Let's Read: David Weber's Honor Harrington

[Conquerer of Mar]

A Rising Thunder specifies that Honor has 25,000,000 missiles at the battle, with 2.5m ready to launch. We don't get any details on how many missiles are fired, but considering she just says "FIRE", we can presume a huge chunk of them are.

So yeah, they have 25 million missiles just at the ready.


I clarified exactly what I meant, so there's no reason to argue about it or pretend you didn't know what I meant. As someone else pointed out, at no point are any of the battles even in question, there's no intended tension about them (hence me calling them 'victory parades' figuratively), the only tension is if the bad guys killing themselves spitefully to frame Manticore will cause any lasting trouble.

As for Filareta.... there's no reason to make him a child rapist to make him a fire and forget missile. He was going there on his own. Hell, he's not even the one who is the fire and forget missile, as it is his tac officer IIRC who is actually under Mesa's control and launches the missiles despite him deciding to reasonably surrender in the face of 25,000,000 missiles. It's just thrown in there at the last second so you don't feel bad that he's about to get blasted and blown up with millions of missiles.

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I mean they have already explicitly figured out exactly how many missiles it generally takes to destroy a SD. That being around some where around 500 per ship. So they used like 500k+ tops and considering canon Spindle, and that they have access to their Real Time control they'd probably use less. But yeah your right that they do use hundreds of thousands missiles in book 13.

Supply issue does cause the Manticorians to not use missiles in that Wormhole battle and causes a Manticorians squadron to be weak enough that they can do a "heroic sacrifice" and causes the Pov Solarian bureaucrat to order an attack on Beowulf.

 

[Simon_Jester]

I clarified exactly what I meant, so there's no reason to argue about it or pretend you didn't know what I meant. As someone else pointed out, at no point are any of the battles even in question, there's no intended tension about them (hence me calling them 'victory parades' figuratively), the only tension is if the bad guys killing themselves spitefully to frame Manticore will cause any lasting trouble.

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Yeah, well, the 'battle' where Filareta dies doesn't have any of that tension either. There is no semblance of tension in any of the battles after Spindle, and not really any tension at Spindle for a reader who's made reasonable inferences about what the two sides' weapons are capable of.

Like, I'm not saying "Uncompromising Honor is an action-packed, suspenseful read," because ahahaha no.

I'm saying that Filareta isn't treated by the narrative as the leading, the definitive, or the last Mesans-Duping-Solarians faction character to meaningfully confront Team Good. That part, in particular, I don't really agree with.

He's not the leader because the conflict is managed by others, and even within the duped Solarian League there are other people more powerful than him.

He's not the last because the plot actually does go on after he dies and there are multiple entire rounds of things that, while ineffectual, are supposed to be Solarian/Mesan actions taken against Manticore, under the same leadership that sent him to his death.

And frankly, I don't even consider him all that definitive because he's just one of a large cast of other characters; we get at least four distinct "Solarian League admiral" characters alone and probably more counting Uncompromising Honor since all four of the ones I'm thinking of are dead.

As for Filareta.... there's no reason to make him a child rapist to make him a fire and forget missile. He was going there on his own. Hell, he's not even the one who is the fire and forget missile, as it is his tac officer IIRC who is actually under Mesa's control and launches the missiles despite him deciding to reasonably surrender in the face of 25,000,000 missiles. It's just thrown in there at the last second so you don't feel bad that he's about to get blasted and blown up with millions of missiles.

Click to shrink...

If we really wanted to lean into the missile analogy, the whole fleet is the missile, Filareta is, like, the engine or something, and that one tactical officer guy is the proximity fuze that detonates the warhead or something. But that's just me playing around.

As to the rest, well, yes, I don't think it was artistically necessary to make Filareta a pedophile, I just don't think that Weber's main reason for doing so was the same reason you think it was. First, because there are a whole lot of people in that fleet besides Filareta and Weber doesn't even pretend that they're all scum, and second, because Weber telegraphs "those poor bastards who are gonna die" at the doomed Solarian offensive in scenes from viewpoints on both sides for a long time. He certainly doesn't seem to attempt to make the reader feel like everyone in a large SLN battlegroup deserves to die, and he could easily have done that given how ham-handed he's willing to be about his villains.

I think Weber's real reason for making Filareta a horrible sex criminal has more to do with other things he was trying to do. Was it necessary or a good idea for him to do it, for those reasons or any reasons? I agree, no, no it was not.

 

[NeremWorld]

I mean they have already explicitly figured out exactly how many missiles it generally takes to destroy a SD. That being around some where around 500 per ship. So they used like 500k+ tops and considering canon Spindle, and that they have access to their Real Time control they'd probably use less. But yeah your right that they do use hundreds of thousands missiles in book 13.

Supply issue does cause the Manticorians to not use missiles in that Wormhole battle and causes a Manticorians squadron to be weak enough that they can do a "heroic sacrifice" and causes the Pov Solarian bureaucrat to order an attack on Beowulf.

Click to shrink...

I mean I guess they shouldn't have given Honor 25 million missiles. if she didn't even need 1% of that.

Yeah, well, the 'battle' where Filareta dies doesn't have any of that tension either. There is no semblance of tension in any of the battles after Spindle, and not really any tension at Spindle for a reader who's made reasonable inferences about what the two sides' weapons are capable of.

Like, I'm not saying "Uncompromising Honor is an action-packed, suspenseful read," because ahahaha no.

I'm saying that Filareta isn't treated by the narrative as the leading, the definitive, or the last Mesans-Duping-Solarians faction character to meaningfully confront Team Good. That part, in particular, I don't really agree with.

He's not the leader because the conflict is managed by others, and even within the duped Solarian League there are other people more powerful than him.

He's not the last because the plot actually does go on after he dies and there are multiple entire rounds of things that, while ineffectual, are supposed to be Solarian/Mesan actions taken against Manticore, under the same leadership that sent him to his death.

And frankly, I don't even consider him all that definitive because he's just one of a large cast of other characters; we get at least four distinct "Solarian League admiral" characters alone and probably more counting Uncompromising Honor since all four of the ones I'm thinking of are dead.

Click to shrink...

So my point is that narratively he is the final boss for Honor because he's the last actual fight she has, such as it is. Uncompromising Honor has her blowing up civilian infrastructure pretty much entirely off-screen, and the only actual on-screen battles are small SLN fleets getting pulverized by even smaller Manticore fleets, and that's including the Heroic Sacrifice!

If we really wanted to lean into the missile analogy, the whole fleet is the missile, Filareta is, like, the engine or something, and that one tactical officer guy is the proximity fuze that detonates the warhead or something. But that's just me playing around.

As to the rest, well, yes, I don't think it was artistically necessary to make Filareta a pedophile, I just don't think that Weber's main reason for doing so was the same reason you think it was. First, because there are a whole lot of people in that fleet besides Filareta and Weber doesn't even pretend that they're all scum, and second, because Weber telegraphs "those poor bastards who are gonna die" at the doomed Solarian offensive in scenes from viewpoints on both sides for a long time. He certainly doesn't seem to attempt to make the reader feel like everyone in a large SLN battlegroup deserves to die, and he could easily have done that given how ham-handed he's willing to be about his villains.

I think Weber's real reason for making Filareta a horrible sex criminal has more to do with other things he was trying to do. Was it necessary or a good idea for him to do it, for those reasons or any reasons? I agree, no, no it was not.

Click to shrink...

Maybe, just maybe, the reason why Filareta is given the sudden child rapist reveal at the last second was to make sure you don't have sympathy for him because he is the designated villain. He had really done nothing to stir any hatred in the readers beyond being The Bad Guy up until then. He just got told to go fight Honor and went to do so.

And uh, this frankly all ties in to pretty well that Weber is obsessed with rape in general, to the point that Honor's last battle in the series is with someone who is revealed to be a child rapist literally right before she annihilates his entire fleet.

 

[Simon_Jester]

So my point is that narratively he is the final boss for Honor because he's the last actual fight she has, such as it is. Uncompromising Honor has her blowing up civilian infrastructure pretty much entirely off-screen, and the only actual on-screen battles are small SLN fleets getting pulverized by even smaller Manticore fleets, and that's including the Heroic Sacrifice!

Click to shrink...

You were earlier describing Filareta as "THEIR big villain card," where 'THEIR' meant the Mesans. That's... not quite the same thing as "he happens to be the enemy commander in Harrington's last encounter with an armed opponent."

Maybe, just maybe, the reason why Filareta is given the sudden child rapist reveal at the last second was to make sure you don't have sympathy for him because he is the designated villain. He had really done nothing to stir any hatred in the readers beyond being The Bad Guy up until then. He just got told to go fight Honor and went to do so.

And uh, this frankly all ties in to pretty well that Weber is obsessed with rape in general, to the point that Honor's last battle in the series is with someone who is revealed to be a child rapist literally right before she annihilates his entire fleet.

Click to shrink...

I think Weber is throwing around rape in the story and using it very heavily to create drama, too much so, excessively so, but that he's not doing it specifically because he's thinking "wait, no, I need to make these characters unsympathetic."

He frequently throws rape into the story well past the point where a character or faction has already been proven to be contemptible, and he uses the fact of past rapes to generate drama, sometimes against characters who aren't even in the story.

...

I think the real weirdness here is that Weber just sort of tacitly assumes that any group without a moral compass will seek to 'enjoy itself' via rape and other sex crimes. This is very typical of his "boomer marinated in Christian fundie perspectives but not quite completely consumed by brain worms, probably self-identifies as a 'moderate' conservative" authorship and that culture's attitudes towards sex where "sinners gonna sin" prevails heavily.

Also, Weber, as we've discussed, has a very hard time picturing antagonists with a moral compass unless they are Upright Military Men (TM) who will of course defect and change sides at the earliest opportunity to abandon their wicked allegiances.

 

[Bernkastel]

My feeling is that Filareta happened to apparently be the last person in the fleet enemy guy seat (I'm going off what others are saying about the last book), but that he was treated as a patsy whose doom was essential for the real big bad's efforts. An accidental last boss, because the writer just stopped trying at fleet bad guy stuff in favour of just carrying on/shifting entirely to "The bad guys want the hero to win in a way that serves their bad guy goals", a model that apparently gave up on the rival fleet guy all together as it moved away from the older model of doing things.

Edit: I'd see it at least partially as basically giving up on the idea of having a fleet bad guy when they no longer stand a chance, or can be given such by the writer, in favour of trying to create a new form of challenging the heroes, when it's been decided that they're too awesome to lose actual fights and can only lose in the way that they lost in the Filareta situation. It feels like a solid example of a work effectively killing its own fight/contest type through making the hero too powerful, with the writer in this case apparently just giving up entirely on it in the last book.

 

[Conquerer of Mar]

[/]

I mean I guess they shouldn't have given Honor 25 million missiles. if she didn't even need 1% of that.



So my point is that narratively he is the final boss for Honor because he's the last actual fight she has, such as it is. Uncompromising Honor has her blowing up civilian infrastructure pretty much entirely off-screen, and the only actual on-screen battles are small SLN fleets getting pulverized by even smaller Manticore fleets, and that's including the Heroic Sacrifice!



Maybe, just maybe, the reason why Filareta is given the sudden child rapist reveal at the last second was to make sure you don't have sympathy for him because he is the designated villain. He had really done nothing to stir any hatred in the readers beyond being The Bad Guy up until then. He just got told to go fight Honor and went to do so.

And uh, this frankly all ties in to pretty well that Weber is obsessed with rape in general, to the point that Honor's last battle in the series is with someone who is revealed to be a child rapist literally right before she annihilates his entire fleet.

Click to shrink...

So we're not counting the spin-offs where she has a battles in the other, yes other, secret system? Also the battle of Sol was a battle, arguably more so than Second Manticore, it probably took more tactical wherewithal since she does a microjump to avoid some missiles shot from Ganymede station. So her final opponent in the main series is the commander of Ganymede and to a larger extent Kingsford.

 

[NeremWorld]

My feeling is that Filareta happened to apparently be the last person in the fleet enemy guy seat (I'm going off what others are saying about the last book), but that he was treated as a patsy whose doom was essential for the real big bad's efforts. An accidental last boss, because the writer just stopped trying at fleet bad guy stuff in favour of just carrying on/shifting entirely to "The bad guys want the hero to win in a way that serves their bad guy goals", a model that apparently gave up on the rival fleet guy all together as it moved away from the older model of doing things.

Edit: I'd see it at least partially as basically giving up on the idea of having a fleet bad guy when they no longer stand a chance, or can be given such by the writer, in favour of trying to create a new form of challenging the heroes, when it's been decided that they're too awesome to lose actual fights and can only lose in the way that they lost in the Filareta situation. It feels like a solid example of a work effectively killing its own fight/contest type through making the hero too powerful, with the writer in this case apparently just giving up entirely on it in the last book.

Click to shrink...

You're not wrong.

[/]
So we're not counting the spin-offs where she has a battles in the other, yes other, secret system? Also the battle of Sol was a battle, arguably more so than Second Manticore, it probably took more tactical wherewithal since she does a microjump to avoid some missiles shot from Ganymede station. So her final opponent in the main series is the commander of Ganymede and to a larger extent Kingsford.

Click to shrink...

Yeah I'm discounting spinoffs because Weber clearly doesn't count them for some reason. I never got the point of making them 'spinoffs' if they're suppose to be important to the plot, even if they are done with coauthors. It's not like the 'main series' have that much more or less Honor.

I dunno if Kingsford even counts since he was basically just there to give in to Honor and her demands, and the entire Battle of Sol was an even more effortless curbstomp as Filareta actually inflicted some casualties whereas everyone in Sol did not. That's why he's narratively the 'final boss' and the Battle of Sol is not, because it was even less of a battle. That's why I characterized it as 'victory parades'.

You were earlier describing Filareta as "THEIR big villain card," where 'THEIR' meant the Mesans. That's... not quite the same thing as "he happens to be the enemy commander in Harrington's last encounter with an armed opponent."

I think Weber is throwing around rape in the story and using it very heavily to create drama, too much so, excessively so, but that he's not doing it specifically because he's thinking "wait, no, I need to make these characters unsympathetic."

He frequently throws rape into the story well past the point where a character or faction has already been proven to be contemptible, and he uses the fact of past rapes to generate drama, sometimes against characters who aren't even in the story.

...

I think the real weirdness here is that Weber just sort of tacitly assumes that any group without a moral compass will seek to 'enjoy itself' via rape and other sex crimes. This is very typical of his "boomer marinated in Christian fundie perspectives but not quite completely consumed by brain worms, probably self-identifies as a 'moderate' conservative" authorship and that culture's attitudes towards sex where "sinners gonna sin" prevails heavily.

Also, Weber, as we've discussed, has a very hard time picturing antagonists with a moral compass unless they are Upright Military Men (TM) who will of course defect and change sides at the earliest opportunity to abandon their wicked allegiances.

Click to shrink...

No...? I described rape as Mesa's big villain card, not Filareta himself as it was (through slavery and Filareta himself) one of their big evils. Masada as well, as the big thing that galvanized Honor's hatred of them is the rapes they commit. It became personal then.

Just as Pavel's big villain card is being a rapist.

And yes, that's the stuff we've been criticizing. That's the problem that started the entire conversation. Weber uses rape so casually as a villain trait that it's practically a punctuation mark for their evil monologues (this is a metaphor and not literal).

 

[Conquerer of Mar]

You're not wrong.



Yeah I'm discounting spinoffs because Weber clearly doesn't count them for some reason. I never got the point of making them 'spinoffs' if they're suppose to be important to the plot, even if they are done with coauthors. It's not like the 'main series' have that much more or less Honor.

I dunno if Kingsford even counts since he was basically just there to give in to Honor and her demands, and the entire Battle of Sol was an even more effortless curbstomp as Filareta actually inflicted some casualties whereas everyone in Sol did not. That's why he's narratively the 'final boss' and the Battle of Sol is not, because it was even less of a battle. That's why I characterized it as 'victory parades'.



No...? I described rape as Mesa's big villain card, not Filareta himself as it was (through slavery and Filareta himself) one of their big evils. Masada as well, as the big thing that galvanized Honor's hatred of them is the rapes they commit. It became personal then.

Just as Pavel's big villain card is being a rapist.

And yes, that's the stuff we've been criticizing. That's the problem that started the entire conversation. Weber uses rape so casually as a villain trait that it's practically a punctuation mark for their evil monologues (this is a metaphor and not literal).

Click to shrink...

The Spin-offs I'm referring to was published after the main series "ended" so I think it counts, as it's essentially the wrap up for the whole "search for the Alignment" plotline.
An explanation for why they'll still be around in the sequel series.

 

[NeremWorld]

Honestly it's stupid as it was both published and takes place after the main series ended but apparently doesn't count as part of the main series. The 'spinoffs' should just be main books as they're all part of the plot in some form.

Also I'd be surprised if there was much of a sequel series, even Weber thinks he can stretch it out to 2-3 books at most, counting spinoffs. Of course he also says that Safehold has 3 books left in it when they are nowhere near the shape it'd take to fight the aliens and they've spent like 10 books just getting through Age of Sail stuff.

 

[namar13766]

Whether Weber focuses on the Honorverse or Safehold, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to enjoy any of them because of my inherent distrust of his various forms of aristocracy due to my recent discovery of Tony Benn's Questions To The Powerful.

 

[notbirdofprey]

What's that?