So I was gonna liveblog on Partially Kissed Hero, but I decided to put it off for a bit because A. I'm putting off Project Horizons too much as it is and B. Oh for fuck's sake, PKH is so abominably shitty that the entire entry would be nothing but bile and I don't feel like being completely negative right now.
I think I've gotten softer. I mean, hell, a few months ago I did a positive blog post
about some things I genuinely liked in the original Fallout: Equestria.
But there will be more time to talk about my retroactive quasi-softening on FOE when I get to PKH. Onto chapter 3 of Project Horizons.
So our protagonists stay with the orphans in the school until the next morning (I'd think they'd probably want to sleep somewhere that isn't full of rotting carcasses, but what do I know) and Blackjack's all healed from getting shot at. Protagonist gets shot at a lot. Littlepip 2.0 indeed. There's a bit where Blackjack looks at some ministry mare posters.
We get some stuff with Scoodle showing them the ropes about scavenging, and then she proceeds to give advice and exposition. On the exposition font, she proceeds to list several of the story's relevant factions, including the Crusaders, the Finders, the raiders, the Reapers (who are like raiders but bigger and badder), the Enclave, DJ Pon3 (oh fuck she's a character in this story), the Society, the Steel Rangers, the Enclave, the College/Eggheads, aaaaand Ghouls. I have been informed that this is NOT the complete faction list for the fic.
Then there's some back and forth between Scoodle and one of the kids about war backstory 'n' things, with the usual disagreements to give the sense that nobody really understands everything. That's a nice touch.
Speaking of Ghouls, Blackjack waltzes into a boneyard and a bunch of ghouls come up. Scoodle dies horribly, because after the original story I really wanted more violence against children.
We also meet Silver Spoon, who is glowing and we're given a big of black comedy where Silver Spoon is crazy and Blackjack claims to be Diamond Tiara. They hug and this means that Blackjack is irradiated. All the while Scoodle is getting munched on by zombies. The black comedy is actually pretty good.
That passes and everyone who isn't dead proceeds. The kids ditch our two main idiots and Blackjack proceeds to be angst and mope. She and P-21 have a spat.
“Yeah. A little bit ago,” he replied evenly as he looked along the road. “I think there’s a house up there. We can rest and take care of you.”
“I don’t want to be taken care of,” I muttered softly.
“I’m sorry, did you say something?” P-21 walked in front of me, his sure blue eyes bearing down into mine. “Sometimes we don’t get what we want,” he said as he nudged me towards a single story house beside the road. “Sometimes we don’t get to sit around and have pity parties for our mistakes. Sometimes we just have to keep going because, otherwise, we might as well just die.”
“That’s what…” I started to say.
He hit me hard enough to knock me on my side. I stared up into the sky and felt my guts churn and my pupils contract. “I’m sorry. Were you about to say you wanted to die? Is that it?” he said as he glared down at me. “If you were this weak, you should have just given yourself to Deus and been done with it.”
“I killed Scoodle!” I yelled up at him. It felt like a confession.
“Yeah! You did, you fucking idiot!” he screamed back down at me. “Didn’t I tell you to listen to her? Didn’t you say to me that I know what’s right when it comes to this sort of thing? But she’s dead, Blackjack, and unless you wallowing in pity or dying will somehow magically bring her back to life then this is accomplishing nothing except indulging in your own selfish wishes!”
“Then prove it, Blackjack. Live and don’t ever fuck up like that again. Learn from this, because if you ever kill another pony through stupidity then I will fucking end you.” He shoved his head under my shoulders and turned me over so I no longer stared into that terrible void above… only now I had an equally vast void within and I couldn’t look away from it.
So Blackjack has to recover from radsickness. In between feeling guilty and being unconscious she has bad dreams. And the line "I saw Deus laughing at me as he sawed off my PipBuck with a chainsaw penis."
She comes to and sees the Spritebot for Watcher.
Why is Watcher showing up here? Okay, I can believe he might give a word of advice to a newcomer out of the stable about "hey, go in this direction if you don't want to die," but this is a bit odd. I mean, he didn't really do much for Littlepip until she'd gone and done that stuff with the slavers and the orphans. Here he gives her a big speech.
“Yeah. That’s me. What about you, Blackjack? Is this it? Is this the point where the Wasteland breaks you?” The spritebot looked particularly solemn as it hovered before me. “Yeah. That’s me. What about you, Blackjack? Is this it? Is this the point where the Wasteland breaks you?” The spritebot looked particularly solemn as it hovered before me.
And so he gives her a big fucking speech here.
“You’re not the first. And if I can be blunt, your fuck-up only killed one filly. I’ve known ponies whose fuck-ups killed millions. So on the grand scale of fuck-ups, I think you’re overrating yourself.” Slowly I dropped my hooves from my face to look at the little machine as it went on. “So I’m asking you: is this it? Are you just a pony that wallows in self-pity and kicks herself for a mistake, or not? Because if this is it, then I’ll leave you be. I can’t help you. You can’t help anypony.”
It would have been easy to just fold right then. But as I sat on the edge of the bed, damn me, I couldn’t help smiling as I looked at the machine. I reeked of vomit, crap, blood, and despair but I still felt my lips curl mirthlessly as I looked at the device. “Are you on that grand scale of fuck-ups too, Watcher?”
There was a long pause, and I wondered if I’d offended him to the point that he would just wash his hooves of me. “Yeah. I am.”
“Did your fuck-up kill someone who didn’t deserve it?” There was silence and I knew he wouldn’t answer. He didn’t have to. I sat there for a minute longer, looking at my hooves. “I was so proud when I saved those girls from those raiders. Now…” I closed my eyes and grit my teeth. It would be so easy just to give up. Fold the hand. Cash in the chips. Quitters might not go bust, but they’d also never make it big. I opened my eyes as I looked right at the machine, wondering what Watcher’s face looked like right now. Finally, I asked softly, “So how do I move on, Watcher?”
“You do everything you can to make up for it, knowing that you’ll never succeed in getting rid of the guilt. You devote yourself to spending every second trying to do better despite the fact that it will never be enough. And you pray with every single good act you do that somehow when your life is over that your lifetime will come close to making up for the wrong you committed.” Watcher spoke so clear and true that I couldn’t stop smiling and crying at the same time.
“Well. That sounds like a plan,” I whispered. “So where do I start?”
Also, I find it funny we're getting these lines from Spike, who uncritically latched onto everything Littlepip did. And repeated use of the word "carefully."
So the next day there's another action scene with Radigators and banter between Blackjack and P-21. BJ needs Radaway but she doesn't want to have to rely on P-21 for it so action scene happens. You know, I notice that a lot of this story so far involves BJ needing to have men (namely P-21 and Watcher) tell her what to do. But then the entire point of these action scene is that BJ doesn't want to have to be nannied by P-21. Hey, remember when I bitched about the gender stuff in FOE? Boy, was that stupid. Stay tuned for Partially Kissed Hero, which is downright misogynistic!
Whatever. Action scene blah blah blah.
After that's done, we get a thing from P-21 about how Stable 99 was terrible. Oh yeah, this is what I liked about their dynamic. Thanks for reminding me.
And we get a neat thing from P-21 where he says that what he really wanted to be was a teacher.
“A teacher?” I winced at the skepticism in my voice. I just couldn’t imagine a male doing… that.
“Yes, a teacher.” He examined one rusty lock on the second, jammed in the screwdriver, and gave it a hard twist. With a pop, it opened right up. “Before I was P-1 I tried to learn all I could about arcane sciences. That was how I knew Duct Tape so well; I studied off her as she went through training. I thought that if I knew enough that maybe the Overmare would let me teach. I would have been fine doing both jobs.” He opened up the crate and took out two empty syringes and two boxes of some kind of canned meat. “Know what the Overmare said? She said she’d let me teach sex education in my breeding rotation.”
So yeah, we're getting more stuff out of P-21. Though I can't help but feel that this early in the story it's a little too much a little too soon. Then again, the story needs something apart from exposition and fight scenes, and this does nicely to develop their relationship. And I'm sure there's plenty more stuff P-21's got buried down that'll get dredged up in this story. But yeah, I like it. Gets him a sympathy point, and given he's kind of a gruff asshole type he needs all the sympathy he can get.
But fuck the thing's oozing with sex. Maybe it's hypocritical to complain about this and not the violence (actually it isn't, 'cause I'm complaining plenty about the violence) but there's just something sleazy… then again, the starting setting is basically a rape factory, so I guess sleaze is just gonna be there as part of the plot.
Wait a minute, how does he study off of her while she's training? Did she like to have sex while on the job? Are the foals not segregated? I'd think the foals would be segregated, otherwise that runs the distinct possibility of them empathizing with each other and thus kinda not wanting to do the whole "rape factory" setup. I'm confused again.
And… wait, that's the chapter? Huh. That wasn't as long as I thought. It also wasn't as painful as the note at the end of the last chapter warned. Sweet. And now that I'm caught up to where I was, we can liveblog onwards! Huzzah!
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