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Battle Action Harem Highschool Side Character Quest (No SV, you are the Waifu)

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Well, we're derailing quite a bit, so in an attempt to rerail it.
We know that everyone knows there's a new #1 but not who. Meaning there should be a lot of speculation on who it is or, more importantly, what she looks like by the WAN people. So, other than the usual giant six-armed three-headed fire-breathing laser-eyed baby-eating antagonist-hating Creature straight from hell/down from heaven, what other thing do you think WAN would come up and stick to the new #1 with? Abandoned US supersoldier? Rogue Aberrant? AG experiment gone wrong? Unholy algamation of all the dead valks and missing cores in USA?

And then the Perth corner of WAN added "bread-eating" to the meme list for shit and giggles.
:V
 
Alphaleph said:
Well, we're derailing quite a bit, so in an attempt to rerail it.
We know that everyone knows there's a new #1 but not who. Meaning there should be a lot of speculation on who it is or, more importantly, what she looks like by the WAN people. So, other than the usual giant six-armed three-headed fire-breathing laser-eyed baby-eating antagonist-hating Creature straight from hell/down from heaven, what other thing do you think WAN would come up and stick to the new #1 with? Abandoned US supersoldier? Rogue Aberrant? AG experiment gone wrong? Unholy algamation of all the dead valks and missing cores in USA?

And then the Perth corner of WAN added "bread-eating" to the meme list for shit and giggles.
:V
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The secret 1st person to bond with Core, kept hidden by the government only to be brought out during most dire of circumstances due to her evolving to be too powerful and having troubles with the whole "how to be human".
 
AND DONE!

Dear lord its taken me a while to actually make it though this entire quest. Started reading it last year and then for some reason I dropped it after the first 10 or so updates then 2 weeks ago I come across it again and actually finish the thing this time. Not much more to say other then that this is a brilliant quest. Even with the glacial update speed I'l definitely be sticking around.
 
I just reread it for the seventh time. The next time I do it, I'll probably point out all the spelling mistakes still in it to lengthen the time until the next update time a bit more.
Second thing: We already established that this is Durga and this supposedly some sort of real hidden Anna. Now that I've read this again, could it be random people from our village whose brains Anna tried to upload (and then forgot about or repressed the memories of?)

These sentences made me think that: (minus context)
Post 19
Avalanche said:
Are you not coming?

No. This is your life now. There is nothing more for me to do.
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and Post 20
Avalanche said:
-Why are you such a bully?-
Because… we had to… it's what we needed to do, but it didn't work…
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This quest is amazing, not because of it's initial selling point of being a Harem side character, but because of all the wonderful worldbuilding and characters that sprung out of Avalanche's mind for that concept, and how they've made something far greater than it's initial concept ever was.
 
nkd1325 said:
Dear lord its taken me a while to actually make it though this entire quest. Started reading it last year and then for some reason I dropped it after the first 10 or so updates then 2 weeks ago I come across it again and actually finish the thing this time. Not much more to say other then that this is a brilliant quest. Even with the glacial update speed I'l definitely be sticking around.
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Well, if you only stop by around once a year or so the glacial update speed won't matter too much because you'll blend right in.
 
You know, if we knew an actual agent, Avalanche could probably pitch this and get it published.
It's definitely good enough to get published.
 
Avalanche said:
I can't actually say, since I don't know how the Higgs and Valkyrie cores work fundamentally myself. If the understanding can be leveraged to greater military effectiveness, then almost certainly they'd be grilled to get every detail out of them then slapped into a research position under heavier than normal guard.
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I don't know how the Higgs and Valkyrie cores work fundamentally myself.
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I don't know how the Higgs and Valkyrie cores work fundamentally myself.
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I don't know how the Higgs and Valkyrie cores work fundamentally myself.
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That's.... What I've seen in this thread gives me confidence that we won't see the inverse of Sanderson's laws here, but it's still rather horrifying to hear that. "I don't know how the main technobabble works," directly from the author.

Moving on my from my initial reaction, I have to ask how bad this "i'dunno" situation is. So using computer hardware as an example to scale against, where do you rank on a scale from "Pressing buttons changes the pattern of lights in this box" to "Can solve, explain, and grok the equations describing the motion of the electrons in the transistors in the chips?"

Edit: Okay, just to be clear - The image and my first paragraph was not intended to shame you or anything like that. Sorry if it did. I get that you don't have a full set of physics set up here, and honestly don't expect you to do that. It is something that... I suppose "bothered" would work... me.
 
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AlphaDelta said:
Black Boxes in fiction exist for a reason.
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True.

I definitely wouldn't have reacted the same way to this statement from an author universally. I think my overreaction has to do with a few aspects of the situation: First, the fact that Avalanche has generally put a lot of time and thought into describing the mechanics of how the new things in his work work instead of just saying "because." There's also the fact that we, as Anna, are deeply involved in going after really complex aspects of Impeller and Higgs things, so I'd assume that the physics of this world was fleshed out enough for Avalanche to actually figure out those fundamentals.

And part of it is probably the mindset I have while approaching technology in Limit Theory.
 
AlphaDelta said:
Black Boxes in fiction exist for a reason.
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For stuff that has no real relevence to the plot they do. But when it looks like the background story is hinging more and more on discovering the relationship between different pieces of clarktech (Higs, Cores, Antagonists) in order to ultimately solve the primary conflict. In the foreground theirs the fact that Core's can apparently have a direct impact on their operator, and thus their relationships, to intersect with the harem-plot as exemplified by Durga and Kandaraka(?) so far.

The 'how' doesn't need to be detailed or even much more the downy-soft sci-fi...but their needs to be at least something, if only because it increasingly looks like it will be plot-relevant.

Now, whether that's what is the case and part of the reason for delays is active world-building and plot construction or not is another matter. Figuring out where Cores came from and why the Antagonists are so genocidal may be all but required in the background of the quest...but the foreground is all about the characters. And the Core's being weird in what they can actually do on top of their mental affects...technically is NOT the same as how they function. Avalanche might very well have plotted all that out, we just don't know it for plot-purposes and requisite actions. Only they can know.
 
Nalanaya said:
For stuff that has no real relevence to the plot they do. But when it looks like the background story is hinging more and more on discovering the relationship between different pieces of clarktech (Higs, Cores, Antagonists) in order to ultimately solve the primary conflict. In the foreground theirs the fact that Core's can apparently have a direct impact on their operator, and thus their relationships, to intersect with the harem-plot as exemplified by Durga and Kandaraka(?) so far.

The 'how' doesn't need to be detailed or even much more the downy-soft sci-fi...but their needs to be at least something, if only because it increasingly looks like it will be plot-relevant.

Now, whether that's what is the case and part of the reason for delays is active world-building and plot construction or not is another matter. Figuring out where Cores came from and why the Antagonists are so genocidal may be all but required in the background of the quest...but the foreground is all about the characters. And the Core's being weird in what they can actually do on top of their mental affects...technically is NOT the same as how they function. Avalanche might very well have plotted all that out, we just don't know it for plot-purposes and requisite actions. Only they can know.
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But we don't need to know what happens inside; we just need to know how they interact.
 
Nalanaya said:
But when it looks like the background story is hinging more and more on discovering the relationship between different pieces of clarktech (Higs, Cores, Antagonists) in order to ultimately solve the primary conflict.
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Considering before she got involved the primary conflict was predicated to be beaten in the next 20 or so years I kinda don't think this is a major problem at all.
 
AlphaDelta said:
But we don't need to know what happens inside; we just need to know how they interact.
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Hence the latter portion of my post. That said, the 'what' and the 'how' are usually rather interconnected. For the more immediatly relevant concerns, Cores having AI/VI to join in the slice of life, how is probably a none-concern. For the background plot? Humanity desperately holding back an alien foe, one that keeps showing much they hold back just as Humanity discovers how little they understand their Cores and the Higgs? Well it'd be possible to not even roughly explain things, but pointlessly hard I'd think, especially since by all appearances the Antagonists are their technology, and the Valkyries are starting to resemble the same with their Cores...
SpeckofStardust said:
Considering before she got involved the primary conflict was predicated to be beaten in the next 20 or so years I kinda don't think this is a major problem at all.
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I did say background, not foreground. As it is though, their has been a noticible drift of focus from 'social, otome-game, slice of life' content to shonen considering the PC we have is of...direct relevance to the war, and actively attempting to alter it. The fact that a point has been made on how the Antagonists historically tend to react to major changes and shifts makes that background rather ominous, and not at all certain. Not enough to say this isn't mostly a quest about the feelz...but there, and relevant enough to keep in mind for character motivations and objectives.
 
Alphaleph said:
Anna's approach on things are "Yes, I can" but when asked to explain all she'd do is doing interpretative dances at best.
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Probably because Avalanche isn't the type to make up lots of new words, and the language we have is woefully inadequate for describe Impeller ShenanigansTM​.
Nalanaya said:
That said, the 'what' and the 'how' are usually rather interconnected.
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^This is also a reason. Thanks for saying it.
 
Not trying to say a thorough or accurate explanation is needed. It could be high-level (closer to Human interpretation then low-level machine language) or super-soft science, but just at least as long as theirs something. It's what the original post was trying to say. Understanding is a sliding scale, and even if the characters may never get the whole thing, it certainly helps the author to have a framework for building on or around.

Like, what is the relationship between Antags and Cores? Are the latter an enemy? Lost tool? Not-lost tool? What? If the invasion is because of the Core's, the fundamental nature of the Core's seems like a rather vital part of the plot, and the 'how' of them is related. If the invasion isn't related to the Core's...then why are they there period? Same goes for figuring out how the Antags got to Earth, what their objective is, what they are period, and of course the question the 'how' is used to answer; how can they be stopped? To summarize it's not that their needs to be a thorough or realistic explanation. It's that the way things seem to be going up till now, the position these items occupy in the plot make the specifics of their nature important and relevant in how they interact with each other and the characters...and determining that nature to build or shape for the plot means having some idea of the 'how'.
 
ltmauve said:
That's.... What I've seen in this thread gives me confidence that we won't see the inverse of Sanderson's laws here, but it's still rather horrifying to hear that. "I don't know how the main technobabble works," directly from the author.
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Isn't the purpose of technobabble to provide some excuse for why things happen even though theres no physical justification?
Given that these (and Impeller) are the only breaks from an otherwise hard scifi setting its pretty forgivable.
Nalanaya said:
For stuff that has no real relevence to the plot they do. But when it looks like the background story is hinging more and more on discovering the relationship between different pieces of clarktech (Higs, Cores, Antagonists) in order to ultimately solve the primary conflict.
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The primary conflict isn't destroy the antagonists or understand the setting...
In order shit we need to get done is :
a) Get Anna over her Trauma.
b) Get enough plot relevance to become best girl/get spin off series.
 
Dark as Silver said:
a) Get Anna over her Trauma.
b) Get enough plot relevance to become best girl/get spin off series.
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And for all that we've accomplished, we aren't there yet.

The main notable spin-off focused on a side character that I can think of is Sword Oratoria, which focused on the obvious love-at-first-sight interest.

We are not love-at-first-sight interest. We still haven't reached "spin-off", which is still far away IMHO. We're a tier 1 or 1.5 character right now, but not tier zero. And our best bet is a Sword Oratoria-type, though with more overlap, imho.

And hahahaha. Trauma. We have loads of trauma. I think that if we can resolve the "Being Human vs. Combat Efficiency" conflict, we can say that we've taken a significant step. Same with getting into a closer relationship with Coke Zero, Sandra, or anyone. It's hard to say where we can say that the trauma's "over", but those two are significant progress markers.
 
ltmauve said:
That's.... What I've seen in this thread gives me confidence that we won't see the inverse of Sanderson's laws here, but it's still rather horrifying to hear that. "I don't know how the main technobabble works," directly from the author.

Moving on my from my initial reaction, I have to ask how bad this "i'dunno" situation is. So using computer hardware as an example to scale against, where do you rank on a scale from "Pressing buttons changes the pattern of lights in this box" to "Can solve, explain, and grok the equations describing the motion of the electrons in the transistors in the chips?"

Edit: Okay, just to be clear - The image and my first paragraph was not intended to shame you or anything like that. Sorry if it did. I get that you don't have a full set of physics set up here, and honestly don't expect you to do that. It is something that... I suppose "bothered" would work... me.
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"Pressing buttons changes the pattern of lights in this box"
Here. I have defined what the Valkyrie Cores and Higgs usage can do, and haven't a clue about how they do it.
 
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