Author Feedback: Steve

[frigidmagi]

I liked episode 1 02. The beginning of this series was a bit choppy and rough for me but it is settling down. I would have liked to see dale confronted a bit more with the fact that frankly at one point he was in the other guys shoes and almost did start half a dozen wars.

[frigidmagi]

Identity thief! For shame! For shame!

[Steve]

It does say something about SB that said identity theft is getting more likes and popularity than the UF stories, doesn't it?

[frigidmagi]

It says more people read trendy stuff and doc who is trendy. Just like how you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a damn worm fic over there right now and everything has to be crossed with exalted.

[Steve]

Exalted is what gets me. I was in an Exalted RPG that never quite got off the ground and while it has a major Coolness Factor... seriously, a crossover with Mass Effect?!

The Mass Effect/Megas XLR crossover makes more goddamned sense. And is funnier.

Note: I can no longer write "Goddamned" without imagining it being said by the late Robin Sachs in his Zaeed accent.

[Lys]

Exalted gets crossed over with everything because it's trivially simple to do it. Take a setting, make one or more characters into Exalted, done. You don't have to think about how to integrate the Exalted setting and its magic and cosmology with something else, you don't have to worry about the characters that populate Creation and how they'll interact with the other setting, you really don't have to do anything other than just go, "And suddenly Exalts". Take the Mass Effect crossover Steve mentioned, its premise is that Commander Sheppard turns into a Solar, and that's pretty much it. It is ultimately little different from giving her a Green Lantern Ring, or Thor's hammer, or making her a Kryptonian. They all just boil down to, "Sheppard has superpowers, now what?" Exalted just happens to provide a very convenient package of superpowers that clearly outline what they can and can't do, making things very straightforward and simple.

Personally, the only such cross over I liked was with Evangelion. Shinji becomes a Solar of the Priest-King caste during his first battle with an angel, instantly derailing the entire god-damned plot, and I do so love massive plot derails. Also contains the best depiction of Solar limit break I've ever seen.

[Steve]

I didn't think Shepard needed superpowers.

[Steve]

Actually, seeing you use female pronouns to make it clear it's FemShep reminds me of at least one negative reaction when I told a reader an upcoming multi-crossover fic appearance by Shepard in one of my works would be FemShep instead of BroShep. Said reader literally begged for a Male Shepard on the grounds of reading too many fics with FemShep or something.

I'll probably split the difference between UF and the Doctor SI story. TGG doesn't count since Alexia and Marina are taking the lead on it. (Of course, that makes it pretty clear which gender their Shepard will be.)

[frigidmagi]

I tend to think of commander Shepard as a girl, I mean there are plenty of male heroes bouncing around so why not?

[Lys]

Considering she saved the galaxy from a vicious xenocidal cycle perpetrated for millions of years by a poorly designed AI and its giant fleet of titanic space killer squid... yeah Sheppard doesn't need superpowers. What can I say though? Some people like to give the hero superpowers anyway.

I default to Sheppard being a woman because frankly FemShep's voice actress is overall better than BroShep's voice actor. While FemShep is great at nearly at all times, BroShep only really shines when he's being a jerk. Also what frigidmagi said, we already have a surfeit of male heroes.

[Steve]

I give much the same reasons; Jennifer Hale does better than Mark Meer in voicing the character. Which makes me feel bad because I do get the feeling Meer is a fun guy and tries his best. I wonder if it's just the directors want male Shep to be this emotionless tough guy. I've often joked that he sounds like an Enterprise Vulcan. I just couldn't play a MaleShep in ME. I didn't feel like I was listening to a character I was guiding but to a guy reading his lines from a script.

Although does she really save the galaxy with anything but Destroy? The other two endings rely on A) Reaper-Shepard not losing her shit like the Catalyst did and B) the post-Synthesis Reapers not dominating the galaxy with an iron fist. Yes, I know Walters and Hudson declared Synthesis the Proper Ending and the default Happy Ending, but that's because Hudson wanted his damned "deep philosophical" ending about the nature of life and didn't mind shitting all over everything else to get it.

I think I'm going to get a visceral joy out of short-circuiting Hudson's bullshit when I write my alternate endings in various works.

[Lys]

Far as I'm concerned all three endings save the galaxy, the rest is just details. I prefer control because it's the only option where Shep always lives, since to me person is their conciousness and not the meat puppet they inhabit. I don't think it likely that she'll lose her shit like the Catalyst did because she's not the Catalyst. She's a wholly different person with different personality, philosophy, outlook, and morality. The only other way to save her is to pick destroy with a military strength of at least 4000, but destroy means no EDI and I like EDI.

[Steve]

Blue and Green result in the Reapers still existing. That, to me, is not victory. The Reapers are too powerful to be left intact like they are in those endings. And frankly I do not trust the Goddamned Catalyst. And let's face it, claiming EDI and the Geth die with Destroy is only in there because Hudson and Walters knew they had to put those drawbacks in or people would always select Destroy for their personal ending, and then they wouldn't embrace Hudson's DEEP PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUE claptrap.

I personally pick Destroy with everyone taking the hard step of, wait for it, repairing EDI's circuitry and turning her back on. Even if not.... I borrow thoughts from a far better and more thoughtful work of science fiction. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few...[/Nimoy].

[White Haven]

In fairness, Steve, the Geth are one heck of a Many as well. EDI isn't the only collateral damage of a Destroy ending. Ultimately, though, I think what we all wanted is to retarget the Destroy ending's Red Wave of Death into a pair of Red Beams of Death aimed at Mac Walters and Casey Hudson.

[frigidmagi]

What's this philosophical issue thing?

[Lys]

Blue and Green result in the Reapers still existing. That, to me, is not victory. The Reapers are too powerful to be left intact like they are in those endings.

Way I see it, the Reapers are too powerful to pass up the opportunity to control them. Think of all the good they could do if only their immense power and intellect were directed toward constructive ends! It's the best hope for rebuilding the galaxy after the war, and unlike green, the blue ending ensures Sheppard sticks around to keep the Reapers on a leash, and if you can't trust her then you can't trust anybody. To destroy the Reapers is to throw away an incredibly powerful tool because you're too afraid to grasp the power that's right there for the taking. To merge organics and synthetics... I'll take the ending narration at its word that the Reapers become the good guys after the green ending, the galaxy is still saved. The problem is that you also unilaterally turned billions of sapients into cyborgs without their consent. Forcibly altering everyone at a fundamental level like that is a pretty horrible thing to do.

[LadyTevar]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... BO3P2cgjlI[/youtube]


I'm loving it. Keep the chapters coming my dear.

[Steve]

I swear, I had no idea an SI fic where the SI is turned into a TIme Lord and starts becoming a psychological doppelganger of the Doctor would become so popular....

It is fun, though. The next full episode is a gonna be a doozy because it's a two-for-one special. Hrm, I posted the opening on SB, should I do it here as well? *scratches chin*

[Steve]

Blue and Green result in the Reapers still existing. That, to me, is not victory. The Reapers are too powerful to be left intact like they are in those endings.

Way I see it, the Reapers are too powerful to pass up the opportunity to control them. Think of all the good they could do if only their immense power and intellect were directed toward constructive ends! It's the best hope for rebuilding the galaxy after the war, and unlike green, the blue ending ensures Sheppard sticks around to keep the Reapers on a leash, and if you can't trust her then you can't trust anybody. To destroy the Reapers is to throw away an incredibly powerful tool because you're too afraid to grasp the power that's right there for the taking. To merge organics and synthetics... I'll take the ending narration at its word that the Reapers become the good guys after the green ending, the galaxy is still saved. The problem is that you also unilaterally turned billions of sapients into cyborgs without their consent. Forcibly altering everyone at a fundamental level like that is a pretty horrible thing to do.

That all relies on you having Shepard take the choice of trusting the crazy AI that is responsible for the slaughter to begin with and has no noticeable limitations on lying, and if it has any it's probably got the same attitude toward the limitation as flippin' Kyubey.

It's not an easy choice. There are outcomes I'd prefer. But the four choices are all shit sandwiches and I gotta go for the least shitty.

[Lys]

Every choice except doing nothing involves trusting the AI. If the Catalyst is lying to you, or misrepresenting the results of each path, then it's manipulating you into doing what it wants. In fact, if the AI is lying how do you know that all three options don't lead to the same destination? How do you know they lead anywhere? All you can do is take its words at face value, because otherwise you don't have a real choice in the first place. If it doesn't work out as planned then it was never going to. As far as we know nothing stops the insane little bastard from going, "Oh you didn't pick merger? Too bad. Better hope your friends like green." Neither does anything stop it from making up the bullshit about choices so you'll jump to your death and leave it alone to finish the scheduled harvest.

[frigidmagi]

Let me repeat myself.

What's this philosophical issue thing?

Hopefully someone will answer before I start to get grumpy.

So Steve I am interested in seeing UF 01-03. Honestly I prefer that to the Doctor Who bit, the Doc fic is fine and I got nothing against it though.

[Steve]

I mean Hudson's pontificating about the inevitability of organic life and synthetic life trying to destroy each other and how the synthesis option merging the two forms of life represents balance and harmony and.... eh, I dunno.

Lys: Yes, I agree, all three require trusting the Catalyst in some way. Hence why I frickin' hate the ending.

(Although reading an LP of Chrono Cross has reminded me there are worse.)

As for 1-03, I'll post it later, but I'm not fighting this server's crap tendency to give me error replies if my posts are too big even if they're still under 60,000 characters.

[Steve]

And I posted it in the subforum. ARGH. Hey Tev.... can you help a time-pressed author out here? Pleeeaaaaaase, O malevolent mistress of darkness?

[LadyTevar]

Oh yes, a fine mess of trouble there.
I can't wait to see WHEN they meet Dresden. There are quite a few months/years between books when this meeting could be set, like when he was setting up the ParaNet, or during the early Vampire War.

[frigidmagi]

So... Nazis.

... Yeah. That's a... That's a thing. Honestly a space Soviet Union or even a PRC dominated sphere would be more interesting, less black and white bluntly. I would suggest a Imperial Japan one but that frankly is even sillier then Nazis. The best thing to do would be to not explain a damn thing about their history, their current set up yeah whether or not any of the Nazi allies still exist (Italy, Japan, Finland, Hungary, etc). I personally would be deeply interested in the fate of the Cossacks who were conned into fighting for them (poor bastards).

My head cannon for this is gonna be simple, Nazi Germany never fought the US, The British Empire and the USSR all at the same time. Somehow, someway it not only avoided war with the US while the Europe was burning but managed to keep the US from engaging in land lease. Additionally Stalin shoots himself when the invasion occurs, believing that his underlings will eat him alive. Between the infighting paralyizing Soviet resistence and the lack of US supplies (In today's dollars a staggering 146 billion dollars worth of aid was send to the Soviets alone, in the form of clothes, food, trains, trucks, planes, tanks, and everything else you need to fight a war). You can read the details here

Let me note the nether one of those things can knock out the Russians but both of them together might just pull the trick, even then everything has to go perfectly right for the Nazis. Which is wildly unlikely but on the edge of possible I suppose.

On futher criticism, I honestly doubt that both the OKW and the SS would coexist for very long in a triumphent Nazi Germany. A sigificent faction of Nazis had bluntly planned to get rid of the Heer and replace it completely with the SS after the war (before the war, the Prussian elites and the army was simply to powerful and willing to kill to maintain their existence, during the war trying to scrap your main fighting force was simply to insane even for the Nazis). There would be period between conquest and the finding of alien races after all, at which point well... Why do you need 2 armies? Because that's was the SS was a parallel army loyal to the Nazi Party instead of the German State and it existed to carry out the will of the Nazi Party, even if that will was against the interest of the German state (like getting into a war with 3/4ths of the planet!).

We still see military set ups like this today, with Saudi Arabia and Iran has the two most popular examples. The Saudi Arabian National Guard despite the innocent sounding name is actually a force meant to defend the Saudi Royal family against the army (it doesn't answer to the minister of defense for example). The Revolutionary Guard in Iran exists to put down revolts (as we saw during the Green Movement) and defend the clerics against the Iranian Army. In fact if it wasn't for Saddam the Iranian Army wouldn't exist today! The clerics were drawing up plans to disband the Iranian Army when Saddam invaded, the resulting 8 year war convinced the leaders of Iran that the army was vitally necessary to defend them from foreign threats. That doesn't mean that they like it or that they're not afraid of it.

Basically I'm arguing that if you want to be ideological Nazis, as opposed to the mellowed out descents of Nazis, you need the SS to be the only existing armed force. Bluntly the OKW by it's very nature will remain one of the most "secular" organizations within the Nazi Empire and that makes it the most dangerous organization to the Nazi Empire.

Okay enough beating on Steve.

Despite what you might think I did actually like this installment, the fact that you resisted the urge to make every Nazi a slobbering mad villian but instead showed us a group of human beings, some bad, some good living under the most nightmarish modern regime to ever exist was good work. I actually felt sorry for Captain Lamper and Lt. Rabe as the story closed. The prisoner's dilemma that played out through the episode was an excellent one, as the audience itself is likely split on whether or not Dale should bite the bullet and bushwack the Nazi Crusier. More time could have been spent on the crew and officer reactions but what time was spent was used very nicely. Well done on making the most out of a rather silly and some what tired premise. I think you actually got the horse to breath again for a bit.

Oh, yes the Dr. Who thing. You put Korra right back where and when you found her young man! We need her there to stop the end of the world!