Hey, everyone, it’s me, Pannic!
So I've been away from the live blogging for nearly a year. I got bored trying to re-read for blogging Duck and Cover and somehow I lacked the motivation to continue with Project Horizons. Maybe someday, though the negativity that seems to surround Project Horizons in the varying levels of what the fuck is going on in this story puts a damper on things. Also the story’s nearly over, so any feedback I give can’t help the author unless he moves on to write another crazy long pony fanfic.
So I'm going to read another thing: Fallout: Equestrian - Memories.
This story apparently tells the story of Frosty Winds, an amnesiac Enclave Pegasus who has a claw arm. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning, with the first chapter.
The first chapter sucks!
Okay, we're still getting ahead of ourselves. Let me explain with my half-baked analysis based on something I read months ago and only dimly remember
So the basic opening introduces us to Frosty Winds, a pegasus and Enclave soldier, minus one leg. How did she lose her leg? That’s one of the mysteries. In fact, there are many mysteries, as she’s amnesiac.
Oh. Oh...
So as I’m going off of half-remembered things about this (if I have to go back and re-read stuff, I’ll never get done) I’m going to speak in generalities except where I remember specific stuff that happened. No making quotes to make fun of.
So the setup with these two chapters is that Frosty Winds is a prisoner of a bunch of branch Steel Rangers, headed by Souflee, who is an asshole. We alternate between interrogation sequences that aren’t very interesting, largely because Frosty likes to brag about how she’s been trained to resist interrogation; we’re treated to things like her recognizing a particularly bad attempt at “good cop, bad cop,” for example. Souflee’s a bit of a boring asshole. We also get some other Steel Ranger characters who are fairly colorful, most notably Rum Cake, who is mostly friendly. I say “mostly” because of bad writing I’ll elaborate on in the next paragraph. He has the most screentime here, which leads me to believe that he’s either going to become a party member or he’s going to die to some dark effect.
There’s a big problem with the Steel Ranger’s dialogue in the first chapter here. In the author’s original draft, apparently they were mostly civil and accommodating, but someone told him that it didn’t make sense because the Rangers wouldn’t like Enclave people… but rather than actually change anything going on, there are just some insults stuck in. This leads to things like Rum Cake asking if she wants anything, and then calling her an Enclave Whore. It’s jarring.
I still think the Rangers are a little too accommodating for her - they give her a handy prosthetic limb, a pipbuck, and even access to guns. Pretty lax security for this kind of prisoner. Then again, given that the Rangers were massive idiots in the original, it might just be true to the setting.
The second chapter has them probing her mind. We get some flashbacks about her life and the events that led to her getting stranded. I forget details. Stuff about people dying; I think her dad? Look, I’ll be better when I do an entry for chapter 3, I promise.
I’m guessing that there are going to be a lot of flashbacks in this story, though if I recall correctly Unknownlight told me that this isn’t particularly the case.
Seeing Frosty succumb to the techniques is a bit of a nice antidote to her no-selling the interrogation in chapter 1, though I can’t say I’m quite endeared yet. The jury’s out on whether or not I’ll like this character.
The main setpiece in the chapter is an action scene wherein slavers storm the base. I found myself rather perplexed and unengaged, as I didn’t think it made sense for slavers to be attacking them. I mean, you’d think that slavers wouldn’t be big risk-takers, attacking easy targets that they could take hostage. The Steel Rangers are more disciplined quasi-military folks and they’re generally much better-armed, what with all that power armor. I’m aware that apparently a reason is given in the next chapter, but that doesn’t really help me when I’m reading now, because as I read the action scene I’m distracted by all the ways it doesn’t seem to make sense. I find that with an action scene, I need one of three things in order to be engaged: something interesting or creative needs to happen in the action scene, I need to know what the stakes are, or at the very least I need to know why it’s happening. This scene doesn’t really do any of these until the end, when Frosty gets a gun and finds an opportunity to kill Souflee. As there’s another slaver in the same direction, when she fires the gun it’s not completely clear who she shot.
I think this could’ve been rectified a bit if there were a mention of slavers giving the rangers trouble earlier on, like something mentioned briefly in a conversation or something. That way it’d set things up a bit better and it’d be less “huh?” and more “ohhh.” And I mean “ohhh” as in “Oh, I see,” and not “Oh…”
I also think that the author could’ve made the bit where Frosty contemplates shooting Souflee a bit more intense if he’d made Souflee a bit nastier or made Frosty more clearly hate him. As it is he just seems like a boring asshole and Frosty just finds him kind of annoying.
The chapter ends on a really trippy hallucination that you think is one of the flashbacks but it actually isn’t, as indicated by dialogue. I actually think I vaguely liked this, though I can’t remember.
So yeah, I’m back. This was a blog update that was pretty crappy. Probably crappier than the story deserves, but tune in next time when I don’t take months after I read the chapter to update!
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