Salutations, faggots. I have been in hibernation these last few months, but have once again entered my active cycle. I descend now from the heavens like a vengeful whirlwind, ready to tear down the pillars of this world and bring about the final violent close of our wretched Kali Yuga. Gaze upon my works, ye mighty, and despair. And by this I mean: I am about to take a gigantic steaming dump on yet another mediocre work of My Little Pony fanfiction written almost a decade ago.
>what is this?
You all know perfectly well what this is. For those of you that don't, I would prefer you remain eternally confused.
>why are you doing this?
Not even I know the answer to that anymore.
Previous Reviews:
Exchange
by getmeouttahere
>>>/mlpol/366626 →
Neo-Equestrian Obstetrics
by Kassaz
>>>/mlpol/348497 →
I.D.: That Indestructible Something
by Chatoyance
>>>/mlpol/342944 →
Our Girl Scootaloo
By Cozy Mark IV
>>>/mlpol/331344 →
Rainmetall (included in the Our Girl Scootaloo thread, post # indicates start point)
By /mlpol/'s very own Mexican Anon
>>>/mlpol/338993 →
The Best Night Ever
By Capn_Chryssalid
>>>/mlpol/327793 →
Fallout: Equestria
By kkat
>>>/mlpol/284789 →
The Sun & The Rose
By soulpillar
>>>/mlpol/269307 →
Friendship is Optimal (included in the Past Sins thread, post # indicates start point)
By Iceman
>>>/mlpol/266598 →
Past Sins
By Pen Stroke
>>>/mlpol/248482 →
Would it Matter if I Was?
By GaPJaxie
>>>/mlpol/202151 →
The Original Silver Star Threads:
(these threads are pretty chaotic and I don't begin "reviewing" until midway through, but they're an entertaining read if you have the patience to comb through them)
>>>/mlpol/165646 →
>>>/mlpol/166716 →
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current Story:
Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons
by Somber
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/208056/fallout-equestria---project-horizons
Also, thanks to whatever drawfag created the OP image; it's been one of my favorites for awhile now. At least I'm assuming it was one of our drawfags. It would be a pretty bizarre coincidence if some random derpi artist had drawn something that hyper-specific by pure chance.
/mlpol/ - My Little Politics
1714548210.png (2.2 MB, 3508x1696, 29CFD8999681785BBCA6630204E0B3C8-2323003.png)
200 replies and 110 files omitted.
>>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.
[Read more] >>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
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?
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.
>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
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.
[Read more] 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.
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.
>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.
>>382666
I've heard this too. If the memes are correct, she also becomes a raging alcoholic at some point. Also, nice satan trips.
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
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.
[Read more] 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.
[Read more] 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.
Fun fact, there are vendors in the fandom who will sell you a hardbound copy of both FoE and PH "so you can have a physical copy to reread anytime you want"
>>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)
[Read more] 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.
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.
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.
>>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.
>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.
[YouTube] Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Music Video)![]()
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.
[Read more] 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.
[YouTube] Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Music Video)
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.
[Read more] 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.
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.
[Read more] 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 findsa 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.
[Read more] 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
>“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.
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>>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.
[Read more] 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.
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.
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