The Shallow
Shallow, Yet Deep
- Location
- Your Universe
- Pronouns
- She/They
I can imagine him calling himself after Sandy, aka Sha Wujing.
(Sandy was a river spirit who used to be a celestial general)
Brockton's Celestial Forge (Worm/Jumpchain)
- Thread starter LordRoustabout
- Start date
(Sandy was a river spirit who used to be a celestial general)
Lazurman
This is fine.
- Location
- Classified
- Pronouns
- He/Him
One of the unintended consequences of a parahuman being given Aura is that their shard might get it as well. Aura is the soul, manifested to heal, protect, and empower you. It lets squishy humans move faster than the eye can see, get punched through concrete pillars and come up swinging hard enough to destroy a huge mech with your bare hands. It can be drained through use, but comes back with time and rest, with hyper-focus making that regeneration happen nigh-instantly. It is energy created from nothing.
What could eldritch parasitic god creatures such as shards do with all of that? Nothing good, that's for sure. Not all of them are as helpful or as friendly as Fragile One.
What could eldritch parasitic god creatures such as shards do with all of that? Nothing good, that's for sure. Not all of them are as helpful or as friendly as Fragile One.
Regarding the Chen cape name, I'm just going to quote myself from a few pages back.
Subrosian_Smithy
endless
- Location
- Washington
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Hers
Anime peak human, at that.
- Location
- Lake superior, Minoc
So hey.. about all the bombs. Didn't he get labeled a villain and master last time he helped with them? So this time his hands off. Who's going to tell the PRT they are villains and masters for helping a good chunk of the city population that has bombs in them?
Don't think Amy's going to help much this time around.. Aside from telling them to fuck off and getting her own lawers to sue the entire prt and the city.
Don't think Amy's going to help much this time around.. Aside from telling them to fuck off and getting her own lawers to sue the entire prt and the city.
- Location
- Philippines
Probably straight up power boosts or it makes them closer to their hosts.
Since Aura is personalized one must remember that the Shards are part of an Entity and said Entity is straightforward in thinking patterns.
Either they can't have Aura as they are part of either Zion/Eden or if they have them individually it would make it difficult for them to fuse back into the life-cycle as Aura changes them.
On a lighter note would it be possible for Tetra and Garment to use Aura?
Found old WoG!
Also found this:
Which means that with some research, Joe can resurrect with clones now, and maybe do something with duplicates? They share a soul after all, so maybe there's a way to share memories too now?
AntaeusTheGiant
Child of Gaea
- Location
- Lawrence, KS
Well, the RWBY wiki assures that Aura is an ability all those with souls can use with practice. Should have looked that up earlier, answers the question I had about whether Parahumans could use it. The fact that Chen has had his Aura awakened also then answers the question of whether inhabitants of LordRoustabout's Earth Bet have souls, which Wildbow always refused to answer for canon Earth Bet saying it was irrelevant. Garment is a Spirit of Fashion...and spirits are almost the same as souls..so maybe? Tetra is more likely or at least easier I would think, though maybe she should achieve her next form first. The real question is if the AIs or Dragon could, though the example of RWBY's Penny is hopeful. Perhaps with a Cybertronic body or a Star Trek Positronic Brain?
As far as Shards go, the question then becomes do they have souls or can they be granted/develop them.
I have a different question about Shards, esp. those of case 53s. Joe will be studying ways to heal or at least mitigate case 53s, but unless he addresses their dying/decaying/patched together Shards he is unlikely to be totally successful. What perks will Joe need to fix this large problem? Is there anything currently available in the Forge that could do it? The Darksiders Maker perks are still on the excluded list, pretty sure they could do it....
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Some what unlikely, and probably only if Lord wants to avoid using those perks. The problem with aura and esper powers only going to non-parahumans is it really encourages cast bloat. Letting parahumans get them lets them be a power-up to current characters rather than making OCs or grabbing peripheral characters (I mean I guess you could give Piggot Aura don't know why though) and giving them more screen time.
That really gets into philosophical wiffle waffle - why would cybertronic/positronic substrates matter? They are just, well, matter - either Dragon's a person or she ain't, and if she is, either all people have souls or they don't.
Especially when you then have the likes of Tetra - if Tetra can have a soul why the heck wouldn't Dragon have a soul? That's, like, silicon/infomorph bias, okay~
Canonically speaking there's a Robot Girl in RWBY that not only has Aura, but also magic. So I don't think Dragon being an A.I. will be an issue if Joe decides to give her Aura.
- Location
- Texas
This is a bit nitpicky but they are case 53s not 52s
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Thanks for the omake, sorry for overlooking this one.
Thanks for the omake.
Thanks for the omake.
Thanks for the omake.
Thanks for the omake.
Thanks for the omake.
Thanks for the omake.
Thanks for the omake.
Thanks for the omake.
Thanks for the omake.
Thanks for the omake.
Thanks for the omake.
Thanks for the omake.
My apologies for the delay in getting these threadmarked. I will try to get better about managing the thread.
First, I would like to say I understand your meaning and appreciate the insight of your post. You raised a lot of good points and valid concerns that were clearly and eloquently presented. Still, the exact phrasing of a few points hit me on a level that made me want to respond. I would like to clarify that this is mostly a response to the general environment following the posting of the last chapter, and not your post in particular, which I felt was very well composed.
The idea of needing to recover from the last chapter is totally understandable, but also does not sit well with me. I think that's mainly because of the amount of effort I have put into this story over the past nine months. Almost all of my free time has gone into either writing the story, planning the story, or familiarizing myself with more media to be included in the story. With that amount of effort, the idea that I know have to make something up to my readers feels off-putting. I understand the last chapter was not well received, and a number of people are considering leaving the story. I know that the next few chapters will decide if they continue, but having it framed like an obligation, like I had some penance to perform, hit me harder than I expected.
I have no problem with the amount of time I have chosen to devote to this story. Consistently I have gotten more back from the writing process and feedback from my audience than it has taken out of me. There were only a few exceptions to that, being the reactions to the 'round two' ending of Chapter 20 Offensive, the extensive controversy over the mechanics of Fate magic, and, most significantly, the reaction to this chapter.
I try to review as much feedback from the story as I can as part of my attempt to improve as a writer. That means when you get a chain of complaints on the same topic it can easily become overwhelming. I understand how that happens, a single person expresses their frustration and doesn't think any more of it. They're just pointing out something that bothered them. It's not until you combine it with dozens of other people saying the same thing that it can come across as excessive. The pages of people venting about the chapter were not easy to get through and frankly there was more than one occasion where I considered just taking a break from the story. I'm going to at least close out the interlude, but after that I'm not sure.
That said I would like to thank everyone who provided positive feedback, or made an effort to frame their criticism neutrally. I also fully acknowledge where the criticism was coming from, but it was still difficult to deal with when presented in that concentration.
When this started this story I was just sharing my writing online. Now it's more than just the quality of my writing. It's plotting multi chapter arcs, managing pacing with the understanding of weeks of real time between chapters, and controlling the emotional endpoint of each section of the story. The way I would have preferred to handle the last two chapters would have been in chapters of about 15k words spread over six weeks, allowing better management of the quality of each section. I also knew that readers didn't want to get stuck in a combat arc that lasted over a month and ended in anything other than complete victory. Episodic writing has it's own challenges and I am seriously trying to manage them as well as I can, but it does feel like the consequences for any missteps are fairly harsh.
This is another thing that's gotten to me. When I explained that I was taking responsibility for the narrative decisions in the chapter, that was in regard to the fact that everything that happens in a story is a narrative decision by the author. Sometimes the decisions are so seamlessly woven into the structure of a story that they never come across as a choice by the author, but they always are. It's a choice to tell one story, show one scene and not any of the hundreds of other possibility.
Terms like author fiat, plot armor, idiot ball, ass-pull, or railroading are signs that the suspension of disbelief has broken down, that the work needed to make a narrative decision feel natural has failed. That is what I was acknowledging. It wasn't 'March will survive no matter what', it was 'the intention of this scene was to depict a situation where March survived, and the fact that it was not conveyed is my fault as an author'.
The specific points you raised really resonated with me because of the original way I had planned to write the scene. I don't normally get into drafts and writing process, since that is probably worse for suspension of disbelief than anything that can happen in a story, but for anyone who wants to look behind the curtain I've included some details of the original version of the scene.
In my original plan for this scene March was not injured by Joe. Instead, when Tetra activated she flailed defensively with her life fibers, and managed to knock March away from completing the execution, injuring her in the process. March then retreats from the fight as Joe has to deal with attacks by Lung and Oni Lee. When it came time to write the scene I was having a hard time conveying the dynamics of that moment, largely because of the state Joe was in at the time.
I decided to shift to a direct confrontation between Joe and March for a number of reasons. I thought the pacing worked better in how the scene was presented. That situation would result in March being more heavily injured, making the incident with the call gem a more desperate maneuver. It would also make Joe directly responsible for her condition, meaning a more personal connections going forward. In addition, it would allow me to convey the seriousness of Joe's physical and mental condition under the effects of his injury and life fiber influence, given that he DIDN'T finish off March, something any clear thinking person would do.
That is what I meant by it being a narrative decision. In the process of writing, especially when writing a story like this, there are loads of ideas that get considered, with some included and some discarded. A whole section with Gully was dropped, as was the idea of Dauntless breaking ranks to help with the aerial battle against Lung. With random powers showing up mid-chapter there is a limit to how well things can be plotted, and that's something I've accepted with this story. I maintain a general idea of how things can play out, and try to craft scenes that are consistent with the conditions in the story. This is just the first time the arrangement of scenes has gotten such a strong response.
I decided to shift to a direct confrontation between Joe and March for a number of reasons. I thought the pacing worked better in how the scene was presented. That situation would result in March being more heavily injured, making the incident with the call gem a more desperate maneuver. It would also make Joe directly responsible for her condition, meaning a more personal connections going forward. In addition, it would allow me to convey the seriousness of Joe's physical and mental condition under the effects of his injury and life fiber influence, given that he DIDN'T finish off March, something any clear thinking person would do.
That is what I meant by it being a narrative decision. In the process of writing, especially when writing a story like this, there are loads of ideas that get considered, with some included and some discarded. A whole section with Gully was dropped, as was the idea of Dauntless breaking ranks to help with the aerial battle against Lung. With random powers showing up mid-chapter there is a limit to how well things can be plotted, and that's something I've accepted with this story. I maintain a general idea of how things can play out, and try to craft scenes that are consistent with the conditions in the story. This is just the first time the arrangement of scenes has gotten such a strong response.
In terms of your concerns about the interlude I can say they broadly align with what I was planning to focus on, but as it is still being written I can't comment further. though While I will try to address as many comments on Ao3 as possible, I am probably going to have to step back from most interaction to get the next chapter ready, . Every time I get caught up in one of these controversies it cuts into my writing time, and as you said, there's a lot riding on the next chapter.
For the sake of ending on a lighter note, I'll take a moment to address some questions from the thread.
Everything given to Chen has heretical adaption on it (it's pretty much the default for everything Joe or his duplicates currently produce). In terms of his semblance, they are based on you're method of addressing conflict (which is why Joe's is defensive). Chen is exceptionally direct and focused on the well being of others before himself. There are a number of ways that could manifest, but you need the right situation for it to happen first (Which is why Joe hasn't discovered his semblance, he has been moving away from his usual methods of dealing with conflict).
Post-chain is different from post-jump. Everything is treated as post-jump, with some small caveats. Esper powers from Hard Science, for instance, are supposed to be level 5 post-jump, but Joe actually gets then at level 1 and just sees a very fast improvement to level 5. Same with Master's Body. Joe noted he didn't have the full benefit, but will advance to it much faster than the normal 10 year peroid.
Hesperidean Cider won't be showing up since it's only possible to obtain after a jumpchain is completed (taking one of the stay, return home, or obtain spark options). To my knowledge, the only possibility in the forge for completing a jumpchain is the endgame scenario from Gurren Lagann.
Parahumans can still get Aura. Their souls aren't in their shards until they die. The link is more of a way to make sure the 'soul' goes to shardspace rather than the generic, unreachable afterlife that other souls go to.
While it is possible to turn a parahuman into an Esper with hard science, that is also an excellent way to horribly kill them. Joe's potential Esper powers are protected by jump fiat, but everyone else would have the normal mechanics of the system, including the consequences of what happens if an Esper uses magic. With parahuman abilities counting as magic and many of them not having off switches it will get real messy real fast.
Of course, now that Joe can make key crests he can protect people from this interaction, but that still requires working with souls as raw materials.
The exact mechanics of this will be covered in future chapters, but the Prismatic Laboratory did arrive with some mail that was backdated to the day of Joe's trigger, and a second set dated two weeks after that.
- Location
- USA
LordRoustabout Question Does Celestial Forge have any perks from Destiny?
- Pronouns
- Dude, bro, etc...
Looking at the Forge spreadsheet. There are no Destiny perks in the Forge Lord is using. Celestial Forge V1 Spreadsheet
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- Location
- USA
Noted and kind sad. Destiny would of been fun and fit the theme of the story.
What I have it, hell I can find it easy.
- Location
- England
I didn't want to drop posts just gushing over the writing here, because I've already done that four or five times so far and I thought you'd be bored by it unless I had very specific, targeted feedback to give. However, as I haven't been keeping up with the thread I didn't realise it had just become a wall of criticisms to read through.
The thing about any kind of user review is that it's mostly the most extreme 5% of the audience on either side that feel the need to come forward, and I did some speculating/commentary earlier in the lifetime of the fic so at this point I'd basically settled in with the trust that you know what you're doing and I'm going to enjoy the ride. I see now that you could probably have used some more definite, obvious positive feedback, to give you a more honest view on how the fic is being received by the audience and not just the ones moved enough to vent at you about it.
I am enjoying this story very much. It's a little long-winded at times, sure, but I like the technical stuff and the theorycrafting so I'm quite willing to go along with it. Besides which, as I'm sure this post reveals brevity is not a strength of mine, and I'm not going to turn my nose up at HALF A DAMN BOOK of free, interesting fiction a week!
I understand that some people feel March is overpowered or Bakuda is achieving more than in canon, but if there was any hope of narrative combat tension for a character with this much power, it was going to have to be an effective antagonist. The options were either to have a combination of powers interpreted charitably and minmaxed a bit to create something imposing, or just OCs. Both are good, but for something hanging around the Bay I think it's good to try and put new spins on old characters and play 'what ifs?' with familiar foes. Ultimately I'm enjoying the path the story is taking, I'm liking reading about the plans and the combat scenes are fun, so I trust Lord to take my suspended questions and queries and answer them with updates full of juicy story.
I certainly don't love the idea that we are owed a chapter to retain readers, but that's been said. If you're gonna drop the fic, drop it, but don't make every voluntary update into a final performance review exam after he keeps delivering good shit time after time.
Anyway in conclusion you may be seeing a lot of negative feedback in the thread, Lord, but that isn't a proper sampling of audience response to your work and maybe the rest of us should speak up a bit more to show you how we feel in future.
The thing about any kind of user review is that it's mostly the most extreme 5% of the audience on either side that feel the need to come forward, and I did some speculating/commentary earlier in the lifetime of the fic so at this point I'd basically settled in with the trust that you know what you're doing and I'm going to enjoy the ride. I see now that you could probably have used some more definite, obvious positive feedback, to give you a more honest view on how the fic is being received by the audience and not just the ones moved enough to vent at you about it.
I am enjoying this story very much. It's a little long-winded at times, sure, but I like the technical stuff and the theorycrafting so I'm quite willing to go along with it. Besides which, as I'm sure this post reveals brevity is not a strength of mine, and I'm not going to turn my nose up at HALF A DAMN BOOK of free, interesting fiction a week!
I understand that some people feel March is overpowered or Bakuda is achieving more than in canon, but if there was any hope of narrative combat tension for a character with this much power, it was going to have to be an effective antagonist. The options were either to have a combination of powers interpreted charitably and minmaxed a bit to create something imposing, or just OCs. Both are good, but for something hanging around the Bay I think it's good to try and put new spins on old characters and play 'what ifs?' with familiar foes. Ultimately I'm enjoying the path the story is taking, I'm liking reading about the plans and the combat scenes are fun, so I trust Lord to take my suspended questions and queries and answer them with updates full of juicy story.
I certainly don't love the idea that we are owed a chapter to retain readers, but that's been said. If you're gonna drop the fic, drop it, but don't make every voluntary update into a final performance review exam after he keeps delivering good shit time after time.
Anyway in conclusion you may be seeing a lot of negative feedback in the thread, Lord, but that isn't a proper sampling of audience response to your work and maybe the rest of us should speak up a bit more to show you how we feel in future.
- Location
- Edmonton, Alberta
I am saddened by the amount of negative feedback you are getting. I don't read the comments, and I wonder if that's true of the commenters, too. A small fraction are annoyed about something, and so they post, and done. And they don't see that it comes across as an avalanche of negative, and sometimes very entitled criticism. They're not seeing it because they're not reading pages and pages of comments either.
I don't know if I'm expressing the opinion of the silent majority or just me, but I don't think you have anything to apologize for or make up. Your writing has quirks, sure, but after a while a reader just has to roll with it. It's like genealogies and etymology in Tolkien. Not everyone writes like Tolkien, nor should they, but he can. Likewise, you are perfectly entitled to write like Lord Roustabout.
Thank you, sir, for all your hard work. If you have to take a break, do what's best for you. And if you want to write a battle scene over the course of a month, that's fine, too. Feed your muse, follow your muse, do what feels right.
I don't know if I'm expressing the opinion of the silent majority or just me, but I don't think you have anything to apologize for or make up. Your writing has quirks, sure, but after a while a reader just has to roll with it. It's like genealogies and etymology in Tolkien. Not everyone writes like Tolkien, nor should they, but he can. Likewise, you are perfectly entitled to write like Lord Roustabout.
Thank you, sir, for all your hard work. If you have to take a break, do what's best for you. And if you want to write a battle scene over the course of a month, that's fine, too. Feed your muse, follow your muse, do what feels right.
- Location
- United States
Shouldn't most magic systems be fine for espers to use? The conflict between science and magic in the Index universe is very much specific to that universe and the various different magic sources in the forge operate on entirely differently rules. It seems a bit extreme that they would consider Esper powers something to attack, or that Esper powers would recognize them as the magic that they fight with in the first place. If Joe was passing out Index magic somehow, I would expect that to be the case. But Parahumans operate on a very different method of magic than is used in Index, they shouldn't directly impact each other unless they are extremely similar to the index style of magic.
- Pronouns
- Dude, bro, etc...
Yeah, it'd be a real shame if the toxic readers that try to dress up their complaints as criticism and think that saying sorry after venting/ranting actually start taking it's toll on Lord, who tries their best to make a middle ground between what he wants to do and what the audience wants. Heavens forbid he actually wants to do his own thing and write something that disagrees with the audience. It'd be a tragedy if the complaints pile up pages upon pages of the same exact thing and forces Lord to take a break right?
Just remember, a majority of us loves you Lord and we'll support you till the end!
Just remember, a majority of us loves you Lord and we'll support you till the end!
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Link please ... There is a widely available version but it doesn't have the perk the forge uses. "Pure Art"
- Pronouns
- He
Lord as much as I love your fic and always wants to see more chapters weekly I wouldn't mind if you take a break to come back later since I don't want you to suffer burn out
Also trust me lord even though there is a lot of criticism in the thread the majority of people who love your work especially me and the bois on discord. Me personally I dont really mind how the arc of abb and March ended with how you presented it and I love to see more of your writing on the future
Also trust me lord even though there is a lot of criticism in the thread the majority of people who love your work especially me and the bois on discord. Me personally I dont really mind how the arc of abb and March ended with how you presented it and I love to see more of your writing on the future
- Location
- USA
I do not think I have it. I fucking had it at one point. But do you have this version Destiny (SpaceBattles Edition) Jumpdoc.pdf
As someone whose critique you replied to earlier, I'll go ahead and say it now. You would have to really bomb the next interlude to get me to drop this story (and that's definitely not intended to keep you positive and writing. Really.)
You mentioned earlier that your two week time-limit was the source for some of the bad writing, and there I'd have to disagree. There was nothing in the last fic that was out-right terrible. Plenty that wasn't excellent, and some that might not have even been good...but not terrible. The simple fact of the matter is that somewhat bungling complex emotional states and conveying intent to readers through action alone is not a sign of bad writing. It's normal writing. Professional stuff needs multiple layers of review to refine it, and years of experience to cut down on that. 'Bad' writing in this age, when almost anyone can spend time and resources just writing, is the realm of grievous spelling/grammar/structure mistakes, and that is not what I read.
As for part of what the problem is...well it's the length. For the established 'okay' writing, there were plenty of indicators that the MC was in an altered state of thinking. Many of these were clumped together. When readers skim portions of the text to get to the action and conclusion, these indicators can be missed, where a more continuous pattern (that being the actions or pov alteration) might not be.
Another issue is I feel you may have accidentally created a AAA game scenario. You have a long and fairly high-quality build up to the climax of the arc, and when it arrives, it fails to meet the audience's inflated expectations due to the nature of time and effort constraints. Except where AAA studios make bank on the people figuratively just starting the chapter and can ignore all the flak...you get no money and all of the criticism. But for this, as long as you're writing long plot-lines with lots of investment and build-up, and still sticking to deadlines so shit gets done? I'm not sure what could be done about this, besides your readers just getting used to it or making the call to stay or not (not every fic is for everyone, and I know I enjoy stuff several hundreds of thousands of words longer then others might find appropriate). In other words, this latest chapter was closer to a WatchDogs (massively hyped, only decent to middling quality) then a CP2077 in terms of why the response was so strong.
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