So I finally read chapter 6 of Project Horizons. That was different, at least.
The chapter begins with our intrepid little trio heading off in search of their next job, which involves dealing with some squatters. My prediction was that this was going to end up in Blackjack murdering the squatters and then angsting about it.
So their prospective employer is one Prince Splendid, who’s with the Society what was mentioned back in chapter 3. And Blackjack gets the hots for him. ‘Cause she wants the Splendick.
Hey, maybe if Prince Splendid turns out to not have any actual personality, then I can call him Splenda. ‘Cause it’s superficial, y’know?
So he tells them what he wants. There’s a hospital that has some nifty piece of life-saving technology that he wants for his daddy, but those Collegiate dudes want it, too.
She tentatively agrees and heads off, asking the others for feedback. P-21 is kinda sputtery about it, thus being the first non-rewrite hint at his sexuality, as it seems he was thinking about that Splendick, too. I’m going to take a wild guess and figure that this was the point Somber ultimately decided against making P-21 into Blackjack’s love interest.
So they get to the hospital and meet the Collegiate ponies, and basically their drill is that the hospital does have that special life-saving thing, but whereas Splendid wants it for his dad, the Collegiate ponies want to study it so that they can use it to help more ponies. And thus Blackjack is faced with a conundrum: does she do what she’s being paid to do, or does she do the thing for the greater good or whatever? A bit standard as far as moral dilemmas go, but hey, gives her something to actually chew on, so that’s nice.
Though Blackjack decides initially to wait until later to make the decision, because there are roadblocks. Mainly, the facility is haywire and is killing folks. What ensues is a nightmarish sequence with the trio forced to contend with seemingly psychotic killing machines. Who want to “play.” There’s a pretty neat moment where Blackjack displays some unorthodox cleverness: a grenade lands in front of her and seems to be a dud, but she realizes that she’s dealing with some fucked-up tormenters, and the only thing more fucked-up than tossing a dud grenade is tossing a grenade that seems like a dud but actually isn’t.
Sick fu— wait... not sick enough. “Run!” I yelled as I grabbed P-21 with my magic and scooped Glory up as I bolted down the hall. A few seconds later the bombs hidden inside the box exploded. The three of us landed in a heap.
“How’d… how’d you know?” P-21 muttered in shock, blood dripping from a nostril.
“The only thing more messed up than scaring us with duds is scaring us with duds, letting us have a moment of relief, and then blowing us up with the real bomb.”
“I don’t know which concerns me more. That someone thought of that, or that you figured it out,” P-21 said with his usual dry smile.
They get separated from Glory and Blackjack gets concerned that she’s probably dead and then we go into angsting and then there’s
Fuck I’m gonna have to re-read I think. I kinda had like, this massive delay between Glory being separated from the group and everything else.
So Glory seemingly dying causes angst and Blackjack starts beating herself up again.
“Come on. We need to keep going,” P-21 muttered softly. I levitated the shotgun, shoving it controls-first towards his mouth. “What are you doing?!” he stammered in shock, trying to push it away.
“You said if I ever got another pony killed by being stupid that you’d end me,” I muttered, looking at my hooves. “Time to make good on it.”
“I’m not going to kill you for this, Blackjack,” he said softly. “This wasn’t your fault.”
“I’m the leader. Whose fault is it if not mine?”
Wow. A headcase and really not any less of a dick than Littlepip.
P-21 gives BJ another pep talk because he does a lot of that. This character confuses me. He kinda passive-aggressive hates her, but he’s always doing these kind of “tough love” pep talks or something which kinda fits in with the passive-aggressive thing. You know, I’m listening to a movie while writing this and I’ve completely lost it (the movie will be mentioned later down the page. No, I don’t write this shit in order). Anyway, it’s like he can’t decide if he wants to be her best friend or if he hates. I’m just completely baffled by this character and it’s like he’s a mix of contradictions. Maybe that’s the idea, like, he’s a confused dude and he’s got all these conflicting feelings and that’s driving him nuts because there’s only so much cognitive dissonance a guy can take… But he’s confusing me. He's like Monterey Jack, a character I like and think is pretty neat and stuff but I ultimately can't figure out if he makes any sense or not.
So it turns out that the crazy killing machines are foals, who got put into suspended animation and are dreaming, and they’re controlling the security robots. We get the backstory stuffs when one of them chucks a memory orb at Blackjack.
Well, that’s one thing that hasn’t changed from the original: memory orb exposition out of nowhere and apropos of nothing. From this we get a thing with Redheart and someone else about how they were a project by Fluttershy to keep foals with terminal injuries or illnesses in suspended animation until they could be treated. And apparently they never got treated. Wait, as in, Nurse Redheart? But here she's Doctor Redheart? Huh? I'm pretty sure Doctor isn't just what happens when a Nurse gets a promotion or something. Whatever, moving on.
So the original establishes that the broadstrokes of everything that’s wrong is Fluttershy’s fault, while this fic explains that it’s individual details that are Fluttershy’s fault.
And at this point I was wondering why my DVD wasn’t autorunning. There we go. Now let’s get on with this while “You’ve Got Mail” plays in the background. You know, that movie is based on the same source material as the musical “She Loves Me.”
I was about to commend this for being another good example of black comedy stuff. Snipehamster told me that it wasn’t supposed to be funny, though, so iunno. Rereading it like a week later it doesn't look as funny. It actually looks kind of sad. Maybe that was the emotion Somber wanted me to feel.
So the trio gets to, like, the main control panel of the thing that controls the stuff, and they’re faced with a tough decision. What to do about the forty foals? They’re dangerous and if their robots get out into the Wasteland they’d be a serious danger, and Glory, the idealistic moral type, wants to help them, and P-21, the cold, less empathy one, thinks they should just euthanize them, and
Wait a minute. I’ve read this before. This is the scene with the raider foal from chapter sixteen of the original. Ohhhhh, fuck. Not this again.
Okay, okay, okay. Slow down. Let's wait a bit longer before we decide if this is as bad or worse than that scene.
This movie is two hours long. It’s a fluffy romantic comedy about two people meeting in an AOL chatroom. How does that make a two-hour movie?
Sorry. Okay, so, P-21 has this big dramatic “you have to be the one to make this hard decision” spiel, because Blackjack is the protagonist. He says she’s a leader. Not that that’s as debatable given she’s the one taking initiative and doing shit, but I’d wait for a little while before that. Have her display a little more leadership-y stuff or something? I dunno, it just nags at me that he keeps talking to her like this. I’m getting confused. It’s like how you kept having characters singing Littlepip’s praises in the original. I mean, P-21 is kinda supposed to hate her, right? I'd be totally fine if he gave her a bit more grief instead of this, like, weird begrudging respect. And if he keeps that up I might just start liking Blackjack less, because the more characters express their admiration, the more the story runs the risk of there being a disconnect between what the characters are expressing and what I'm saying and that's just gonna annoy me. Like it did in the original fic.
So anyway, she makes the hard decision to euthanize the foals. And she gets the "Foal at Heart" perk. Wow. That's, like, the worst. Or something.
And I never finished You've Got Mail.
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