The Project Horizons Review Project - Volume 1: The Security Mare · 4:09am Feb 25th, 2015
Project Horizons is certainly the most famous of the Fallout Equestria side stories. It is also one of the longest fics of the fandom, standing at about 1.7M words, or almost 3 FoEs (as of Chapter 73). And it isn’t massive only in length, but also in scope, as it deals with almost a hundred unique characters with unique allegiances and personalities, connected in a complex political mesh, and by a lore that spans multiple time periods.
It is also a very divisive story, be it for its massive amounts of graphic violence (of all kinds), sexual themes, or referential humor. Often you will see it referred to as unfocused, since Blackjack embarks on multiple side quests throughout the narrative, not all of which feel strictly necessary.
Personally, I always had complex feelings about this story. On one hand, it’s hard not to admire Somber for his world, his characterizations, and how well he can use and expand on FoE’s cannon, going wild with it but with things rarely feeling out of place. Somber is also an expert at carving impressive action sequences, and is able to hit you out of nowhere with very strong, genuinely emotional scenes. However, PH tends to lose itself more often than not, and suffers from not knowing if it wants to be a fun action romp, a serious psychological drama, or a teenage comedy – even if that lack of consistency is often its strength.
In short, it is the fandom’s Wheel of Time.
But whatever you think of it, I believe Project Horizons is an important fic. It is probably the second most influential fanfic on the fandom, only after FoE proper, spawning hours and hours of music, custom animations, and other fan works. It is also a live text, and it isn’t uncommon for Somber and his editors to modify things on previous chapters, in order to better reflect the present story. There is certainly something to be said about the dedication and organization needed to go back 50 chapters just to fix something minor, all for the sake of consistency.
To celebrate the fact that it is finally nearing completion, I will be doing a series of posts, reviewing each volume of the fanfic in turn. Considering it is longer than everything else I have reviewed combined, this level of attention seems fitting. If everything works out, I should be posting the last of these along with the release of the epilogue. So, without further ado…
Somber – Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons - Volume 1: The Security Mare – FoE sidefic – Mature
Blackjack, a security mare in Stable 99, is expelled from her home and must learn how to survive and thrive on the wasteland.
Starting to read FoE:PH, it is hard not to think about it in terms of “Fallout Equestria, but…” Stable 99 is Stable 2, but with a much more dystopian and oppressive societal order. Blackjack is Little Pip, but more reserved, less intelligent, more practical, and less stable emotionally. Blackjack has to leave the stable, but she is leaving unwillingly, being pursued while carrying a wounded pony. Project Horizons is Fallout Equestria, but grittier.
I don’t think that should be taken as a criticism. Yes, Project Horizons jump starts itself from FoE’s framework, but it soon manages to become its own thing. The main difference is in which direction each chooses to flesh out its setting: Fallout Equestria is more about the world, while Project Horizons is more about the inhabitants of that world. Not that there aren’t great characters in FoE, or that Hoofington isn’t a vibrant place with great locations, but Project Horizons tends to always tie back its locations to certain groups’ motivations, while FoE likes to use the ponies that inhabit such places to give them flavor. This confers a more personalistic aspect to the story, and does wonders for reader investment.
Originally, the similarities were much more noticeable. Still, even then there was something unique to the story, be it in its flow, or in Blackjack’s tendency for improvisation. The edits only allowed Stable 99 to become a much livelier location, an issue with the original Fallout, in which the first view of Stable 2 is almost perfunctory. Still, the start of the story will certainly feel extremely familiar for those that have read FoE, including most of the same story beats – Leaving the stable, agoraphobia, meeting the watcher, cleaning a building infested with raiders, joining with a pegasus companion, etc. But it doesn’t read like a remake, but rather like a variation on the same theme, familiar, but differing on the details. And any doubt that this was going to be just a derivative work is quickly dispelled as Project Horizons becomes its own thing in what I consider its defining point: Chapter 6, Play.
Play is a fantastic chapter. If you are unsure whether Project Horizons is for you, I recommend checking that one out, since it spoils very little of what comes before, and is pretty much self contained. It isn’t necessarily PH at its absolute best, but it is a great showcase of what it does well: Action, atmosphere, politics, and genuinely sad scenes. Most importantly, it has a distinct rhythm that will dictate much of the first half of the story: They interact with new characters, explore a new location, action set pieces are interspersed with glimpses of the past, there is an effective climax, and it ends with a strong twist ending that hits like a punch to the stomach.
Play is also good as a litmus test because it shows well the type of gore that Project Horizons is willing to use. It works for me, since while the descriptions are vivid and disgusting, they don’t become voyeuristic or pornographic. Instead, the gory parts work as a way to reinforce just how psychologically messed up Hoofington is, and to raise the stakes of success and failure. And really, Project Horizons is as much about failing as it is about succeeding. And this is the chapter where it becomes clear that since Blackjack, as the protagonist, won’t die, she will get to be scarred in all manners possible.
Whenever I think about PH, a bunch of very specific phrases pop on my head: “Do Better”, “Ante Up”, “I am not a smart pony”. All of these are established in these first chapters, but more than catch phrases, they embody the spirit of the story. At the end of the day, Project Horizons is a story about making up for past mistakes, no matter how large they are. It is also about going forward no matter what, and reacting to adversity by giving your all. And it is about being able to do these things despite your own shortcomings, or the rotten opportunities that life throws at you – after all, in the wasteland to not play is to lose.
Yet, on Volume 1 Project Horizons isn’t that story, not yet. This is where the seeds are being planted, since you need to screw up before you can make up for your mistakes. We need to see Blackjack try and fail, time and time again. We need to be introduced to P-21’s barely contained rage and his history of abuse. We need to see Glory’s idealism being torn apart. We are barely introduced to Rampage and Lacunae by this point, both with their unique cocktail of psychological issues. We must see the Hoofington Wasteland, and how the ministry's decisions lead to that.
That contributes to this volume’s distinct atmosphere. It has its fair share of down moments, particularly when dealing with Blackjack’s issues with drugs, but it is in fact fairly upbeat, with a constant sense that, while things might be bad, there are many ways to spin them positively. However, there is always a sense of unease, even when the characters are doing fun, about what the consequences will be.
In fact, it is precisely those more upbeat elements that come back to screw them over later. Blackjack gets a cool beneficial mutation… but she keeps getting increasingly horrifying ones, to the point of inequinity. Raiders are mindless, essentially pure evil… except they were affected by a virus, part of a plot by the Enclave, and are as much victims are perpetrators. And Fallout Equestria has that side of being a fun action romp, as the protagonists mow down hordes of bad guys, until the psychological consequences of wanton slaughter come knocking. Even the climax of this story, with the defeat of Deus, is rethought later when you discover how he got to be that way.
But none of that really comes out of nowhere. Rereading it, the amount of foreshadowing that gets thrown around is incredible. Part of that might have been inserted later, but I am sure that most was already there on my first read, and I just couldn’t connect the dots. More than foreshadowing, they are the earlier threads of some of PHs many side plots. And, if you stick with the story, you will eventually see how much of the faffing around here eventually coalesces into strong narrative points.
And really, that certain lack of aim is the greatest issue here. Instead of a defined, even if only vaguely, end game, Project Horizons Volume 1 reads like just a series of adventures, with the only connecting thread being Blackjack trying to escape Deus, while unraveling the mysteries of Hoofington. In fact, the all important EC-1101 is little more than a generic McGuffin at this point. Even knowing what is yet to come, it is hard to be invested on what happens next, since it really doesn’t matter right now. At best, my curiosity is piqued about the nature/destiny of the Macintosh Marauders, or why everyone wants to get EC-1101.
But, despite that, this is a story that keeps the reader invested, thanks to the strength of the characters. Each and everyone of them, even some of the minor ones, have realistic motivations that are communicated through both actions and words. It is both interesting and heart wrenching to see Blackjack deal with self-doubt, depression, and trauma. Somber conveys very well her anger and resentment, as well as the manner those feelings interact with her friends’. How she treated P-21 on the past, Morning Glory’s having to adapt to her new reality, all those are important things which change Blackjack as a character. Those interactions keep the story fresh, and are a core element of what makes the fic enjoyable.
In fact, Project Horizon is often at its best when ponies are talking. For all its bombast, atmosphere, and gore, Somber is really a wizard with having characters interact. That is why it can easily get away with long scenes inside memory orbs, where things are (often) inconsequential (since those ponies are likely long dead), likely introducing new characters that are never show again. He starts with background ponies for those, but eventually builds up his own cast, which ends up being as important as many of the side characters from the “present”.
Like I said before, the many side characters are what make Hoofington an interesting place. In fact, much of the conflict happens and is resolved in dialogue. My favourite example is a scene in chapter 9, when Blackjack infiltrates a gang, and just sits around to play cards and hear their life stories. It is simple, intense, and without you even realizing, has her acting naturally and still getting her plan to work. The chapters involving chapel are also very good in that regard.
But the dialogue doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and all my praise for it isn’t to say that the action is sub-par. In fact, Volume 1 is home to many memorable action scenes, like the fight against Gorgon, the museum ambush, or the climax of the volume on chapter 16. But Project Horizons is much more than the sum of its parts: action and character interactions/development aren’t things that happen in isolation, and it is through her struggles that Blackjack finds the motivation to become better, or gets new reasons to feel miserable.
And it is thanks to making those work together that I can say that Project Horizons is a great story. In fact, I doubt it would have its following were it not for how well everything balances out. For a fic like this, seemingly endless and published chapter by chapter without a regular schedule, it is very important for each installment to feel like a self contained story, while still pushing forward the overall narrative.
You don’t finish a chapter of PH feeling like it was a waste of time, or that you just saw something which won’t be concluded until the next one gets released. Every single chapter is an enjoyable experience in its own right, while still providing a hook for you to go check the next one out, and advancing the overall plot. Even Volume 1, when taken by itself, feels like a complete story, as many plot points get some semblance of resolution.
However, I posit that it is thanks to Project Horizon being so good at being an excellent serial, that it falls into the trap of being unfocused. After all, if every chapter is doing so much, it seems reasonable that they are longer than they could have been. And that creates an interesting conundrum: Somewhere in the realm of possibility, there is a much more tightly plotted version of Project Horizons,vastly superior to the one that actually exists, but which isn’t a story I would have continued reading. For that reason, I believe that PH is better appreciated in smaller installments: Read a couple of chapters at a time, then put down the book for the day.
Finally, I believe that a special note must be made about the humor. I am a fan of Blackjack being silly, and not taking certain situations with the gravitas they should deserve. However, Somber also has a tendency to write quite a few dissonant characters into the wasteland. You don’t really get much of that here, just the Zodiacs, a group of quirky bounty hunters. Sincerely, it wasn’t something that bothered me too much, but I can see how having that kind of character can bring someone out of the story. Hell, Gem and Mini dying was even used to good effect! Still, I feel the need to bring it up here, since this will become important on the chapters to come.
I hope that in my ramblings I could give you a sense of what makes Project Horizons unique and interesting. It really is an amazing story, and despite being far from perfect, I simply couldn’t imagine it being as effective without its flaws.
Why it should be read: For a fanfic that know how to balance action, levity, character, and cruelty.
Top 5 moments:
5: Blackjack gambling with the Pecos.
4: Chapter 6 as a whole.
3: The scene with the ponies at the chapel singing.
2: Drunk Blackjack facing an ambush on the museum while unarmed.
1: The whole second half of Chapter 16.
Volume score: 9.5/10
God damn, this was a lot harder to write than I thought. Hopefully for Volume 2 I won’t have to touch so much on the basics, and will be able to write something much more succinct. See you then!
Thank you for the very kind words. I wonder what you think I could have done to improve the first book. I had to of messed something up.
When Horizons is finally finished (and perhaps when it's added to FiMFiction, I'm going to read it again cover-to-cover. Even this review, which for the most part refrains from telling a lot about the actual events of the story, reminded me of so many beautiful and haunting scenes throughout the story. I mean, I can't remember the last time I was as hyped about a story as when Discord was revealed in chapter 38.
I find that I remember very little about those first sixteen chapters. To me, the most evocative of the volumes (only the first four; I haven't caught up with volume 5 yet) was volume 2. God, Chapter 22 and the finale...
You did a really good job of explaining what makes Horizons such an incredible story. I'll be looking forward to the next installment.
You know, I've been wondering whether or not I should read Horizons for quite a while - it's so long, and I wasn't sure it would be worth it. This has sold me on it. I've got a lot of other stories to read too, so I will likely wait until it hits Fimfic upon completion (err, 2828841, will it hit Fimfic?), but I'm definitely going to read this. If you rank it this highly Soge, it's got to be bloody good.
>nearing completion
r u fkn srs m8
So it's basically FoE: Bigger, Longer and Uncut? :B I told myself I would never read this story, but if (Thornquill? Neighrator Pony?) finishes his audiobook, I'll have to. :|
wait, it's actually going to be finished? Seriously?
Because if so I'd like to find a way to be notified, since I stopped around...chapter 51 of the sixth book, I think? due to fatigue
2828841 The main thing is that, at the end of the day, Volume 1 doesn't seem to be about anything. There are plenty of things that happen from moment to moment, but the closest thing to a goal is "get enough money to decode EC-1101, while fleeing from Deus/everyone else". Since most of that ends up taking place by going to random places, it makes it hard for me, as a reader, to create a sense of anticipation for anything that will happen. Also, much of the mystery that drives the later chapters – like the projects or OIA – are only introduced here on the broadest way possible.
2828962 Yeah, I'm trying not to say a lot about what happen in the story – otherwise, I would have just a solid page of spoilers for the other volumes. It surprised me how little I remembered of Volume 1 – I knew that "Play" and the fight against Gorgon were around here, and also the hydra battle and Blackjack misusing drugs, but a lot of the other stuff felt like they happened later. And, I hope that Volume 2 holds up as well as I remember. It used to be my favorite one.
2830181 I think I started reading them on batches around that time – save some 4 of 5 chapters, and read them one after the other.
Somber tends to blog when a new chapter is published, but I am used to reading about new chapters from EQD's "Story Updates" features.
2829270 Visual Pony is the one doing a reading. I read up to chapter 4 through him, and they are quite good.
2835745
Ugh, dammit, I'm so mean to Visual, I can never remember who he is. :(
2835689 Fair enough. Back then I was aping Fo:E and so much of the first book is 'wandering the wasteland'. Wandering is good for player content, not narrative, so I tried to spruce things up with little hints here and there. When it's all done, I'll give it all one last tweak and then set it in stone.
You liked Project Horizons quite a bit more than I did. It's just too long for me. My thoughts on the matter are there's a good story in there, but it's under one or two other stories worth of stuff that isn't as good.
2829270
Don't do it! I would bet money you will not like Horizons. It pretty much doubles down on all the stuff you disliked/hated in FO:E.
2845877 I have a thing for long stories. I like to keep a couple of short ones ready, but what I really love is being immersed on something like this for a long, long time.
And don't dissuade PP! That way we won't be able to laugh at his suffering.
2845958
In general I enjoy being immersed in things for a long time as well. Though I prefer a long series over a long story. I like storylines to come and go and the characters and world to continue on. Project Horizons isn't exact bloated, but I feel like it could get a good 1/3rd of it edited out and be a better story for it. No huge pieces, but just snipping away here and there. Guess the writing is just not as compact and/or concise as I prefer.
2845958
Curse you! D:
2835745
He's not the first. 2d the Reader got towards the end of the teens, I think, but the reading wasn't very good, with the sound messed up to the extent that I needed to do some processing to make it decipherable, and then only on headphones. Crazed Rambling had an excellent reading, but appears to have stopped (seven month hiatus) after chapter 21. (My only complaint is Glory's accent.)
2836371
I wish him luck in getting through the whole thing, but so far I've had trouble with his since (I'm shallow, I know) I just don't care for his accent. It's the type of thing I might get accustomed to if/when he crosses the point Crazed Rambling reached.
Anyway, fun to see your views on the story. I'd say I probably fall on the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of feeling on the long, winding path the story takes as Singularity Dream. While I don't doubt the prose could be tightened and think I have identified a couple places where, say, two chapters might be squeezed into one or three into two, on the whole I enjoy how the way it's structured gave the story, setting, and characters room to breathe. The lack of tight focus in some respects feels natural, in that a lot of the time the way the world works is that people just move from one project or crisis to another, without a sharply defined linear plan; or, of course, they might have one, but it needs to be continually revised in the face of events.
In any case, you've hit on a pretty common point in calling it a "serial"; in many ways, I see it as having more in common with a five season TV series than a feature film or, for that matter, a very (very) long novel.
-When I say what I'm going to say, keep in mind that this is the only volume of PH that I read, and it's going to stay that way until the story's finished/on Fimfiction. I'll read the rest then, and I'm not all that shy about reading spoilers, mostly because of how heart-wrenching this series can be. So if I cheat and learn what happens ahead of time to soften the blow, so be it. So far I haven't seen anything in your tags that's both specific and new to me. Also I read it years ago so forgive me if my memory's fuzzy.
-Interesting that you make a Wheel of Time analogy, but there are some important differences between the two. I've only read the first "book" of each, but PH's first was mostly great while The Eye of the World introduced the series' problems early. I still think Rand is one of the most boring protagonists I've ever seen, and the book had pacing issues that rendered it almost all setup, while PH managed to tell at least two complete story threads (Blackjack and P-21's respective character development and BJ's conflict against Deus), having much better pacing overall.
-Those damn Zodiac bounty hunters stick in my craw because they seem like they walked in from a tamer shonen anime. They stick out like a sore thumb and don't fit in with the tone of the segments that grabbed me. So they're pretty unquestionably my least favorite part of the volume.
-My favorite part, meanwhile, is how the story just gets the nature of privilege and marginalization in ways that not a whole lot of other stories I read do. This is going to get very political, so if you aren't in the mood for that stop reading this comment now (and I'll just tag all of it just in case.. Also, maybe this was accidental and will be contradicted by later volumes, but it was so fucking amazing that I have to talk about it. The case with Glory is a more minor example, with the crowning moment being this speech by an Enclave officer (who turned out to be the least treacherous and evil of them all) making an angry speech to Blackjack about how non-flying ponies haven't "earned" a better life that reads like a distillation of every conservative talking head on Fox News. It's blunt, but it sounds like something a real person would actually say, which makes it cut harder considering what the Enclave has done and will do.
-Then there's the matter of Blackjack and P-21's entwined character arcs in the volume, which is a masterpiece; even though, like you said, there's not really a unifying plotline here, this is what it is in my mind because it's so good. Blackjack is the perfect example of a privileged person not realizing how much worse minorities have it than them, with her thinking at the start of the series that stallions have it easy because all they have to do is get laid (conveniently forgetting that that's all they're allowed to do). Then comes the scene where she finds the recording that reveals that she raped P-21 as part of the oppressive Stable system and forgot about it years before the story started. I thought it was impossible to make the reader feel sorry for a rapist, but Somber managed to make it happen. I didn't cry when Gem and Mini died at the end of the volume, since I knew nothing about them and was already turning against the Zodiacs as seen above, but I was devastated when Blackjack poured her heart out to P-21 right afterward and he made the choice to trust her after seeing how much she changed (though I forget if he had more of an arc than that). And I also cried when Glory got her brand, and it got rubbed in by her sister.
-It's a shame that there are aspects to that whole story arc that make me really nervous to crow about how much I liked it to other people, though. For starters, there are the usual hangups of taking the source material of MLP and using it to make a story with sexual elements like rape, gore piled high, and the emotional devastation you'd normally see in something like The Last of Us. Then there's the fact that the system that perpetuates the oppression and privilege that I talked about is a female-run stadium where males are sex slaves, which without context (like MLP's focus on female characters and the isolated nature of the Stable) is something that sounds like an MRA fever dream and could never, ever come about in the real world as a cautionary tale. The fact that the story understands the nature of privilege and conveys it subtly without coming off like an SJW lecture is amazing, but maybe it's undercut by this reversal of a real world situation?
-The whole "sympathize with a rapist" thing is also going to be a hard sell to pretty much everyone, but there's a possibility that it could work better than the usual route in media that a lot of people are getting sick of. We're used to thinking of rapists as monsters like Hitler and throwing the book at them, but most people also think of rape in cliched situations meant to cast VICTIMS and VILLAINS when the truth is that real-life rapists don't think of themselves as rapists, just like how Blackjack didn't before she started changing and getting to know P-21 outside the Stable system. Usually rape scenes in stories are just hammering home look how traumatic this evil act is to the point where it gets a little exploitative, but here we don't see the rape, just the tape recording of the conversation leading up to it, and I don't think Blackjack ever calls herself a rapist or anything like that. I don't know. I'm feeling conflicted but I still really want to support this. I'll stop now.
-And that's it. I feel like someone is going to shout at me super hard now for getting all of this touchy gender politics stuff wrong (or just bringing it up at all or implying that the SJWs are right or whatever), and I probably did, but I've had this thinkpiece mentality about this part of PH for a while now and I needed to get it off my chest. It's the sort of writing that has me green with envy, trying to figure out a way to channel it for my own story.