Ship of Fools: A Taylor Varga Omake (Complete)

It's also worth mentioning that the programming language that the DOD standardized on was Ada, so creating a new standard called Lovelace is completely in line with the theme.
Unfortunately, it was a bodge, a distorted/extended version of the Pascal language, that some claimed was selected due to politics, from the alternatives. Whether Ada could have ever been done in such a way it was a 'good' language is open to argument, of course...


Epilogue: Stargate-verse

Pretty flawless wrap-up. Nice job! I'm unsure that the morals/ethics of the Family would fit with them feeding the Ori to Dementors, though. Dumping them after a forced descent into a virtual world, in a dimensional pocket, with no powers and only basic tools (but with immortal re-spawn) seems more their style... Like Farmer's 'Riverworld'...
 
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I don't think that letting the Dementors eating a descended soul is a good idea perso .... who know what that could make to them.
 
Well, feeding the Ori to the Dementors would be a great way to take two problems off different boards, and with Tom being adopted and raised by Daniel and Sarah, things should at least have a better chance to self-correct in the Potter-verse after Grindelwald's defeat. Still think that the entire Wizarding world is headed for the crapper, but this way they might have a better chance for someone to buy a clue before the inevitable Muggle/Wizard conflicts pick up.

A bit on the extreme side, but considering the Ori attempted to genocide their estranged cousins, I can see where the Family would have been less in a mood for a teaching lesson.
 
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I don't think that letting the Dementors eating a descended soul is a good idea perso .... who know what that could make to them.

Full?

Let's clear up a few misconceptions.

The Ori as presented in Stargate were presented as big bads because they had powerful technology, rabid followers, and the powers of ascended beings. They're almost cartoonish as presented. However, let's look at what they did:

- They were religious fanatics that attempted to wipe out those in their society who followed the path of science, ultimately driving them to flee their entire galaxy to another.
- They explicitly and deliberately lie to their followers so that they never ascend, so the Ori never have to share power; they keep their followers technology primitive, so they never become a threat.
- They massacre any planet that refuses to convert, and torture and kill individuals that refuse to do so; they used one inhabited Jaffa world to create a black hole so they could build a supergate (instead of, you know, using one of the black holes that we already have in the galaxy).
- One of their favorite tactics is to release a lethal plague on their target populations that only their priors can cure.
- They burn heretics alive.
- They impregnated a woman against her will to create a messiah for their religious crusade.

In short, the Ori are what the Goa'uld aspire to be. They are every bit as evil, if not more so. So, if the Family will drop off the System Lords to be hunted by Predators, I see no reason not to drop the Ori in a pocket dimension filled with Dementors.

Let us not forget that Taylor is bonded to an ultra-powerful, ancient creature that used to fight in demon wars. Her first reaction to Amy discovering her identity was that it would be a shame to have to kill and eat her. The reason the Family is so pants-wettingly terrifying is that when the line is crossed, you're dead...and they're not afraid to make an example of you if it helps keep others from making the same mistake.
 
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You had me a second there. Thought Daniel and Sarah were going to save Harry, not Tom. What an awesome idea!
 
You had me a second there. Thought Daniel and Sarah were going to save Harry, not Tom. What an awesome idea!

Thanks. I'm happy the misdirect worked.

It's actually the setup for another potential sequel. Tom Riddle actually gets the DADA teaching position at Hogwarts, while another wizard, an American named Randall Martins, takes over the Muggle Studies job. Of course, the British Ministry of Magic wouldn't be so happy if they knew what they were actually there to do...

It's a toss up whether I try that or the story of an alternate Shadowstalker being rescued by Saurial's Angels first.
 
Thanks. I'm happy the misdirect worked.

It's actually the setup for another potential sequel. Tom Riddle actually gets the DADA teaching position at Hogwarts, while another wizard, an American named Randall Martins, takes over the Muggle Studies job. Of course, the British Ministry of Magic wouldn't be so happy if they knew what they were actually there to do...

It's a toss up whether I try that or the story of an alternate Shadowstalker being rescued by Saurial's Angels first.
The plots they be twisting. Nice.

Thanks for the chapter.
 
- They massacre any planet that refuses to convert, and torture and kill individuals that refuse to do so; they used one inhabited Jaffa world to create a black hole so they could build a supergate (instead of, you know, using one of the black holes that we already have in the galaxy).
To be fair it's possible that whatever method they used to extract energy had some requirements that made imploding a new blackhole easier than using an existing one. Still doesn't excuse using an inhabited planet, rather than a empty world or better yet a dead one.
 
I would have like something more unexpected by throwing in another crossover. Just imagine the skullduggery of them running into Discworld's Death.
Ori: I am an ascending being, and am immortal.
Death: AH, NO I'M ALWAYS ON TIME. THE AMOUNT OF TIME MIGHT FOR YOU SEEM LIKE AN ETERNITY, BUT IT HAS ALWAY BEEN TICKING AWAY TO NOW.
Ori: wait, I challenge you to a duel
Death:
OH, NOT THIS AGAIN.
 
I would have like something more unexpected by throwing in another crossover. Just imagine the skullduggery of them running into Discworld's Death.
Ori: I am an ascending being, and am immortal.
Death: AH, NO I'M ALWAYS ON TIME. THE AMOUNT OF TIME MIGHT FOR YOU SEEM LIKE AN ETERNITY, BUT IT HAS ALWAY BEEN TICKING AWAY TO NOW.
Ori: wait, I challenge you to a duel
Death:
OH, NOT THIS AGAIN.

Having needed EIGHT epilogues to cover the various crossover universes, I think adding another at this point would be overkill.
 
I see no reason not to drop the Ori in a pocket dimension filled with Dementors.

Their problem isn't the Ori, it's the Dementors (or you quoted the wrong post). Will they gain unfortunate new powers from eating Ori? Is it a punishment to remove them from wizards that can abjure them to a new prison where they can eat prisoners whenever they want? If they can't starve, will anything eliminate them without further intervention?
 
Their problem isn't the Ori, it's the Dementors (or you quoted the wrong post). Will they gain unfortunate new powers from eating Ori? Is it a punishment to remove them from wizards that can abjure them to a new prison where they can eat prisoners whenever they want? If they can't starve, will anything eliminate them without further intervention?

The Ori have been effectively cut off from their powers. They now have fairly normal souls...though they probably taste dry-aged.

As for the Dementors, there is only ONE thing known to mankind that can kill a Dementor. That one thing is author fiat in fanfiction. The actual mechanism doesn't matter -- Sword of Gryffindor, over-powered patronus, super-science, being eaten by a dragon, etc. In this particular case, Saurial doesn't really care if they die. She just tossed them into a pocket universe filled with dry-aged Ori snacks and set it adrift into the void between universes, to drift forever until the multiverse ends...or Rincewind stumbles across it. I wouldn't put anything past that guy.
 
The Ori have been effectively cut off from their powers. They now have fairly normal souls...though they probably taste dry-aged.

As for the Dementors, there is only ONE thing known to mankind that can kill a Dementor. That one thing is author fiat in fanfiction. The actual mechanism doesn't matter -- Sword of Gryffindor, over-powered patronus, super-science, being eaten by a dragon, etc. In this particular case, Saurial doesn't really care if they die. She just tossed them into a pocket universe filled with dry-aged Ori snacks and set it adrift into the void between universes, to drift forever until the multiverse ends...or Rincewind stumbles across it. I wouldn't put anything past that guy.

He will then proceed to let the dementors loose by running so fast, he creates a hole between realities...
 
A couple points about this chapter don't match up at all, both from the Harry Potter universe.

I'll never understand the compulsion people seem to have with making the names of Harry Potter characters fancier or more esoteric, but Voldemort's birth name is Tom Marvolo Riddle, not Thomas. That would completely screw up his stupid anagram as well; the anagram is not 'I am Lord Has Voldemort'.

Point number two, Riddle was not yet born in 1919 when the influenza epidemic I think you're referencing occurred. Riddle was born December 31, 1926. So far as I know there was no major influenza epidemic at the time. Given you had them travel to the 'correct date' in story this second point could technically be fixed simply by removing the reference to the influenza outbreak.

Unless you are intentionally using some random offshoot timeline that is quite different from canon timeline, you may want to correct that.

It does make me wonder if this change from canon is why they are saving this one particular Riddle out of all the ones in the multiverse.
 
A couple points about this chapter don't match up at all, both from the Harry Potter universe.

I'll never understand the compulsion people seem to have with making the names of Harry Potter characters fancier or more esoteric, but Voldemort's birth name is Tom Marvolo Riddle, not Thomas. That would completely screw up his stupid anagram as well; the anagram is not 'I am Lord Has Voldemort'.

Point number two, Riddle was not yet born in 1919 when the influenza epidemic I think you're referencing occurred. Riddle was born December 31, 1926. So far as I know there was no major influenza epidemic at the time. Given you had them travel to the 'correct date' in story this second point could technically be fixed simply by removing the reference to the influenza outbreak.

Unless you are intentionally using some random offshoot timeline that is quite different from canon timeline, you may want to correct that.

It does make me wonder if this change from canon is why they are saving this one particular Riddle out of all the ones in the multiverse.

The first catch with his name is simply an error...mostly because I was focused almost entirely on not revealing the name until the very end of that section so that the reader was misdirected to think they would be retrieving Harry Potter. I've corrected it.

The flu epidemic, however, was the outbreak in 1927. By March of that year, a thousand people a week were dying in the UK from the disease. Sadly, there were a LOT of epidemics in that time period. The 1918 outbreak was horrifyingly bad, but it was far from the only one. (1928 and '29 were actually worse years globally...but of course they wouldn't know about that in '27, and that year was especially bad in the UK.)

Edit: Here is a link to an article on the '27 epidemic: January 7, 1927

Note: I've made several edits for clarity and correctness.
 
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Information about Dementors is extremely unclear and contradictory even by Rowling's usual standards, some of this can probably be put down to an in-universe lack of understanding thanks to their creator being dead and the creatures themselves being the products of such incredibly dark magic that no-one really wants to know how they work, but some of it is also undoubtedly due to Rowling herself changing her mind about how Dementors work; early test editions of Prisoner of Azkaban had a line about how Dementors could feed on a person so much that they turned them into 'something like themselves', suggesting that they turned humans into more Dementors, but that line was cut from the final book. Rowling has said that Demetors 'don't breed, but grow like fungus where there is decay and are functionally immortal in terms of age' but in Half-Blood Prince Fudge tells the Prime Minister that breeding Dementors are what is causing mist to cover the city.

And then there is the extreme disparity between their depiction in the books and the movies, the most obvious of which being that they can outright fly, actually freeze the environment around them and numerous spells that are not the Patronus charm are seen to have at least some degree of effect in the movies, none of which are the case in the books.

Fans also often make the mistake of associating Dementors with death in some way, considering them as incarnations or embodiments of such. Despite appearances, this is actually incorrect: Dementors are not incarnations of death, they are incarnations of depression. That is why they do not actually kill (as would be expected of an incarnation of death) but instead suck out all the life and goodness in a person, leaving them empty and hollow inside.
 
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Interestingly, I could see Kaiju eating all the Ori, with the Dementors as a 'hot sauce' side-dish. If the ascended Ancients are considered 'family' then a large dish of 'calamari' would make sense with 'hot sauce'. One reason for this is making quite, quite, sure both are gone. So, you could say the Ori deserve the personal attention of the Family.
 
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.or Rincewind stumbles across it. I wouldn't put anything past that guy.
He will then proceed to let the dementors loose by running so fast, he creates a hole between realities...
What's worse, is that he obviously arrived through a hole between realities, and now he's left two for the dementors to leave through.

AH, PERFECT. EARLY APPOINTMENTS THAT I'M GLAD THAT ARE EARLY.
 
Yay, Sateda's alive!
And the Asgard are getting back into the 'being Gods' business, uplifting colonies and making sport of gribblies like the Wraith.
 
Well, I've got one final epilogue to do for the whole story, and it has been quite an experience.

I've been looking at the feedback from likes and such. There are a couple of surprises to me, in a sense.

Chapter 47 was an attempt by me to throw in a whole bunch of villains, in part as bit of poking fun at stories that suddenly take a turn for the dark. Of course, that wasn't the case, as we're talking about the Family, and Varga in particular. The feedback count dropped dramatically for that chapter (by about 25% of the average prior to that). I'm not too surprised by that, but the feedback counts never recovered. One iffy chapter is apparently enough to make people drop a fic, which is a little disappointing.

The Interludes introducing Kiva in the Star Trek universe also didn't get much positive feedback. My assumption is that it's because it kind of came out of left field -- which was sort of the point. The chapters showing the resolution of that did fairly well, at least.

The epilogues haven't been around as long, but there are clear favorites based on universe, with the most popular being DC. A lot of folks apparently like Jimmy Olsen getting some, which is a far better result than he got from Zack Snyder, at least.

Anyway, one more to go!
 
My experience is that the readership of a story goes up and down over time. One issue is that a lot of people really, really want to see lots of things blow up. Like, a lot of things. And if they find that the story they're reading doesn't end in a huge battle they get all bent out of shape and move on, often complaining bitterly :)

So pulling in some villains makes them go "Yay! Lots of blood coming up!" Then the Family get involved, things get settled relatively peacefully, and they get all sad because no one died... And they go away.

Possibly that's just me, but based on some of the PMs I've got in the past on my own stories, I don't think I'm entirely wrong. I mean, some of them are just bizarre. And somewhat disturbing in what they say about the person complaining that not enough people were killed in the story, so it's crap 🤷‍♂️

Personally, I've thoroughly enjoyed this story, and am amazed that someone managed to spin off characters I've come up with and produce all these words. It's been very entertaining and I'll be sad when it's over.

10/10, would recommend to a friend :D
 
Chapter 47 was an attempt by me to throw in a whole bunch of villains
Just to throw a Spanner in the works, your feedback count may have been that people that read a TV related story are passionate about interpersonal discourse, but are left flat by actual villains. Thus, the lack of comments on that chapter. Without comparing numbers of readers to numbers of comments, the drop in comments itself may not be significant. If the numbers of readers continuing with later chapters didn't drop, then, like me, they may not have wanted to comment on 47 and just moved on to later chapters.

This story is a massive achievement and you deserve all the awards and props for not only the volume and quality of words, but brining it to a closed arc. Very well done.
 
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