuing from Blackjack about how she's depressed and hates the Wasteland, because yada yada death and yada yada suffering and so forth and et cetera. To cheer her up, one of the zebra survivors tells her a parable about a zebra who fucked up a lot but also managed to inadvertently do some good.

This segues into a discussion of Lancer and why he did what he did. We don't really learn anything new; the basic gist of it is that there is a small faction of zebras still dedicated to the long-dead zebra king who started the war 200 years ago. They go around fighting against...actually, I'm not sure who they're fighting against, or if they even fight anyone at all. It sounds like they mostly just go around murdering zebras who refuse to join their pointless non-existent cause. More goofy FoE logic I guess.

Anywho, this zebra explains that the reason Lancer killed off the rest of her tribe was not because they refused to join the non-existent war effort, but because they laughed at how silly he was for having joined up with the non-existent war effort. Now I will grant that, if an FoE character's behavior is so silly that even the other FoE characters are calling it silly, that's some pretty damn silly behavior. So Lancer probably deserved to be laughed at. Still, though, this zebra seems awfully sanguine about all of this, considering that eleven of her fellow zebras are dead simply because they laughed at Lancer's retarded faction, when they could have just as easily not laughed and been spared. There was literally nothing else on the line:

>“So you were zebras who refused to fight? He killed you for that?”
>“Oh no no no. There are many tribes that refuse to fight. So long as they bow and quiver, they are spared. My tribe’s crime was infinitely worse,” she said with a solemn expression as she glanced back at us. “Our crime was that we laughed at their foolishness. I suppose it was too much to hope that they would laugh as well. A fearsome fool is a fool still, and it is hard to fear something so funny.”
Well, I suppose it makes about as much sense as anything else that's happened lately.

Anywho, the zebra advises that Blackjack should laugh at Lancer the next time she sees him, because apparently in this setting, being able to stand on imaginary moral high ground matters a lot more than whether or not you get yourself pointlessly killed. Righty-o.

There's a bit more back-and-forth, and then the chapter comes to a close.

>Footnote: Level Up.

>Perk added: Intense Training - Your experiences travelling in the Wasteland have allowed you to add one to your intelligence.

>Quest perk added: Telekinetic Bullet spell- you may now attack enemies at close range with a bolt of telekinetic energy equivalent to a pistol.

Also:

>Author's Note:
>(Tons of thanks to Kkat for inspiring me and letting me play in her sandbox, and Hinds for making this as awesome as possible.)
The problem with playing in sandboxes is that they have a tendency to be full of cat turds.

>>376973

Chapter 11: Peace

>Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons
>By Somber
>Chapter 11: Peace

Today's fortune cookie:
>“Sweet Celestia, she’s drunk!”

As the chapter opens, Blackjack suddenly awakens and finds herself on a strange mattress next to a strange unicorn. She panics and almost shoots the guy, but then realizes that he isn't hostile. The unicorn's name is Priest, and he informs her that she is in a place called Chapel.

>I still had my PipBuck, so I entered S.A.T.S. and queued three telekinetic bullets at the black unicorn.
Apparently this "telekinetic bullet" thing is a new power she will be using regularly. It was also listed as a "quest perk" at the end of the last chapter, so I guess those things are meant to be taken literally. I'll say again that it seems like the kind of thing that ought not to be plausible, but at the same time, it's a far less egregious abuse of physics than all of the bullshit that Littlepip got away with in the original story, so I'm inclined to let it slide for now. Small improvements that make a difference.

Anyway, while it's perfectly acceptable to time-skip a little between chapters to gloss over mundane events like travel, it feels like the author might have once again skipped a little too much. I'm almost as confused as Blackjack as to where the fuck she is and how the fuck she got there. Last time we saw her, she was on a mine cart being wheeled into a network of underground tunnels populated by feral ghouls. I guess we'll put a pin in that for now.

In any event, Chapel is a small village that appears to be populated almost entirely by foals. That a guy named "Priest" is the only apparent adult in the area does not augur well, but we'll put a pin in that for now too. Blackjack notes a Crusader flag flying nearby, so presumably this is their base of operations. It seems that BJ was found unconscious somewhere by a group of Crusaders, and was brought back here to rest. Apparently the Crusader patch she sewed onto her barding marked her as being worthy of rescue. Her friends were not there when she was found. Also, the Crusaders weren't able to carry all of her equipment, so she will need to go back and retrieve it at some point. Presumably this includes most of her weapons.

Anyway, BJ now laments the possible loss of her friends, though we still don't know for sure if anything actually happened to them or not. Priest goes on to explain that when she was found unconscious, there was also a "trapped" memory orb found nearby. What appears to have happened is that BJ tried to access the orb, was repelled by the protections that were placed on it, and was knocked unconscious. The idea behind the trapped orbs is explained thusly:

>When the war was at its peak, memories could no longer be left accessible to any unicorn that happened across them. Zebras had unicorn sympathizers. The Ministry of Morale, together with the Ministry of Peace, eventually devised methods of extracting and sealing dangerous or sensitive memories away. The process was so difficult that it was used only for the most critical memories, but with constant zebra infiltration and sabotage, the technique of locking memories became vital here. Too many secrets in this city.” He nudged the orb with a hoof as he looked down at it. “It has a password: some thought, or idea, or name you need to be thinking of.”
>“And if you don’t have the password?” I asked, looking at the orb like it was a bomb.
>He shook his head and sighed. “Most of the time, nothing. But if you try to force contact, it can render you unconscious. Place you in an endless nightmare. Even kill you.”
Kind of an interesting addition to the lore, actually.

Anywho, the basic thrust of it is that BJ found this orb at some point and tried to view it, and was then either knocked out or trapped in some kind of suspended animation. The Crusaders brought her back here, and Priest separated her from the cursed orb. He also healed all of the injuries that had her incapacitated at the end of the previous chapter, so conveniently she is no longer hampered by any of that.

We also learn about a new concept that appears specific to the Hoofington area as far as I can tell, this entire story is set in or near the vicinity of Hoofington. A special magic called Enervation permeates the area; it's some kind of residue left over from all the weird shit being done in this city during the war. Enervation will slowly drain the life force from ponies, and can also render healing potions unusable. I don't think I put it in my summary, but in the previous chapter BJ mentioned that she had drank a few healing potions and noticed that they weren't having any effect. This seems to clear up that mystery: apparently, if a potion has been affected by Enervation it will change color, at which point it either no longer works or becomes harmful. This is also a rather interesting addition to the lore, and I will once again applaud Somber for attempting to place some reasonable limits and counterweights on this setting's ridiculously OP healing magic.

Anyway, the scene ends in a page break.

>“Why didn’t I have this a week ago?” I muttered as I lay on a mattress on the floor of the post office; in front of me was an open copy of ‘The Wasteland Survival Guide: Hoofington Edition’. Dangers of scavenging! What’s that beeping noise? Robots and you. The who’s who of the Hoof.
Presumably, this also solves the mystery of why the hallway keeps chirping.

>While I did want to track down P-21, Glory, and Sekashi, Priest had pointed out that my friends knew I was coming in this direction. Chapel being the only community near the rail line, it was a good bet that they’d come here if they could.
This is actually pretty reasonable. Though I'm still not clear on how they made it through the ghoul-infested tunnels, it seems that this place is at least located near the rail line they were traveling on at the end of the last chapter.

>>376981

>“Why didn’t I have this a week ago?” I muttered as I lay on a mattress on the floor of the post office; in front of me was an open copy of ‘The Wasteland Survival Guide: Hoofington Edition’.
>"Would you have taken the time to read it?” he asked with a chuckle.
This simple dialog exchange between Blackjack and Priest reads like a perfectly normal conversation, and there is nothing at all wrong with it....except that in the actual text, these two spoken lines have three massive paragraphs of meandering inner monologue from Blackjack between them. Protip: prose should be readable and dialogue should fit into the natural flow of the narrative. Don't have one character ask a question, then veer off the subject for multiple paragraphs, and then have the second character answer the question halfway down the page, after the reader has completely forgotten what was even asked. It's extremely bad form.

Anyway, Priest and Blackjack yak for a bit. It turns out that Priest is familiar with Deus, whose full name is actually Deus Ex Machina. We also learn that his name is "zebra-speak" for "God of the Machine", because apparently zebras speak Latin in this world to be fair, this makes about as much sense as ponies in the show speaking French, so I don't have a huge problem with it; however, my inner dweeb compels me to point out that Somber mistranslates the phrase slightly. Anyway, this segues into a short infodump about Reapers.

Apparently, Reapers take their name from a pre-war hoofball team that existed in Hoofington. They don't have any real connection to the original team from what I can tell, but they took the name because it sounded bad-ass, and they base themselves around the stadium that the team used to play in. The Reapers are probably closer to a semi-organized gang than a faction; something akin to maybe the Hell's Angels. In order to gain membership, you have to either defeat a Reaper in combat, or defeat enough hopefuls in a tryout tournament that you make an impression on the other Reapers. At this point you will be presented with your ceremonial Reaper sweatshirt and coffee mug, as well as a membership card that gets you 10% off at participating Plot Topic locations.

Anyway, at this point a foal shows up and informs Priest that some "pilgrims" have arrived, so he goes off to greet them, or murder them, or whatever the appropriate response to approaching pilgrims is the text seems to leave this deliberately vague, so I assume it will come up later. BJ, meanwhile, continues to read the Hoofington Survival Guide.

She learns the following:

>the guide was written by Ditzy Doo, who was also a mail carrier at the time of the war
Presumably this is due to her being a ghoul, but BJ does not have this information and puzzles over it for a bit.

>Canterlot is an icky place where death awaits you with big sharp pointy teeth
Mostly a recap of stuff we know from the first book, but again, for BJ this is new information. The main takeaway seems to be an implication that Celestia and Luna might still be alive, perhaps some Egyptians believe.

>The Core, the place that's been foreshadowed to hell and back, is an even ickier place, where death awaits you with even bigger, sharper and pointier teeth
Presumably, Blackjack will need to go in here at some point.

After she's done reading, she goes to a small store that the Crusaders apparently operate, and an admittedly cute scene ensues, in which she haggles with a filly for cereal and gets massively overcharged. The filly also tells her where she can find the stuff the Crusaders hid on her behalf, in exchange for fifty additional caps.

BJ sets off to retrieve her lost items. She climbs to the top of a nearby hill to get her bearings, and notes the location of the literal chapel from which the town of Chapel takes its name. She also has a look at the Core, the eventual importance of which is again hinted at. As an aside, I'd like to take a moment to once more toot Somber's horn: assuming The Core will in fact be an important area of the story at some point, this is the correct way to foreshadow it.

People who were here for my review of the original FoE story may remember me complaining about those gigantic radio towers that Homage used to spy on the Wasteland, which were also part of the Pegasus weather-control system as I recall. These things were supposed to be a huge, obtrusive, unmissable part of the skyline, yet the author completely neglected to mention them even existing for two thirds of the book. Then, we are suddenly informed that these enormous, impossible-to-miss, plot-critical radio towers have been in the background the entire time, the narrator just neglected to mention them because she was too busy juggling boxcars.

The way Somber handles The Core is much better. We don't know much about this area at the moment, but we have a general idea that it's an important area of the city, and that it's a dangerous place that factors heavily into the setting's history. The author doesn't spend a lot of time talking about it, but he brings it up every now and then to remind us that it exists, and to reinforce that it will be an important location later on. Every time we hear about it we learn a little more, but the mystery is preserved: we're curious, but we're going to have to wait. This technique is called foreshadowing, and it's a legit literary thing; you can totally look it up.

Anyway, she has herself a look-see at the surroundings, and then starts walking toward where the Crusaders said her stuff is. Along the way, her PipBuck suddenly highlights a new location - the Hoofington Natural History Museum. Since she is unarmed, alone, and has literally no goddamn reason to go in there, she naturally decides to go in there. The front door is heavily barred, but rather than allowing this to deter her, she walks around the building until she finds a service door.

>>373099
No, no, no!!! I had failed to keep up with your reviews for a few years while I was moving and was so excited to see you continue your reviews or see what writing projects you've done but first thing I see is Fallout Equestria Project Horizons. I don't want to be stuck in this hell for years. I hate Fallout Equestria and this cranks it up to 11.

I hope your writing has been going well and I miss you and that one guy who posted here a lot but man I hate this OP unicorn lesbian stuff so much.

>>377728
lol sorry, it's being done by request. If it's any consolation I'm actually moving through these chapters rather quickly, the project is just taking awhile because I keep getting distracted by other things and end up not posting for weeks at a time.

If you've been out of the game for awhile you can always get caught up on some of the other reviews that you missed; they're all archived at the top of the page.

Also, if you're curious about my projects or are just looking for something to read, you're welcome to pick through my fimfic if you like:
https://www.fimfiction.net/user/520492/DavidFosterWalrus/stories

Anyway, to everyone else who has been anxiously biting their hooves waiting to find out what becomes of Blackjack and her merry band of deviants, I promise I will totally get back to this in a day or two, six months at the most.

>>377758
I've been gone for a long time. Is Nigel still here? Promised not to share his videos but he has a real talent for modding and designing stuff in games. I enjoyed his tangents here and your efforts to help him grow as a writer.

>>377774
Scroll up

>>377774
>Is Nigel still here?
He shows up once every few months or so. He usually ends up causing some type of drama, then gets extremely angry and swears he's leaving for good, then shows up a few months later and does the whole thing over again. To his credit these episodes seem fewer and further between these days. He also claims he has a gf now. I'm still not sure I believe him, but if it's true good for him I guess.

>your efforts to help him grow as a writer.
Unfortunately this proved to be something of a wasted effort.

Okay Im just gonna shoot from the hip.

What do I have to do to incentivize you (OP) to abandon this failed venture of delving into Blackjack's,... ahem,... story.

It has been said in good faith and trust "Wait until she gets the robot legs".
So, if I may offer an interlude of sorts, from the pony fandom "if"/when it gets tiresome.

Cupcakes oh yes

In contrast to "the previous" its the best example. Its why certain things work and dont work, depending on setup, structure, and story/presentation

Cupcakes sucks cock and is entirely devoid of artistic merit. It caught on like Kung Flu because it was one of the first childishly edgy gory MLP fics to get big, not because of the quality of the work. Then again a journey through all the old famous fanfics would be incomplete without that. And it's short.

Today I heard the phrase "MAP - Minor Attracted Person" and thought about Map Club from that retarded MLP fanfic I wrote as a teenager. I don't remember if that part of the story came up before. Lol, now I want to write a scene where everyone who hears their stupid name thinks map club is something sus. Characters making meta commentary about the stupid names they and their organization have is comedy gold after all, especially when villains the author wants people to take seriously do it. Meta humor is always a good thing and never obnoxious at all, everyone loves when characters wink at the camera. *wink*

Map Club was just a stupid subplot about bland one note OCs mapping out the multiverse and exploiting the hell out of these alternate universes, getting sick powers and dehumanizing everyone within them for being from an alternate universe and therefore not "real" like the characters in their universe are, even though their universe is as unreal as all the other alternate realities. The villain was looking for a replacement goldfish, or in this case a replacement pony, to replace his dead favourite pony, a singer who fell off the stage and died when singing and drunk, but he was in denial about the alcohol because he thinks "She is pure, she doesn't drink". He is in denial. While his underlings were power tripping in throwaway universes to steal strong shit expecting the universes to stop existing when not looked at, causing consequences a few chapters later, he had his own goal. He was looking for a timeline where his favourite poner was alive and willing to be his, and everything else like his army of power tripping retards exploring arbitrarily different universes with stupid themes searching for more magic items was just retarded filler. He was a retarded fanboy obsessed with his idea of who that singer supposedly is based on his interpretation of her performance and performing persona which is unlike the real deal. He regularly called versions of her he didn't like fakes. The villain breaks down upon seeing the multiverse unravel and learning he's not special or real and then he tries making Silver feel sad too by telling him he's not real either, and Silver says his belief in himself and what he cares about makes him and what he cares about real to him and then kicks the villain into the retarded giant multiverse magic machine destroying both and saving the day. I known it's a stupid idea. In retrospect I think I should have made him the final boss, but I liked the planned ending for the intended final boss.

The final boss... there's this guy who runs a secret military organization, and his sister was killed by a giant monster attack, and he wants to militarize Equestria and uses the power of the cards to rewrite reality to do that, kicking Silver's ass to get the cards so he can create his ideal perfect ultra violent Equestria where the ponies never lose and the answer to any problem is extreme cartoon violence, only once he creates his perfect world and lives in it for a while he realizes it is boring and his revived dead little sister is nothing like the real her, so he gets sad and undoes everything. But not before losing a fight to the even stronger AU Silver who he tracked down and duelled out of curiousity before his story ended.1

Those two villainous characters were meant to be commentaries on the brony fandom's obsession with making "dark edgy violent AUs" of pony, often losing all that makes the setting and characters unique in the process, due to the faulty belief that a character is "better and more developed and has done more character growth" if he is stronger, and the losers who turn entire fictional universes into exercises in wish fulfillment, seeing characters and settings only as playthings to satisfy shallow desires.

The irony there is not lost on me, considering how much I sucked at writing back then and what that old story became. I wish I trimmed the fat and got around to writing those parts sooner, it would have sucked considering how bad I was at writing back then but it might have been more fun to read and write. I regret how shit the story turned out and that it never got around to the original ideas I had. Team Rocket but dogs was not my finest work. But I am glad I never got around to writing the Duelling Academy stuff, that season sucked balls and all the characters involved sucked balls and the planned ending was fucking awful.

See sven? ^_^

Now, while MOST of that spiel is,... I hope no one thinks less of me for taking the piss and saying "consistent", the part I wanna get to:
>devoid of artostoc merit
Without attacking the source of that allegation, I would like to see that position validated.
Asmitting, Ive only seen the comic strip, and if you're alleging an absence of artistic merit then you're only invalidating your credentials as a 'critic'. Since the story lacks the artwork, we can dismiss that. But if the dialogue in the story is anything like the comic, then it is at the very LEAST an honest, loving(?), and sincere depiction of MLP ponies,... in a context where one of them has been a psychopathic serial killer all this time.
Seriously, that part where Pinkie, in the middle of dismembering Dash, criticizes her for being a baby was fucking dark in so many ways.
>>378982
Seriously, I get if 'you' didn't LIKE the story, but fuck off with "no artistic merit" or we go back over YOUR work.

>>378983
Did you have a bet running over whether I would go a year without posting on this site? I don't care.

You're seriously telling me you think Cupcakes has artistic merit? What, are you a Sonic.exe fanboy too? I don't care if you "go over" something I wrote a decade ago, get your head out of your ass and stop using adjective-infested word vomit to try and give your basic redditor opinions the illusion of depth. You are not an authority on writing. I have no reason to respect your opinions on cryptocurrency or writing. You are not an expert on either. I have no reason to respect you as a person. If Pinkie Pie brutally murders Rainbow Dash in a fanfic for cheap shock value, that isn't a "honest sincere loving" depiction of the characters. If stories that are "so fucking dark" and nothing more make you soyface, good for you. You are easily pleased. Must be nice.

>>378989
All that to just say
>I didn't like it, and in my world everything I don't like is bad
Though we know that about you.
It's a loving depiction because it takes all the existing (included) elements pf esoting fim canon and turns them up a notch or two.
It's well established Pinkie turns into a crazypath at interval, and has a "party" basement, what if she's really a serial killer and has been BOTH the lovable pinkie everyone knows AND a murderous psychopath. But she's not JUST a psychopath, they wrote her as a psychopath with Pinkie's personality as narcissism.

>Quit your crying! Is that how you want me to remember you? As a BABY?
Im sorry, but thats such a jarringly conceivable statement from a psychopathic Pinkie that you have to know a bit about psychology and alot about Pinkie to script.
Again, Ive only read the comic, which may have seen some refinement, hence my interest in going over it in spite of British Chancelors and their dubious self-absorption.

Also no, I was telling him a few days ago that you still come by every so often. You normally have toned down the spergposting so youre harder to spot. That was you in the New Years thread, yes?

>>>/ub/8114 → if ur interested

>>378982
>>378989
Jesus heckin' Christ, Nigel. Here we are again. Look, I'm not interested in getting into another long, protracted word fight with you. I'm not going to insult you or make fun of you. So please hear me out, and consider what I have to say.

>That was you in the New Years thread, yes?
I'm actually glad that this anon [ >>378992 ] brought this up, because I also noticed that thread. Specifically, what I noticed is how weirdly normal it is. It was so normal, in fact, that I actually had to pull up the post history and verify that it was in fact you as the OP, and not the other British guy who posts here.

>>378898 →
Here is the thread for reference. Notice how all of the replies you got are just... normal replies? Nobody makes fun of you, nobody derails, nobody calls you Nigel, they just answer the question you asked. The reasons for this are very simple. The thread subject is "New year plans," which clearly indicates your purpose in making the thread. The OP text simply reads "Got any plans for the new year?" All of the replies are just answers to that question. See how it works? You ask a normal question in a normal way, and you get normal responses. Simple as. I am impressed enough by this that I'm even willing to give you a slightly backhanded compliment: congratulations. It's taken you almost six years of your life, but you've finally managed to have a normal, productive conversation with strangers on the internet. Nice job.

Now, compare and contrast that with this other thread you made recently:

>>378505 →
You will notice that, here too, nobody is insulting you personally or calling you Nigel. However, the responses you're getting are far more negative. The reasons here are also very simple. The thread subject is "What a faggot," which signifies nothing. The content of the OP post is just a link to a youtube video, along with some garbled greentext detailing things in the video you didn't like. You offer no context and no explanation for any of this. You do not clarify what this video is about, how you found it, who uploaded it, why you're bringing it to the attention of the Mongolian horsewhispering forum, or why anyone on said forum should care. The video itself is over an hour long, so it's unlikely that anyone will actually sit through it to find out. Unsurprisingly, the responses are mostly just a few people expressing confusion over why this was posted. Eventually the thread derails into people shitposting about Britney Spears, while ignoring the thing that you (presumably) wanted to discuss.

Your problem is that, while you seem to understand on some level that users here consider you a toxic poster, you don't seem to understand why, and that's the reason you keep hitting the same wall over and over. It doesn't help that you also have an incredibly thin skin, and despite your many protests to the contrary, you still don't seem able to handle even a small amount of negative criticism without flying off the handle. Case in point: your last few posts in this very thread.

All of this works against you. As I have told you many times before, you tend to be your own worst enemy. You post bad content, and you post it in a bad way. People react badly to the bad content you post, and you react with incoherent, profanity-laced insults that only serve to lower the bar further. Eventually more anons take notice and start piling on you, either because it's funny or because you've genuinely made them angry (for my part it's usually a mixture of both). I will also note that, from what I've seen of your behavior on other forums, this phenomenon is not specific to mlpol.

>I don't care if you "go over" something I wrote a decade ago, get your head out of your ass and stop using adjective-infested word vomit to try and give your basic redditor opinions the illusion of depth. You are not an authority on writing.
This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. You are in absolutely no position to throw stones. Aside from maybe video games, you have never demonstrated any serious knowledge on any subject, writing least of all. The only reason people keep tossing that old Silver Star story back in your face is because it's the only thing of note you've ever written. Apart from that one story, you've only submitted a handful of writing samples to this site and to fimfiction, most of which show marginal improvement at best. In fact, you've openly admitted that your most recent batch of stories were AI-generated.

>I have no reason to respect your opinions on cryptocurrency or writing.
Anon didn't say anything about cryptocurrency. In fact, a simple ctrl-f reveals only one instance of the word "cryptocurrency" in this nearly 200 post-long thread, and it's in your post. Why are you mentioning it? In any case, no one (either in this thread or on Earth in general) has any reason to respect your opinions on cryptocurrency, writing, ancient Egyptian pottery, or any of the other tens of thousands of things you know nothing about.

If you have something valid and interesting you can add to a conversation, and you can manage to say it without going completely off-topic and spilling every ounce of spaghetti you have, then by all means do. However, you have nothing to offer except tangents and profanity, then we would all appreciate it if you would just be quiet. Thank you for listening.

Anyway, since it's been almost two months since I've updated this thread, I probably owe everyone an explanation. I have multiple fimfiction stories I've been working on lately, at varying levels of completion. The Dale Gribble story is actually doing surprisingly well, so I've mostly been focused on that. I'm also involved in the Born to Silly project, so that's going to be consuming a lot of my focus over the next couple of months. In addition, I have a couple of non-horse related projects, as well as the usual combination of work, sleep and procrastination.

The other part is that I am seriously beginning to question the viability of this review series as a long-term project. I'm not sure how many people are still interested or still following along, and while I have fun desecrating these old stories, it is somewhat time-consuming. This original intent of my "Glim Glam" persona, back in the old Glimmergate days, was to just shitpost a little and knock Nigel off his pedestal. After that, it became about shitposting and slaughtering a few of the fandom's most beloved sacred cows. At this point, I've probably accomplished all of those goals.

Also, as others have pointed out, this particular story is over a million words long, and getting through the whole thing is probably going to take like forty forevers. So, I haven't quite decided where this is going to go just yet. One thing that did occur to me is to just drop the lengthy read-and-react process, with one thread per story, and just make a new "Glim Glam Reviews Stories" thread. This would be more of a general review thread, in which I could just make two or three posts per story detailing what I liked and didn't like. I would probably get through more stories much faster this way.

Anyway, tl;dr I haven't quite made up my mind about whether or not I want to finish PH. However, in the meantime, I am interested in hearing thoughts/suggestions from the gallery.

>>378090
>Cupcakes
A few people whose opinions I generally respect have suggested I read this story. It's pretty short, so maybe this would be a good one to do while I make up my mind on the fate of the overall thread.

>>379007
To further validate, i knew it was Nigel in the new years thread, thats why I namefagged.
Still, to his credit it was previously very stealth and not obvious

>>379009
I will actually grant that he's improved and the "nigelness" is much more subdued now. I didn't personally bantz on him in either of those threads either. However, the old personality unfortunately still ends up bleeding through a great deal of the time.

>>379008
Okay

>>379007
The truth is that I just like hearing your voice. If I actually took the time of reading this thread's post I'd be all over it but I haven't gotten around to it. Once you start, you get sucked in, imo.

I like when you dive deep into story elements too. I don't think the way you do things is bad.

I say this because I know how it is to be the creator of something. It's not always easy to know if things are good and appreciated. So I will just say it, you're great and this thread is one of the things that keeps bringing Anons back, I think. At least, it brought Nigel back.

However, I think you should do what you feel like. I really enjoyed Dale Gribble in Equestria so maybe that's what you wanna do? I'm just throwing out ideas. But don't feel obligated to do anything. You do you.

I was gonna ask you for your reviewing expertise for an upcoming thread of mine. Tbh, (again, prioritize yourself and no guilt) but if you don't have time for it, I probably won't bother with it, at least not in that format. The idea (cuz I feel like talking about it) was one of those competition threads I used to do but this time refined with what I have learnt over the years. It turns out, I did it the best the first time around.

Anyway, I have always loved having my work reviewed by you. I think others would love it too. Having someone read your work and go through it deeply, is very satisfyingI know what you're thinking^^.

Actually, as a complete non-sequitur, I'm just gonna do that more often. As in, I'm gonna as you to review my work. The worst thing that can happened is that you say, "No." Maybe, also if you find my work so wanting that you declare me as a homosexual because then I go visit the pharmacy and you know, I don't got any money.

Now when I think about it. You should repost and archive your reviews somewhere and then post the link elsewhere in the fandom. There are many more people who would enjoy reading your stuff.

Well, you don't have to or anything. To me that sounds like a lot of work.

>>378987
>>378991
That's an interesting observation and I agree. The original author got the characters down pat. You can really hear the lines spoken by the characters. Pinkie: "Why do they call it a hack-saw? You don't hack with it."

Btw, the third chapter is (mostly) out but I haven't re-posted it because I don't have an e6 account. Some of the images are locked behind account. I might get one or I post the ones that aren't locked.

>>378982
Welcome back! I missed you. Hopefully we can all get along. We have more similarities than differences, after all. ^^

>>379008
>>379016
>As in, I'm gonna as you to review my work.
*ask* and I might as well, while I'm at it: Feel free to give me your thoughts on this,
>>376992 → (Downpour of fire)
and this,
>>>/üb/7961 (the daily writing thread)

I expect nothing and I demand nothing, so anything even just a thumbs up or down is appreciated. ^^

https://m.fanfiction.net/s/7745399/1/Cupcakes-Volume-I-Original

Published Jan 16th 2012, the latest aired episode was s2e13. So this dropped RIGHT at the beginning. And yes, I'm doubling down on the "lovingly" assertion. The way they reference aspects of the show twistingly, as though murders have been a subtext the WHOLE time (like, you can rewatch and pretend Pinkie's silliness has a sinister undertone, after this story) - at least seemingly - speaks to a slightly disturbed author but reframes the whole series in a fun(?) and interesting manner. Its pretty obvious why it became the meme that it did in retrospect, having not been around MLP until mlpol but appreciating the context

>>379008
I love your longform reviews, it's fascinating to see the mind of a great critic at work picking through every line and concept and gauging how well they are done. But I totally understand your issue and your personal growth/ hobbies take precedent over pouring over shitty fanfics. I was one of the original people who suggested bad FO:E fics and PH to you but the initial agreement was more or less a 'we understand the fic is super long and bad, see how far you can get' right? IT's no problem if you want to drop out now.

Overall i'd like to see you continue your more in-depth critique personally, but it's ultimately your own decision to do so.

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/382883/1/johnny-bravo-in-equestria-rgre/the-plan-whoa-mama

Here's a review recommendation, GG.

Happy New Years, literary masochists

Having just STARTED the Fallout streaming series (and not resolvrd that its accurate, being modifed for a tv series format)

Oh my GAWD did these authors fuck up an amazing oppotunity. But based Sven is trying to allow us to imagine a writefaggery, unburdened by what has been

By "these authors" I mean Shittlepip and Balksuck's (best I could come up with)
Like, go based Sven, and maybe i'll try teach AI to write what I have in mind. Its a great literary landscape to write a slightly improvizational story from, drawing from the source material when useful, but disregarding the hoershit when its in the way

>>379011
>>379016
>>379047
>>379606
Alright, so. Thanks to everyone for their input, sorry I haven't replied/updated for awhile. I've given some thought to this and here is what I'm thinking I'll do.

Since I started Project Horizons and have gotten as far into it as I have, and since at least a few people seem to be enjoying my critique, it probably makes as much sense to keep going with it as it does to stop and/or critique something else. So, unless the story ends up getting so dreadful and ridiculous that it no longer makes sense to keep going, I will probably just keep plowing through PH the same way I have been. Whether or not I do any more of these longform critiques after this one is finished remains to be seen, I guess.

That said, I'm still not sure when exactly I will get back to this. As I mentioned I have several other things that I'm working on that are higher-priority to me at present, so most likely I will not be resuming this project in earnest before Feb or March though I might make the occasional odd update if the mood should strike me. Considering the length of PH this could mean that Nigel's prediction of the project taking me until 2037 to complete might just come true. On the other hand, I probably won't be doing a whole lot else between now and 2037, so what the hell?

It's worth noting that I've actually been moving through these chapters at a pretty respectable clip; the main reason it's taken so long is due to the long periods of procrastination in between short bursts of regular posting. But, since I doubt I'll be able to break this pattern, we'll go ahead and keep 2037 as the target date for completion.

>>380060
I think it will serve to be a very interesting read regardless, because of how batshit insane it gets later. It is memed on for a reason, but time will tell if the immense word count will dull the 'highlights', such as they are.

>>380464
Hoping you'll pardon a bit of dickriding, but as the audience its easy to criticize stories like this because we get perspective.
When you're consuming media, even media that could have been,... better implemented,...
You still have to look into the eyes of the characters. The characters don't choose the context, they are literally written in. Let's look at Blackjack. Are her motivations poorly established at times? Absolutely! But she also represents the idea of a flawed individual trying to do the best of her situation in an increasingly adverse set of circumstances. I'm sure the author will go off the rails at some point like FoE did with Littlepip, and at some point we're all gonna be like "well this is just silly", but even though theres already been plenty of holes and omissions, tell me you can't see through it to see the character that thr author is trying to portray THROUGH Blackjack. I'll wait ^_~

>>380465
I tried to resist a follow-up to this, but I'm anticipating some cross-play, so I'll head some of it off

Yes, every author has a responsibility to effectively illustrate their character. But, it can get murky really quickly depending on how basic the writer is.
This might sound odd.
It isnt the character's fault.
Sometimes, you can make a story better by INTUITING what the author tried to do, and IMAGINING thats what happened.
Its a chore, yes, but its about making your experience better.
its the weirdest thing,... everytime I need a random pony pic, I go on ponerpics and "golly gee there it is"

>>380323
When you really listen, you realize the song is an omage to (you) the viewer
God I love this fandom

>>380474
Okay the song isnt, but the vid certainly.is

>>380060
GG, you know me. Can you give me your opinion? What should I do to improve as a writer? What should I work on?

>>381698
Or, what are my problems?

>>381698
>>381699
Sorry, I didn't notice these posts before.

If you're just looking for general advice, your biggest problem from what I've seen is ESL, as I've told you in the past. From some of your recent stuff though it looks like that's improved considerably. I'll confess I haven't gotten very far into it, but your Fallout Equestria story looks promising so far. I'll grab this little bit just to use as an example:

>A midnight blue unicorn mare stood on the bow of the ferry; she gazed ahead at the coastal city of Bubbly Lake, The Cooked Mare. The frills hanging down from her black cartwheel hat waved in the, just faintly cool, breeze. A bouquet of poison joke flowers stuck to the side of the hat. Her face lit up every time she inhaled and disappeared every time she exhaled; the light revealed two narrowed cyan eyes with eyebrow like butterfly wings and black freckles on her cheeks, and when her face disappeared, it was due to silver smoke escaping her mouth as if she was a snoring dragon. Between the mare's teeth sat thin wooden rod. Delicate carvings depicting flowers spiral along it's barrel. The tip had a small metal contraption where one could fasten things, like the makeshift cigarette that glowed every time the mare took a breath. I looked like something between a cigarette holder and wand of sorcery. A tome was strapped with pair of belts to the left side of her barrel and a saddlebag was strapped to the other. There was also a holster for a chromed pistol with a long barrel attached to her right hoof while her left had wrist band of bullets around it. Only the very tip of her back tail that curled in spiral could been seen as the rest was obscured by mult-layered black and blue skirt. Her mane was tied into a bum but a few spirals of hair rested down her forehead. In her ears hung tiny silver sheriff stars.

This is good quality prose compared to a lot of what I've seen from you in the past. There are still some odd errors here and there: typos, awkward sentences, grammatical errors and so forth, but you're doing a lot less of it than you used to, and it doesn't seriously impede readability.

My main advice would be to just keep working on your English, and keep a close eye out for typos and misspellings. There are a few I noticed in here:

>two narrowed cyan eyes with eyebrow like butterfly wings
I'm assuming this is meant to say "eyebrows like butterfly wings," implying that her eyebrows resemble butterfly wings. As written, this basically suggests the opposite: that her eyes have butterfly wings attached, and that the wings are eyebrow-like. Obviously, this would be rather silly.

>as if she was a snoring dragon
as if she were a snoring dragon

>Between the mare's teeth sat thin wooden rod.
Between the mare's teeth sat a thin wooden rod.

>Delicate carvings depicting flowers spiral along it's barrel.
Delicate carvings depicting flowers spiraled along its barrel. In this instance, you mixed up past and present tense, and also used a possessive apostrophe inappropriately. The word "it" is kind of a strange exception to the possessive apostrophe rule. The only time you use an apostrophe-'s' after "it" is when you're making the contraction "it is." When denoting ownership, you just write it as "its." It's confusing, but that's just the way its apostrophes work. English is a retarded language sometimes.

>I looked like something between a cigarette holder and wand of sorcery.
It looked like something between a cigarette holder and a wand of sorcery. Also, "sorcerer's wand" reads a little less awkwardly than "wand of sorcery."

>A tome was strapped with pair of belts
A tome was strapped with a pair of belts.

>There was also a holster for a chromed pistol with a long barrel attached to her right hoof while her left had wrist band of bullets around it
You forgot another 'a', and you'll also want to add a comma here:
>There was also a holster for a chromed pistol with a long barrel attached to her right hoof, while her left had a wrist band of bullets around it. Also, if you want to get super-technical about horse terminology, I'd probably go with "fetlock" instead of "wrist."

>Only the very tip of her back tail
As opposed to her front tail? Unless she's a really weird-looking horse, you can just say "tail" here.

>that curled in spiral
That curled in a spiral. Watch those 'a's, you seem to miss them a lot. Just channel your inner Fonzie.

>the rest was obscured by mult-layered black and blue skirt
Obscured by multi-layered.

You also missed another comma, and the description of the tail is slightly awkward. Altogether, the sentence should read like this:
>Only the very tip of her back tail that curled in spiral could been seen as the rest was obscured by mult-layered black and blue skirt.
Only the very tip of her spiral-shaped tail could be seen, as the rest was obscured by a multi-layered black and blue skirt.

Also, this last sentence:
>Her mane was tied into a bum but a few spirals of hair rested down her forehead.
I'm assuming you mean to say "bun" and not "bum." It's not common in America, but in Britain "bum" is slang for "butt," so basically what you're saying here is that this mare has her mane tied to her butt. Perhaps this is how she wound up with a front-tail. Also, this sentence needs a comma, and the phrase "down her forehead" is awkward.

Altogether, I'd write this as:
>Her mane was tied into a bun, but a few spirals of hair rested on her forehead.

Anyway, as I said, you still have errors like this in your writing, but the good news is I'm seeing far fewer than in the past. You may want to consider getting a grammarly or chat-gpt account or something to scan your writing for grammar problems and spelling errors, it might help with this. That's the biggest issue with your writing that I've seen.

Also, I'm probably going to get back to this project in the relatively near future, hence my checking this thread again finally.

>>382162
Thanks for response. I'll get back to you.

>>382162
Thank you for you advice. I think my analysis is that I'm so unproductive. I probably have mediocre english too but I feel my problem is that I'm so unproductive.

How do you do to be so productive?

>>382479
>I probably have mediocre english
I know tat's not what you said btw, just me being negative right now I guees.

>>382480
Calm down Sven, you're doing amazingly. You already communicate to the degree that English-speakers do. GG is good about particulars, but don't take that there is criticism as an indication that you aren't succeeding; YOU ARE. I haven't posted because I am running out of criticisms. You're doing great

>>382479
I'm honestly not that productive, nowhere near at the level I wish I was. I mean, look at this thread for example. I tend to have a lot of ideas, and I will get excited about one and put in a lot of work but will then lose interest and back-burner it.

If you really need to force-motivate yourself, probably the best way is to commit yourself to a deadline. Ideally not an arbitrary personal deadline like "I will write X words by Y date," but a deadline that other people will hold you to. For instance, I'm still writing the Dale Gribble story, but since I started publishing it I've basically committed myself to a weekly or near-weekly release schedule, which means that every week I need to have a chapter done and edited so I can post it. EFNW also does a physical bookstore and I want to try do do a print run for sale there, which means I also need to finish writing the entire story by that time. So, that's served as enough of a fire under my ass to keep me consistently working on something I otherwise would be slacking off on by now.

>>382481
Also, what this guy said. If you give me a piece of writing I can almost always find something to nitpick, but that doesn't mean I didn't like it or that it's bad. As I've said before, you have a good instinct for storytelling, you tend to produce quality work and you clearly put effort into what you do. That and time is all anyone really needs in order to git gud.

Boy oh boy, Project Horizons. This story is a long, strange ride, and I don't blame you for taking your time with it. Somber has a stronger grasp of the writing fundamentals than Kkat, but also his own raft of problems, including some pretty severe mental, emotional and sexual hangups. It's an all the more fascinating/depressing read if you work under the assumption that Somber was writing it as an outlet for some fucked up personal issues.

Back in the day when it was still being posted serially, PH had a huge early following that gradually splintered as it went on. Up until chapter 30-or-so it was widely regarded as "FoE but better," or "the New Vegas to FoE's Fallout 3." After that, not so much. A lot of people on /mlp/ and in general jumped ship at various points in the latter half, each with their own opinions of when it completely jumped the shark even by FoE standards. Some stuck it out to the end, but they had stronger stomachs and smoothe brains than most.

Curious to see how long your patience lasts.

>>382663
>Somber has a stronger grasp of the writing fundamentals than Kkat
>it was widely regarded as "FoE but better,"
This has basically been my view of it so far. I've also heard that it does start getting pretty bizarre eventually. I've more or less enjoyed it up until now, but the massive length + the rumors I've heard about the later story makes me suspect the honeymoon period will be over pretty shortly.

Anyway, I've probably procrastinated on this project long enough, plus I have a bit of stress that I need to work off, so I'm going to try to get a little more of this done tonight.

>>382663
>>382665
Without having asked for elaboration, it has been impressed by more than a few that "it gets nuts after she gets the prosthetics"

>>382666
I've heard this too. If the memes are correct, she also becomes a raging alcoholic at some point. Also, nice satan trips.

>>382667
Unintended, but considering the discussion with AI that occurred this evening it's hardly a surprise

>>376982

When we last left BJ, she was about to venture alone and unarmed into an abandoned natural history museum that is no doubt swarming with hostiles. Her justification for doing this is rather thin:

>I had told the Crusaders I’d be going straight to my stuff and back, but honestly, walking alone in just my coat didn’t sit well with me. Besides, I still had a ten-thousand-cap goal to attain. If there was something useful within, maybe I should see if I could find it.
Since we already know the Crusaders put her stuff somewhere safe, it would make far more sense to go back and get her weapons before exploring the museum, but presumably the author is trying to set something up here.

Anywho, she goes around back to the loading dock and encounters a locked door. The skeleton of the last pony who attempted to get in this way still reposes next to the gate, a good omen if ever I've seen one. Conveniently enough, it is holding some bobby pins BJ can use to pick the lock. However, she lacks Littlepip's all-powerful Mary Sue powers, and thus has no aptitude at picking locks.

At some point during their downtime, it seems that BJ asked P-21 to give her a quick rundown, and this provides her with enough basic knowhow to take a crack at it; however, she isn't very successful and ends up breaking a bobby pin.

>P-21 made this look so easy… I realized more and more how I much I depended on him. I needed my friends.
I will once again note that Somber does a much better job divvying up skills between the various characters. This not only helps balance the party, it also serves to reinforce the 'friendship' theme that kkat paid lip service to but never effectively demonstrated. This character actually needs her friends.

Anyway, she eventually gets the lock open, but as soon as she does, she senses someone behind her. Her EFS confirms the presence of something yellow (I think the yellow blips are neutral), and she catches a glimpse of what appears to be an alicorn. She mistakes this for Princess Luna, presumably because as far as she knows there are only two alicorns, and since it's nighttime Luna would be the obvious choice. However, she concludes that this is unlikely; her eyes are probably playing tricks on her.

Disregarding this for the time being, she enters the loading dock of the museum. Unsurprisingly, the room is full of bullet holes and skeletons (at this point it would be more unsettling to enter a location that isn't). She notices that one of the skeletons is wearing coveralls, and for some silly reason she takes them and puts them on. Now she is +1 coveralls, but still completely unarmed. In spite of the fact that her EFS is showing a large number of red blips in the area, she decides to press onward.

She finds some more skeletons, along with an old newspaper article from before the war. The article seems unimportant, but by now, we should all be familiar with this setup: the protagonist enters an old building, finds a series of old articles, sound recordings or terminal entries detailing what took place here during the wartime era, and eventually learns grim truth behind whatever horrible tragedy took place here. This time, the story involves the capture of a serial killer called the Angel of Death, with the arresting officer being someone called Softheart. So, we should make a note of these names as we'll probably be hearing them again in the near future.

While she's reading, one of those ominous red blips on her radar approaches her. However, it turns out to only be an obscenely large cockroach, which she is able to easily squish. After this, she raids the breakroom, where she finds a half-empty bottle of whiskey. Being the absolute retard that she is, she decides to drink it now instead of saving it for later. So, in addition to being alone and unarmed in a museum full of enemies, with nothing but a set of 200 year old overalls for protection, she is also drunk. Presumably, her next move will be to round up the gang and head to Camp Crystal Lake, for what promises to be a completely uneventful weekend of promiscuity.

Anyway, she continues to poke around the museum, and for the time being nothing tries to murder her. She finds a pretty boss looking sword that would actually make a decent weapon, but unfortunately the lock on the display case is too complicated and she has to leave it. Also: several of the museum displays mention Hoofington being built on the ruins of an ancient zebra city that is believed to have been destroyed in a volcanic eruption. This may or may not be important later.

>Stepping into the next room, I froze at the sight of the alicorn. She stared down at me in complete contempt, horn leveled to strike me down. Then, as the lights rose, my heartbeat slowed as I saw it was just another statue.
Once again, we have alicorns, specifically Luna, being alluded to. I'm assuming Somber is building up to something here.

Anyway, she wanders around some more. Most of this is just backstory about Hoofington; the main takeaway seems to be that this was the site of one of the earliest Zebra attacks at the beginning of the war. It was apparently a center of scientific research and was thus a strategic target; after the attack it was rebuilt and heavily fortified. This ultimately proved to be a wasted effort, since we know that it was later destroyed by a megaspell.

While she is thus absorbed in local history, BJ suddenly hears voices and the sound of a radroach being stepped on. She turns around to see a couple of baddies, who apparently followed her in here, rounding the corner.

>There was a moment when their grins showed this to be the best night of the lives.
Not even the sturdiest pair of overalls could protect Blackjack from this abortion of a sentence.

>>382676

Anyway, it seems that BJ is determined to take home the coveted "Stupidest Horse in Edgequestria" prize. Already alone, drunk and unarmed, facing off against a pair of sober, armed stallions, she decides that her best course of action is to try seducing them:

> I hoped they enjoyed that moment as I walked slowly towards them. My eyes locked with theirs as I turned my head and smiled sweetly. “Hey boys.”

However, she is up against some stiff competition this year. After all, this is Fallout: Equestria, where the heroes are dumb, but the villains are just flat-out retarded:

>“Sweet Celestia’s crotch, she’s drunk ,” whispered the one in a dual-rifle battle saddle, goggling in astonishment.
I don't think I've ever heard the word "goggle" used as a verb before.

In any event, Blackjack must look dang sexy in those overalls, because instead of just shooting her as she slow-walks drunkenly towards them, the two outlaws just stand there "goggling" at her. Eventually she gets close enough to bash one of them in the face with the whiskey bottle. She then takes his gun away and uses it to dispatch the second one.

The gunfire attracts more baddies, but BJ is able to dispense with them easily enough. She empties the rest of the pistol into an unfortunate mare armed with a shotgun, and then takes the shotgun. There are still three more enemies, and she only has two shells, but fortunately a giant dragon skeleton the museum had on display is able to shoulder some of the load. She blasts out the supports holding it up, and it collapses on top of the three baddies. One of them survives, but BJ is able to leap onto her back and bash her skull in with the now-empty shotgun.

Another survivor then charges her, armed with one of the dragon bones. BJ picks up one of the claws, they scuffle briefly, and her opponent ends up with a slashed throat and a dragon bone lodged in his windpipe. It's worth noting that Blackjack is doing all of this while singing a drinking song at the top of her lungs.

A fresh batch of recruits is now charging down the stairs at her. Still armed only with the dragon's claw, and presumably still wearing a pair of bloody overalls, she charges up to meet them. The first one goes down after a few quick stab wounds to the chest. The next guy gets castrated and chucked over the railing, which causes the remaining baddy to lose his nerve and kamikaze himself over the edge.

By now, there is a whole horde of enemies swarming in through the front door of the museum. So, following the dickless guy and the suicide their powers combined, they become kkat, she vaults over the railing, using the pack's leader to break her fall. As soon as she lands, she immediately faces yet another mare armed with yet another shotgun. However, she is able to jam the dragon claw into the barrel, causing it to misfire and explode. She then takes the remains of the shotgun and beats its owner to death.

While doing this, she is set upon by two more ruffians, who foolishly think that, just because she is unarmed, outnumbered, and pinned helplessly against a display case, she will somehow be prevented from stabbing them both in the neck with their own knives. Will these hooligans ever learn?

Anyway, this seems to be the end of it. BJ goes through the bodies one by one, relieving them of their various weapons and possessions. Among them is another bottle of whiskey, so of course she has another drink. Meanwhile, the guy whose legs she broke by landing on him and the guy whose dick she cut off are still alive. Instead of finishing them off, she gives them each a bit of whiskey plus whatever healing potions she has on her, and advises them to steer clear of her in the future. She then goes back upstairs and resumes poking around the museum. The scene ends in a page break.

We rejoin her back at Chapel (not the actual chapel of Chapel, but the town called Chapel where the chapel is located). We are informed that she finished looting the museum, and then went back to wherever the Crusaders hid her stuff and retrieved all that as well. Now she is lying on a mattress nursing a hangover. She has a brief conversation with Priest, who makes some cryptic remarks about the "pilgrims" that were referenced earlier. Then, she goes outside to walk around in the rain and clear her head.

While doing this, she comes across an old wartime cemetery, and spends some time reflecting on the different attitudes towards mortality she's encountered thus far:

>I’d never seen something like this before. Not the dead. I’d seen so many pony bones that it seemed like they just blended into the background. Only when a name was attached did I care. These dead were cared for. In Stable 99, when you died it was as if you simply never were. Death had been an annoyance because you were then obligated to breed and train your replacement. The dead were taken to the machines and recycled, along with all the byproducts of the stable. Recycled. Reprocessed. Mixed with vat-grown algae, yeast, and fungus and made into chips. It wasn’t cannibalism; there was nothing equine about your meal. We didn’t eat Leg of Duct Tape. It was just the way things were. You lived in Stable 99 till you didn’t any more, and didn’t think about it.
This is actually kind of an interesting passage. I appreciate the amount of thought Somber put into this.

Anyway, she wanders around the cemetery for an appropriate amount of time, then makes her way to the chapel of Chapel located at the top of the hill. Inside, she finds Priest again, tending to the pilgrims that were mentioned earlier. I'm actually a little surprised to see them alive and intact; the way things usually go in this setting I was expecting Priest to turn out to be some kind of cannibal or organ-harvester.

However, it's not quite over. There's a bit more to this scene that will need to be addressed in another post.

>>382678
Priest and Blackjack shoot the shit for awhile, and the subject of "virtue" comes up. This was dealt with extensively in the original FoE, but to my recollection this is the first we've heard of it here. Once again, Somber basically adheres to kkat's established formula, while making subtle additions that make it a little more plausible.

It's easiest to just let Priest explain in his own words:
>According to what I believe, all ponies possess a virtue. It’s an aspect of themselves that is their most pure and honest self. It is what makes a pony good, an integrity that nopony can take from you.
>Ponies who know their virtue and embrace it can last longer in the face of adversity. They have inner strength to support their flesh and blood.
However, virtue on its own is not enough:
>Friendship. A virtue alone will inevitably erode. The Wasteland will poison it, corrupt it into a dark reflection of itself.
>Friendships that support and bolster the virtues of the participants empower them against any challenge. Friends united in a common cause are stronger than anything the Wasteland can throw at them.
So in summation, the only way to survive and prosper in the Wasteland is to have a virtue towards which you can orient yourself, and friends to support you and keep you properly oriented. This works best when your friends have virtues of their own. Ponies without virtue are directionless, and tend to be bad at forming friendships:
>They may remain together, but there will always be strain and struggle. I can’t think of any friends lasting for long without knowing themselves. How can you be friends with a stranger?

This is more or less the same as what's in the original FoE. However, kkat's interpretation of these concepts is very rigid and literal. He also attempts, rather clumsily, to connect his concept of "virtue" to the Elements of Harmony from show canon. The implication seems to be that each pony's virtue will correlate somehow to one of the six Elements. If a pony fails to live up to their virtue, it becomes corrupted and the pony goes insane, eventually becoming a Raider.

The original FoE canon seems to treat "virtues" as unbreakable codes of honor that are interpreted literally. The most ridiculous example of this occurs with the character of Monterrey Jack. MJ appears early in the story, when Littlepip rescues him from slavers, only to have him turn around and rob her afterward. Later, when Littlepip runs into him at Tenpony Tower and accuses him of the theft, he pointlessly confesses to the crime and refuses to defend himself, the reason being that his virtue is "honesty." The robbery can't be proven and MJ could easily get himself off by lying; however, lying goes against his virtue. So, he chooses to confess, knowing full well that doing so will result in him being executed and his children being orphaned.

It's still a little too early to judge exactly how PH will deal with this idea, but so far the interpretation here seems to be more abstract and philosophical:
>“Only Celestia truly knows my virtue,” he said quietly, but from the look on his face it would be all he’d answer. Maybe you didn’t have to know it. Maybe you could just live it.

It will be interesting to see how this progresses.

Anyway, after their discussion wraps up, the pilgrims leave the chapel:

>I looked back at the door behind me. “I hope your pilgrims will be safe on their trip home.”
>“They’re not going home,” he replied softly. “They’re continuing their pilgrimage.”
>Now I frowned. “You mean to other chapels?”
>“To Celestia.”
>I stared at him a moment, my eyes widening as they saw the sadness in his expression.
>“How could you?” I whispered and then turned and raced out the door.
I knew there was going to be some kind of bait and switch with these fucking pilgrims.

The pilgrims march out onto the bridge leading to the Core. You may recall that the Core was the most heavily fortified area of the city during the war, where all sorts of spooky government projects were being conducted. There are still functioning robo-lasers guarding the entrances, that automatically gun down anyone who approaches. The pilgrims appear to understand this, and go marching across the bridge to their deaths.

>She was still smiling as the red beams lanced out from the top of the wall and swept through their bodies. Red energy swirled, consuming every inch of her being and turning it to ash. Celestia damn them, her smile was the last thing to disappear.
inb4 Cheshire Cat.

The question of what, specifically, this means is left ambiguous for now. Maybe Priest is officiating some kind of wacky suicide cult, or maybe he's some kind of Dr. Kevorkian type figure, who helps ponies kill themselves when they lose the will to live. I guess we'll just have to wait and find out.

The chapter ends here.

>Footnote: Level Up.
>New Perk added: Tough hide (Level 2) - The Brutal experiences of the Equestrian Wasteland have toughened you. You gain +3 Damage Threshold for each level of this perk you take.
To be fair, I think her magic overalls deserve some credit here. Incidentally, until I am told otherwise, I am going to assume that Blackjack is still wearing those fucking overalls.
>Skill note: Lockpicking (25)

>>382679
Tempting to own just as a trophy, but I think once is probably enough for both of them. Though I am tempted to print up all of my review shitposts for both stories and publish them in a nice hardback edition.

>>382681
One might liken Virtue to Snowpity, in that all ponies have it but it can be lost, but friendship reaffirms and bolsters it, enabling it to grow.

>>382682
THAT I would pay money for

>>382681
>Once again, Somber basically adheres to kkat's established formula, while making subtle additions that make it a little more plausible.

This is a common thread throughout a lot of PH. It takes elements of FoE's setting that were either poorly explained, brushed over in brief or downright nonsensical from the start and tries to do them better. Emphasis on tries, because the results are very mixed. This more abstract take on virtues as an in-universe religious belief is a pretty substantial improvement though, perhaps because FoE's virtues were a trainwreck to begin with.

>>382681

Chapter 12: Denial

>Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons
>By Somber
>Chapter 12: Denial

Today's Fortune Cookie:
>“Obviously, that’s why I zipped my mouth closed, then locked it with a key, then dug a hole, then buried the key, then built a house on top of the hole where I buried the key, then moved into the house on top of the hole.”
Obviously.

The new chapter opens up basically where the last one left off. BJ just watched a bunch of pilgrims getting vaporized, pretty much the worst Thanksgiving ever.

>No mare in Stable 99 would ever kill herself and deprive the stable of her abilities. Every life was needed! Important!
Is that technically true? Unless I'm misunderstanding how things worked around there, so long as you bred and trained a replacement for yourself first, it seems like everyone would be cool with it.

Anyway, BJ and Priest argue over the ethics of allowing ponies to voluntarily commit sudoku. As always, there's a bit of a surreal flavor to the conversation, seeing as how BJ went on a drunken killing spree just a few short scenes ago and didn't even bat an eye. Nothing we haven't seen before, though.

After sulking for a bit, she goes back into the chapel where Priest is ministering to yet another group of pilgrims who may or may not also be about to kill themselves. They all break into song, and Blackjack is moved to tears by how beautiful the music is:

>I’d never before experienced music so honest and good that it hurt. I ached as it swept me along, and yet it was a good hurt. It felt as if something dark was being drawn out of my chest and set aside. It wasn’t perfect. I could hear off notes. That didn’t matter. Ponies weren’t perfect. But for just a few minutes, there was beauty in Equestria.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ [Embed]

Anywho, there's a page break. When we rejoin Blackjack, she is back to wandering around.... somewhere.... fighting random radigators and listening to some random audio recording she picked up.... somewhere. The recording itself is the usual fare: some long-dead mare leaving a message for some other long-dead mare about something seemingly trivial that will no doubt become plot-critical in 40 or so chapters. Specifically, it deals with mineral samples in the Museum; apparently the government wanted to borrow the Museum's rock collection, and this mare was all like "no, no, no."

From this, BJ somehow deduces that the museum must have been attacked by the government on the very day the city was also bombed by... actually, I forget who was supposed to have bombed the city. Was it the Zebras? Ms. Crabtree? Chef? The 1992 Denver Broncos? We never learn, and it doesn't seem to matter.

Anyway, after this completely pointless digression, BJ returns to... somewhere. Locations are becoming vague at this point: all we're told when the scene opens is that she's doing a "sweep of the surrounding area," and all we learn now is that she's "back." The last definitive location we had for her was the chapel.

In any case, she has a pleasant surprise when she gets back to this mystery location we are eventually told that it is the post office. Apparently, one of her friends has returned in her absence. However, if you were expecting either Morning Glory or P-21, aka the two other main characters that we haven't seen in 40 forevers but that BJ seems weirdly uninterested in tracking down, you'd be sadly mistaken. It's actually two other characters, named Sekashi and Mangina, and it's been months since I last read this so I don't remember who the hell either of them are. However, they are both zebras. I think they are the survivors of that zebra troop that was killed by the other zebra in one of the earlier chapters. I went back a bit and confirmed that yes, they were; they were the zebras who laughed at the other zebras and were subsequently killed for laughing. Also: Mangina is actually a foal, and her name is actually Majina. Anyway, whatever; Sekashi is reading stories to the Crusaders or something.

>“Sekashi, I am so glad to see you. Where are P-21 and Glory? What…” Then she turned around and gave me a wry smile. “Oh, right. You can’t hear me.”
Apparently, Sekashi can't hear.

>“Sadly not. But Majina’s hearing may recover. She is young and I have hope,” she said as she walked to one of the houses and sat beneath the porch roof.
Aparently, Mangina can't hear either. Wait a minute, if she can't hear, how did she answer the question?

Alright, it's probably time to check the wiki. This is apparently the explanation:
>Sekashi worked in Brimstone Falls as a slave. She has been deafened by the noise pollution within the Mines along with most of the other Zebra.
Presumably the same applies to her foal, whose official name, from here on out, shall be Mangina. The two of them can probably read lips or something and that's how they communicate. I'm assuming all of this was covered earlier and I just forgot, but it's still good to have all that sorted out.

Anyway, Sekashi and Blackjack have a sweaty makeout session and then everypony goes back to the clubhouse to have a big "welcome home" party with punch and pie. Mangina compliments Blackjack on her sick new overalls, and then everyone moves to New York and goes to a party with Warren.

By which I mean: Sekashi fills in BJ on all the stuff that happened in the whitespace between Chapter 10 and Chapter 11. Here are the broad strokes:

BJ was riding in the back of the wagon, all wounded and w/e, and was whining a lot and getting on everyone's nerves. So, they gave her a booby-trapped memory orb so she'd shut the fuck up already. Then, they were set upon by ruffians who tried to capture Blackjack so they could trade her for meth. Some brown unicorn, who sounds like another previously mentioned character whose identity I don't recall, made fun of P-21 for being BJ's fuccboi. Then there was a big fight, P-21 and MG were both abducted, and Mangina pushed BJ's cart down a hill for lulz.

>>382753

Oh, also: P-21 and Morning Glory were each captured by two different factions. MG was captured by a group of pegasi, so I'm assuming that was probably the Enclave taking her back home because she overstayed her student visa or whatever her deal was. Meanwhile, P-21 was abducted by the brown unicorn and some other unicorns, probably for gay sex. For some unknown reason, nobody bothered to go after Blackjack, despite her being unconscious with a $$60,000,000,000 bounty on her head. In any event, I guess Mangina pushed her down a really big hill, and she fell off the cart at some point. Then, she was found by the Crusaders, and the rest is history.

Anyway, BJ and Sekashi yak for a bit. BJ asks Sekashi to come along with her on what will most likely be a march towards certain death, and Sekashi politely declines, saying that she'd rather just chillax around Hoofington and tell bedtime stories to foals. BJ is all like "okay fine bitch w/e, not like I was going to ask you to lick my pony taint or anything," and then she wanders off to find someone who will lick her pony taint. Before she goes, she just has one question: why the fuck doesn't Sekashi have all those retarded zebra superstitions that all the other retarded zebras have? Well, it turns out that the answer is because reasons. I'll be honest: I'm probably way too tired to be doing this, but it's the only thing keeping me awake right now.

Anyway, whatever. The conversation eventually turns to sex, because why wouldn't it? BJ mentions to Sekashi that she should pay a visit to the priest, which Sekashi naturally interprets as BJ suggesting she have the priest inseminate her. Sekashi informs BJ that she is already filled to the brim with semen, but that BJ herself looks a little semen-deficient, so maybe she ought to pay a visit to the priest. BJ is all like "no, you retarded cunt, that's not what priests are for" and Sekashi is all like "well then why the fuck did you bring it up?" and BJ is all like "bitch I have no idea it's probably because horse autism."

Naturally, this segues into a conversation about P-21's gigantic curved munchkin wang, and how BJ clearly wants to take a long ride on the grand salami express. BJ is all like "that don't be like it is but it do" and Sekashi is all like "lol, lmao."

But in reality, it's more like this:

>“P-21 is my friend. He’s smart and focused and…” Wraps explosive collars on ponies and gives me the button to push. And helps keep me together when I’m falling apart. And I need him and he needs me. “Ugh… things were just easier back in the stable. You put yourself on a male’s breeding queue and waited for your turn. Easy.”
Actually, I'll note that Somber is once again proving surprisingly competent at this. While he's not exactly a great writer, he's continuously shown that he has a much better instinct for how stories ought to work than kkat ever did. Case in point: this interesting little insight into BJ's thought process.

Characters are people and/or horses, and people and/or horses are complex. Their attitudes and feelings towards each other are therefore multilayered and often contradictory. P-21 clearly has a great deal of emotional baggage weighing him down, which drives a lot of his erratic behavior; I'm assuming we'll learn a lot more about what makes him tick as the story progresses. BJ, meanwhile, is basically trying to slap together some kind of half-assed values system for herself out of whatever the Wasteland has left lying around. She simultaneously admires this guy, is repulsed by him, wants to fuck him, and feels guilty about wanting to fuck him, on account of how she on some level understands that the Stable's bizarre mating system is a significant part of why he's so fucked-up and angry. At the same time, the Stable's bizarre mating system is the sum total of everything she knows about male/female relationships. Plus, he also wants to kill her for some yet-unexplained reason. All of this runs through her head simultaneously in the space of a few seconds, and as jumbled and schizophrenic as it is, it all fits together and feels like a natural expression of thought, belonging to a real person. Pony, whatever. For anyone who wants to write: get used to thinking this way.

Anyway, after some more spirited debate about the length and girth of P-21's oven-roasted bologna scepter, Blackjack wanders off to find someone who will lick her pony taint. Fortunately, on her way back to the post office, she bumps into Priest, who seems to be an expert at that sort of thing.

>Our eyes met. He had the lightest golden eyes. He smiled wistfully. “You’re leaving?”
Seriously, though, I have no idea why this Priest character is suddenly being sexualized like this. Literally nothing about their interactions up until a couple of paragraphs ago indicated that BJ was in any way attracted to him. Best I can figure is that it has something to do with BJ's latent interest in P-21, which I guess she's just projecting onto this guy because he's there and because Sekashi brought it up.

Anyway, whatever; he licks her fucking pony taint and the scene ends.

Page break. BJ is wandering around in the wasteland again, armed with her usual crazy assortment of guns. She stops to shoot at some radhogs or something. Pew pew pew. She also puts on the radio, just in time to hear the DJ recap her latest exploits.

Then, suddenly, she trips over a random corpse:

>The poor mare hadn’t just been killed. Whatever had done it had torn massive rents in her sides, cleaving right through her ribcage and spilling her organs across the field.
I'm sure it was natural causes.

Anyway, she comes across a pile of dead bodies, that appears to have been lying in wait to ambush her. However, they were themselves ambushed and rent asunder by some unknown assailant that is probably nearby.

Will this move to >>>/poner/ in the next thread?

>>383400
In all likelihood yes, it's a better fit there. Once this thread hits bump limit the next thread will most likely be on /poner/. However, there is a good chance that reviewing PH may take the rest of my life to finish, so one way or the other we won't be going anywhere for awhile.

>>382757
Anyway, BJ keeps on following the rail line, I'm assuming because she's trying to find out what happened to Morning Glory and P-21. On the way, she wonders about that thing that did all the stuff back in the place:

>My thoughts went back to my... helper. I didn’t like somepony helping me all sneaky like, but I had to admit it was better than shooting me in the back. On the other hoof, though, I really didn’t care for their methods. At all. Anypony that tore other ponies to pieces wasn’t exactly what I’d call an ally. The idea of anypony who could even do that didn’t sit well with me.
Reminder that she literally just killed ten ponies and cut a guy's nuts off while singing ribald sea chanties less than one chapter ago.

Eventually, she comes across an overturned rail car with a bunch of armed ponies hiding behind it, obviously waiting to ambush her. She considers sniping them all, but then, for no obvious reason, she decides to just walk in front of them and announce herself. In any case though, it all works out, because none of the ponies are capable of shooting at her. They are all tied up, with their rifles tied to their hooves so they look armed, and also they all have sacks of live radroaches on their backs for some bizarre reason.

As she approaches, floodlights are suddenly switched on, and the whole thing is revealed to be an elaborate ruse. The perpetrator is someone calling herself Virgo Zodiac, Seventh Daughter of the Zodiac Family, who announces herself remotely via a terminal. She invites Blackjack to surrender in the name of arcane science.

It turns out that Virgo Zodiac is a bounty hunter who is also interested in arcane science, specifically PipBucks. She created this elaborate trap to lure Blackjack in, because she wants the bounty on her and also her PipBuck. There's a bunch of drone robots, and some landmines, and some kind of box full of neurotoxin, and all kinds of elaborate bullshit here.

However, this is nowhere near as big a problem as it would seem. It turns out that Virgo is actually just a filly, and her level of overkill is what does her in. BJ shoots at one of the robot drones to make them charge, and then they all step on the mines, and so forth and so on until the entire trap has been destroyed. Virgo runs away with her tail between her legs, screaming "I'll get you next time, Gadget, next time..." and so forth and so on. I'm assuming this is going to be some kind of recurring comic-relief character who will periodically show up with elaborate but poorly-thought-out traps like this. At least I hope that's what she's going to be, because honestly this character has potential. I also hope this doesn't turn into another one of those Scoodle situations, where a character I like exists for all of one scene before getting brutally murdered and written out of the story.

Anyway, after Virgo takes off, BJ unties the hostages and asks if they have any info on her recently-abducted friends. In a weirdly coincidental stroke of luck, they do: turns out there are some Enclave ponies holed up in the Miramare Air Station up north. In an even weirder coincidence, this actually corresponds to an assignment she was given several chapters ago.

You may or may not still remember that, back in Chapter 8, BJ was at the Mega Mart asking the assistant manager or whatever if there were any jobs she could do. She needs to raise a lot of money to get that file on her PipBuck decoded, so she took on three assignments: deliver mail to Flank, patrol the highway between some location and some other location, and retrieve some macguffins from the Miramare Air Station. Then, for some reason that has yet to be explained, instead of doing any of those things, the party went straight to some abandoned school in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere, and somehow wound up fighting a bunch of slavers in a mine. After that, BJ got separated from her friends and ended up in Chapel.

So in other words, this completely random encounter has put BJ back on the path that she ought to have been on in the first place, had the author not chosen to send her off on this digressive side-quest. Call me crazy, but I'm starting to get the feeling the author is just pulling this story out of his ass as he goes.

Page break. When we rejoin Blackjack, nothing especially interesting is happening to her. However, this does not prevent her from spending several paragraphs yapping about it. Eventually, she stops at an abandoned trailer park to rest. However, she is having trouble sleeping, so she whips out her PipBuck to rub one out before naptime.

While rummaging through the crap in her Downloads folder, she discovers that for some reason, she has a bunch of recordings of P-21 having sex with various mares from the Stable I feel like there's actually a legitimate reason why she would have these, I just can't recall what it is. Even more surprising is that there are a few recordings that have her initials. Wouldn't it be embarrassing if she'd been traveling with this guy for weeks and had completely forgotten that they'd already done the horizontal monster mash?

However, it turns out that this is not the case. What she initially thinks is a recording of herself and P-21 doing the dirty dingo is actually just a recording of her own cutecenara party, which for some reason she keeps in the same folder as a bunch of recordings of P-21 giving some random mares the old in-out in-out.

However, it then turns out that her first impression was actually half-right. What she hears is a recording of herself... having sex with P-21... at her own cutecenara party. She recalls the event, but never made the connection between the whiny little bitch she played hide-the-salami with in the closet all those years ago, and the whiny little bitch she's been traversing the wasteland with for the past several weeks.

Well, isn't her face red? And for once, it's not from being splattered with the blood of her enemies.

>>386867

Page break. We rejoin Blackjack outside the Miramare Air Station. If the revelation that she basically raped P-21 while they were both foals is still weighing on her mind, she gives us no sign of it. The text gives us a fairly decent description of the area:

>Like just about every major building in the Wasteland, Miramare Air Station was an overengineered monstrosity, a black brick of a building topped by a tower. It was that overengineering that kept the building intact when almost every other structure was blasted away by the red-glowing crater on the east end of the runway. Armored sky chariots lay tumbled in heaps and piles. The hangars slumped in concave mounds where their roofs had collapsed. Ground carts had simply been reduced to scattered chassis, with the hulk of a tank the only recognizable vehicle.

There are, of course, the usual assortment of red bars ominously lighting up her EFS. However, she sees no indication of what sort of threat she might be facing. She stands outside for several paragraphs, contemplating her predicament.

>If there were pegasi here, they were being pretty sneaky about it.
Being sneaky about what? Being pegasi? Or being here? Protip for writers: be careful how you word things.

>I kept getting an impression of two personalities from the Enclave. The former was nice, idealistic, naive, and bumbling. Easy to trust. The latter had snuck into the Fluttershy clinic and ignored the psychological states of forty colts and fillies trapped in stasis. This place had entirely the second feeling to it: the Enclave here was up to no good.
BJ seems to be drawing a lot of conclusions about the Enclave based on very little actual information. It's clear the author wants us to perceive this group as shadowy and morally ambiguous; the problem is that neither we nor BJ has seen enough of them to draw any firm conclusions yet. Protip for writers: instead of force-feeding the reader the impressions and feelings you want them to have, it's better to just show them characters and events, and allow them to draw their own conclusions.

Anyway, after several more paragraphs of her usual rambling, BJ approaches an overturned sky chariot and attempts to loot some ammo crates. However, before she can get near them, she is fired upon by an energy weapon wielded by an unseen assailant.

She takes cover under the chariot and looks for a sniper. Seeing no one, she realizes that her opponent is probably Enclave and can therefore fly. She blasts a hole in the roof of the chariot and looks up to see an armored pegasus hovering above her. Since she technically has no beef with the Enclave and doesn't want to start one, she requests the chance to explain herself. However, the pegasus does not respond, so she has no choice but to blast one of his legs off. The pegasus retreats, but falls to the ground before it is able to return to base. She loots his corpse for gun parts and armor and what have you though I can't imagine why she would need armor; I'm assuming she is still wearing her Hugo Boss magical overalls, and then proceeds into the air station proper via a side door.

She finds herself in a filthy bathroom, which leads to an equally filthy locker room. She comes across some lockers emblazoned with several names that sound vaguely familiar: Stonewing, Jetstream, Vanity, Twist, Doof, Echo, Psalm, something unreadable, and Big Macintosh. I feel like these were the ponies involved in the air battle we witnessed via memory orb a few chapters ago, but I could be mistaken.

The lockers appear to be controlled by a terminal. She attempts to open Stonewing's locker, and is asked for a password. She tries "Rainbow Dash", and it works. Inside, she finds a bunch of crusty cunt flakes some photos and other assorted personal mementos. She also finds a note:

>“Hey. If you’re reading this, please get out of Stone’s locker. I took his harness and put it where it’s safe. And if it’s you, Jet, it’s in the place where he did that thing that one time. Pick it up whenever you’re ready. Big Macintosh. P.S. Honestly, Stone? ‘Rainbow Dash?’ What were you thinking?”
If this story works the same way its predecessor did, I'm assuming whatever object (apparently a harness) was stored in here will turn up at some point in the future. So, I'll go ahead and make a note of it.

Anyway, she can't brute-force the passwords to any of the other lockers, so she moves on. There are a few more rooms, and she collects some more junk, and then she winds up in a cafeteria. A couple of Enclave ponies are enjoying their afternoon tea, but BJ manages to get the drop on them. They refuse to answer her questions about Morning Glory, so she duct-tapes their wings to their sides, glues them to the floor, and then tapes their mouths shut she found the glue and the tape in one of the lockers so this is all kosher as far as I'm concerned. In an admirable display of restraint, she seems to want to avoid killing any of the Enclave ponies if she can in any way avoid it.

Unfortunately, she is forced to give up on this resolution almost immediately, when she encounters another guard in the hallway, whom she has no choice but to kill. She then pokes around a little more, finds some more bric a brac, and then goes upstairs to the empty air traffic control tower. The room is full of radroaches but she smushes them all. Unsurprisingly, the room is also full of skeletons.

She also finds a memory orb. Even though the last one of these things she picked up had been booby-trapped, she apparently decides that learning about what happened to this control tower 200 years ago is worth the risk. She triggers the orb, entering into another flashback cutscene.

>>386887
>https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/longtime-democratic-sen-dick-durbin-will-not-seek-re-election-2026-rcna201138
Good riddance.

>>386958
Okay. Not sure what this has to do with Project Horizons, but good to know I guess.

oh shit better bump this

>>389249
GG, if you were my teacher, what assignment would you give me to further my writing?

The enshittification of everything continues.

>>389777
Sure..?

>>389756
Well, first and foremost I would probably tell you to finish the assignment you already have, ie writing the next chapter of that collaborative story. Having the resolve to push through and finish projects even if you're stuck, is an important part of getting better. Second, I'd advise you to stop endlessly second-guessing and questioning yourself, and just focus on completing a project. If it sucks it's no big deal, you can hammer out the problems once you've actually got something on paper.

Third, I'd probably repeat my usual advice about putting in daily time reading as well as writing. If you want to write stories in a particular genre, find an author who writes those types of stories and dive in. I'd also advise picking something challenging from time to time, maybe a type of story or an author that you wouldn't normally read but that sounds interesting. A lot of writing is just subconsciously picking up techniques used by other authors and absorbing the way they put their stories together. Eventually, you'll start using these same techniques yourself without even thinking about it. Though I will add that you should probably focus more on actual published books than online fanfiction. It's not to say that you shouldn't read fanfiction at all, but you might end up inadvertently picking up a lot of bad habits if you're not reading anything else. Aim for variety, I guess would be my advice.

>>389777
Sorry, about earlier. I was just messing with you since I thought it came out of left-field but I do kinda agree with you if you talk about general media. There's a lot of what I like to call drip-feed media today, like its been that way for a long while but I get the feeling, it gets worse and worse. Like, it's always something new and everything has to go fast and there's no time to make something with high amounts of effort, imo.
>>389913
Thank you a bunch for this. I have tried to take it to heart. I restarted my attempt on writing the next chapter in our collaboration. Attached is how far this new draft is in. I have worked on it a couple of days.