Probably we're talking past each other. There's this whole explanation planned for the Shiplords, that Snowie very much wants you to see before making judgement…
It is... somewhat unrealistic about human psychology to expect people to
entirely suspend judgment for a period of several years, in the face of well known atrocities that one has already acknowledged are not
justified in the usual sense in which that word is used, which is "this made sense and was the correct course of action, and/or you would have done the same."
The more realistic expectation is that
yes, people will not switch the moral centers of their brains fully off when looking at the fictional Shiplords for five years, but they
will hopefully be able to re-evaluate what they think they know in light of new information. There's a lot more hope for that, but it would save needless aggro all around if we stopped trying to straitjacket ourselves into this very artificial framework of totally suspended judgement against the extremely atrocity-prone villains of a multi-year work of fiction.
...
To take an example from the classics, consider Darth Vader.
A New Hope is very unambiguous about Darth Vader being the bad guy. He's menacing, he's masked, he's armored, the first human interaction we see him have involves him crushing a guy's neck, he advocates for all kinds of ghastly treatment of the good guys, he's a little bit hammy in his evil. Nobody leaves
A New Hope thinking "Darth Vader isn't actually
bad."
George Lucas would have been setting himself up for a lot of needless stress if he'd insisted that people
not think of Darth Vader as the bad guy, just because he totally has some reveals planned in the later movies where Vader turns out to be Luke's father and ultimately turns on the Emperor rather than let his son die and all that jazz.
Sure, he
did have those reveals planned, and those actions
did dramatically alter how we see Darth Vader's character. But it would have been a non-starter, something neither beneficial to his art nor to his blood pressure, for Lucas and his immediate circle of friends and helpers to say "no, no, don't judge Darth Vader, you don't know the whole story" when the 'whole story' in question had up to that point barely been hinted at and the parts of the story that
were known made Darth Vader seem like a clear and menacing evildoer.
Because the problem is that such a thing has to be shown, it
cannot simply be told, and it simply
wasn't yet time to show it in
A New Hope.
You can't harvest the fruit when it isn't ripe. You can't convince people not to think badly of an obviously atrocity-prone villain
before the dramatic reveal. And trying to do so... Again, it may not be apologism, but it will have much the same feel for those you're talking to. It's kind of inevitable.
I wish people would stop trying, because it goes very much against the grain and makes some people suspicious about the direction the story might take, when they say "these atrocities are terrible and could not have been committed by a person who was in a good mental/cultural space" and
every damn time someone pops up to go "don't judge the Shiplords." For months or years on end.
Personally, in the absence of secondary effects I hold that no action is ever worth punishment. Punishment exists to prevent precisely those effects, but it can't change the past and so the action itself isn't why we do should do it. I will admit that the Shiplords are straining this belief.
Well, I
really, REALLY hope we can at least get agreement that it is very important to the galaxy that the Shiplords be quasi-permanently* deprived of the ability to project power on anything like the level they now have. They are currently the galactic superpower, emphasis on the word
power. And asking all the current traumatized victims of the Shiplords to tolerate that state of affairs without Shiplord disarmament is, I think the point at which we fall prey to the dangers of falling too deep into the Shiplords' own self-absorption.
_____________________________
*(By this, I mean a decision that can be revisited after a great deal of time has passed, but that does not inherently have an expiration date, in much the same way that an "immortal" does not necessarily have the ability to survive being dropped into a blast furnace but will not die on their own of natural causes I would call the "immortal's" life "quasi-permanent" in much the same way.)
@Snowfire
I feel like I should help put my earlier critique and feelings into proper perspective by saying all of the other things that have thus far been unsaid or underemphasized about all of the things I like in this quest (and its prequel).
Every interaction with and glimpse into the various alien species of the Group of Six (and the others that we've briefly seen) have been amazing. There is so much character, so much variation, so much depth that you convey with mere allusions and hints and little details that it still leaves me in awe when I think about how little time we've spent with them. Hell, you've managed to make
humanity feel like a somewhat alien culture/people without making them feel uncanny or hard to relate to. You've managed to portray a humanity that has had to rebuild itself from the ashes and grow very, very fast under immense pressure and fear...and then find it that it has to keep growing even
faster to stay alive against an enemy that seems intent on ratcheting up the pace and pressure no matter the consequences. Second Contact did an excellent job at showing the bizarre effects and appearance this situation created: humanity being impossibly advanced and capable for being so young and new to the harsh reality of the galaxy, yet astonishingly confident and determined in the face of terrifyingly powerful opposition that it actually knows about and treats with deadly seriousness. The way that humanity, despite all of that, knows how screwed it is by itself and how incredibly valuable and respectable the other species of the Group of Six are for achieving what they have without the cheat codes of Practice and Speaking.
And even with the Shiplords, you've done a great job of showing all sorts of details and quirks that are both memorable and interesting. The way they use a whole slew of gestures for communication even though they all have technology to make machine-telepathy seamless and easy. The way the nanomachine suits they wear automatically act as part of the body language they express both by subtle shifts in physical form and expressions in color and light. The ritualistic language and traditions they employ at various situations. The way they secretly monitor and study the developing sapient species on the world once called home by the Hjiven, almost implied to be a kind of gentle and protective guardianship that stands in stark contrast to how they treat nearly all other races, but still makes sense: this species is evolving on a world that is itself a Sorrow, meaning that it would be impossible for that species to reach a point of developing a First Secret drive without long being aware of the Shiplords' existence, and with the physical presence of the Hearthguard there from the start, it would be easy to see the Shiplords eventually being actual kind guardians and teachers to them by virtue of having full control and knowledge of the situation from the very start.
The way you've set up Practice and Speaking and Potentials has also been fascinating. You don't usually see magic and sci-fi blended together so well, but it's always a treat when you do. And given what I've seen so far, I'm pretty sure you could do well writing a Magical Girl-genre story, too, or even a story with a similar kind of genre that has its own unique twists.
The way you've set up a cast of characters and entire peoples who have fully justified and very relatable pain and fury at the evils and injustice they've endured...and how they have struggled but overcome the burning desire for vengeance by tempering it with a reprioritization of the good things that are worth more. If that isn't such a viscerally real conflict for most people IRL to relate to, I'm not sure what is.
Also, this.
Indeed, it is because the conflict is viscerally real and relatable that people get so twitchy about being told to suspend judgment indefinitely, I think- because it feels too close to being told to suspend judgment against
real people who have oppressed and hurt, potentially even those who have oppressed and hurt some of us here personally.
It's a testament to the story's power that it hits people so close to home, even if that can have drawbacks.
