I quite liked it. Sure, the plot didn't move forward very far - but you combined exhilaration-of-flight with impressive hardware, it was well-paced with buildup//WOOOOO//surprise//exasperation//fight scene!//drama//triumph, and the whole scene was quite well-described in terms of visualisability (I'm sure there's a word for that but not sure of what it is).
Remember is monsters show up to fight you with greater than 'once per annum' frequency, you to might be suffering from worthyopponentitis. See your local PRT Director immediately if you believe that you are suffering from this affliction. Remember only the PRT can make your opponents go away. FOREVER. As with all PRT mandated actions failure to follow through can result in 3-5 years jail time for dangerous practices, per incident unreported.
I might as well throw my two cents in about all this.
First off, the whole issue with the fighter jet. I love that that's a thing, but I'm really hoping you don't just throw it away once the ship becomes a thing, @ensou . In Arpeggio Fog aircraft were scrapped because they lacked the fanciness to hold shields and the Fog didn't really know how to use them effectively, making them little more the cannon fodder to the humans. I figure it wouldn't be hard to make this one a bit more relevant considering you've made it go to low orbit. I'm also hoping it get's armed with some bullshit level Fog weapons.
And I'm going to choose to believe it looks like this:
Because it's a sexy as fuck fantasy jet. Nothing will convince me otherwise.
I also feel like it'd be relatively easy to solve the whole "Going mach 33 is actually flashy as fuck", which is to just slap some vague stealth field on it. Just add a line where Taylor mentions flipping on a stealth field of some sort, and bam. It's stealthy.
How?
Who the fuck knows, Fog tech. Something something dimensional slipstream and quantum tunneling in a nonlinear realspace format to shunt excess energy into an extradimensional pocket.
Whatever the fuck that means.
And I kinda want her to just get her ship already. Sounds like that's happening soon, so that's good. I just can't wait for the "What is this I don't even" levels of Fog BS possible with a ship. Not to mention the level of authority having giant cannons and missile tubes with armor plating measured in inches gives you.
As for the dragon fight and the whole Uber and Leet thing...
This can be both simple and complicated, depending on how you look at it.
So first, who won, who lost?
In my opinion?
No one.
Not really. People seem to be throwing around "Complete victory, total loss" like it was in some way crushing.
It wasn't
At least, it didn't feel like it. It felt...kind of like Taylor was doing a chore. Which is a problem, but I'll get back to that later.
Before U & L showed up, Taylor was having a great day. Skipping school, flying to low orbit, etc etc. Then U&L show up somewhat randomly, and ruin it for her. She passes it fine, and everyone walks out without a scratch. Yes, Taylor is forced to play U&L's game and doesn't beat the shit out of their physical selves, she still beat their challenge and walked out fine. And U&L didn't scratch her. Hell, she walked out with a sword made of unobtainium. Calling it a win or loss either way in such definitive terms considering it didn't feel like there were real stakes seems...melodramatic.
And don't say "Oh no, she revealed so much though", eh, kind of, but not really. All she revealed is a (maybe) striker ability to make things more deadly by touching them, and the fact that she's way more durable than people that before. The worst thing revealed is probably that she has little idea how to actually fight. Which, to be honest, is something a lot of people could probably pick up easily just by watching her fight long enough. She didn't unveil some fancy new secret weapon and she didn't show the world some incredible secret weakness.
All in all, I'd call the whole thing a net "meh" or zero-sum. No one really lost much, no one really gained much. Best case, Taylor gained bragging rights and a fancy sword of unobtainium while U&L got some data and some cash. And they got to go home.
Which...is sort of part of the problem?
The fight feels...meh.
It doesn't feel like a fight, it feels like a chore.
There's a lot of factors involved in this, but as far as I can see there are two primary ones.
One: Taylor is broken as fuck. The dragon couldn't even scratch her, there's almost nothing for her to be worried about. In fact, the first bit where she's trying to be stealthy is actually a little painful for me to read because I kind of just want her to get it over with and beat some face in.
Which brings me to Two: The beating of the face frankly falls flat. Mostly because, well, in it didn't sound compelling. With how broken Taylor was, she might as well have been fighting a balloon animal. I'm not saying that Taylor can't be OP, that's not the root of the problem.
The root of the problem is that it didn't feel significant. Too often you described her cutting through the dragon as cutting through air.
Without breaking stride, I stepped off of the panels and allowed myself to fall, putting all my weight behind the stroke I brought down.
I didn't stop falling.
For a second, I thought I'd failed, that I'd missed the creature entirely. But when I looked up, an angry, glowing orange-red gash sat on the side of its neck.
With an appropriate yell, I brought my blade down towards the side of the neck, the sword slipping through it like so much air, and quickly crossed the ten feet to the other side of its neck, pulling my sword out at the same time.
That's great for conveying a sense of "Holy shit, that's strong", but really bad for conveying a sense of "Oh shit just got real". It's because, for me, at the end of the day it feels like Taylor is really just fighting a big balloon animal. Its attacks can, at best, knock her around, and she cuts through it like it's made of air, with its only trait being that it's fucking huge.
It's your story and you can do what you want with it, but my recommendation is to focus on making the fight visceral. Don't say, "And it cut through its flesh like it was made of air,", instead, get detailed into it. Go, "And the silver sword tore through bone and muscle, rending through the great beast like a butcher's blade through so much meat." Make me feel like Taylor is actually tearing apart some large, dangerous, monster, and not just attacking a big balloon animal with a giant Exacto blade. Just because Taylor is overpowered as fuck doesn't mean that the fight itself can't be entertaining, you just have to portray in the right light, you have to paint the right picture, you have to show the effort put into it, and the grisly result, and make it feel significant, rather than trivial.
Make it feel like Taylor is slaying a Dragon, not disposing of a toy.
Let me put it like this, at present the fight gives the impression that Taylor is thinking, "Oh my god, I just want this to be over, I want to go home and do stuff." Whereas I think the impression you were going for was more along the lines of Taylor thinking, "I'M GONNA RIP OFF YOUR HEAD AND SHIT DOWN YOUR THROAT", or something generally in the area where she'd be hacking away at it with a smile.
Or maybe I'm misreading the situation.
Also, U&L's commentary is...limited in its appeal. There are ups and downs to it. Upside? More comedic. Downside? Totally brought me out of the fight. One second Taylors in what feels like a fight for her life, the next Uber and Leet are playing side commentary and talking about Leeroy Jenkins. If you want to go for humor, double down on that, if you want to go for brutal but FUCKING GLORIUS combat, double down on that. At present, it feels too much like watered down versions of both, leaning towards humor but playing itself too seriously to do much other that fall flat.
If you were going for mostly comedic, then I'd get rid of the tension at the beginning completely and just have Taylor treat it like a trivial chore that she'll just bash aside. That feels like what ends up happening anyways. Seeing U&L's jaw drop when Taylor easily beats the shit out of Deathwing would be far more entertaining.
It might just be the sadist in me, but when I read about a fight I want to feel something, empathy, sympathy, or even a general feeling that can best be summed up as "FUCK YEAH, RIP AND TEAR THAT SUMBITCH!".
You're a good writer @ensou , and I really enjoy your work. This work, in particular, is very much a treat for me to read. Your character interactions are easily one of your best factors when writing. Fighting, in general, might be one of your weaknesses, but I thought the combat in AFHB was damn fine, so I don't know about all that. Maybe today was an off day?
I don't know, I'm just giving you my two cents on how to improve this chapter and other chapters going forward.
In short, I want to feel like Taylor is extremely strong, not that the enemy is pitifully weak, and when that guy goes down, I want to scream, "FUCK! YES!", or at the very least sport a big old dopey grin as some poor bastard screams his last death song of agony.
Speaking of the ship-body why not have it be like a fog version of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier thus letting her use fog jets like drones to attack her enemies?
I've been thinking it over, and I think I figured out why people have been complaining about the pacing. It's how fast this updates.
Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy this, and I know how hard it is to update one story regularly, let alone eight, and I thus have no problems but it feels a lot slower than it actually is. If you go back and read all eleven (had to check) chapters, this is a very well paced story, at least in my opinion. It, however, updates a little less than once a month.
Compare that to something like Taylor Varga (which has been brought up in this thread a surprising amount), which is very difficult to read through from the beginning, due to length (almost as long as canon by this point, I think), and the fact that there's around 30k words describing every event in Taylor's day.
Reading straight through feels like a chore, because nothing feels like it's happening with any sort of speed. However, when it's updating, it updates fast. it doesn't feel like you're having to read through an ocean of text that could be boiled down to "Taylor and Amy share knowing works, stuff that won't pay off for another 200k words is mentioned, blah di blah di blah," it feels like you're reading a tiny chunk of that, because he updates three or four chapters at a time, about once a week.
As I stated before, I mean no offence to Ensou, and not very much to mp3.1415player. Just sharing my two cents on the matter.
The update was fairly interesting for me. Though I must say all the thoughts that U&L won does get kinda grating, because it's binary and just doesn't work for me in this context. Like, when you say win or lose for a Parahuman fight, my perception is that it usually ends with one side standing and the other retreated or crushed into the dirt (wait that did happen literally, but I meant it metaphorically...) defeated. That didn't happen here. Taylor took out the dragon, but can't be bothered to search for U&L. U&L didn't do any real damage to Taylor barring the reveal that she's very much tougher. It's a draw if a result where both parties walk away relatively unharmed counts as a draw, from my perspective.
Actually, this does have a good point. We now have gotten the U&L interrupt out of the way, and we know they won't be very willing to try stupid stuff when Taylor is around next time. After all, they won't be stupid enough to risk pissing Relentless more than she is already annoyed at them.
I quite liked it. Sure, the plot didn't move forward very far - but you combined exhilaration-of-flight with impressive hardware, it was well-paced with buildup//WOOOOO//surprise//exasperation//fight scene!//drama//triumph, and the whole scene was quite well-described in terms of visualisability (I'm sure there's a word for that but not sure of what it is).
I liked this chapter. It does a good job at setting the stage for the Fog, since I believe Taylor is based off of an aircraft carrier, so creating Fog jets is a good prelude to that. And the Uber & Leet segment was done much better than many other depictions of the duo, in my opinion. I also liked the idea that Taylor was disappointed at the end of the fight, since that is a good way of not only introducing her to the internet at large, but also providing Uber & Leet a way out. Overall, a very good chapter.
You are totally ripping being inspired by Battle Angel Alita, the 2nd part. Because this is so rare I can only think its popped in there. I mean, Anti matter as an energy source for a... mechanical life form.
The only thing better then antimatter for power per kg is a total conversion drive... and the two ways I know of to physically do that is shakey in it's ability to exist (magnetic mono-pole) or really heavy on it's own (black hole).
It's pretty much the standard power source for anyone with high energy needs and a lack of total energy density hand wavium.
The only thing better then antimatter for power per kg is a total conversion drive... and the two ways I know of to physically do that is shakey in it's ability to exist (magnetic mono-pole) or really heavy on it's own (black hole).
It's pretty much the standard power source for anyone with high energy needs and a lack of total energy density hand wavium.
I can think of a way to get better better volume for power, but you would need some way to make things smaller, a star, some way to suspend a tiny star in a box without destroying everything within a few AU, and a way to extract power from solar wind and radiaton
I can think of a way to get better better volume for power, but you would need some way to make things smaller, a star, some way to suspend a tiny star in a box without destroying everything within a few AU, and a way to extract power from solar wind and radiaton
Stars are fusion though, that has significantly less energy conversion per kg mass then AM+M conversion. Even with all the loss to neutrinos.
A total conversion drive is pretty much like AM+M but minus the Antimatter, and it also I think is a bit lighter on the difficult to harvest neutrino waste.
Black hole way of doing this is by doing gravity braking of whatever fuel mass is offensive to you at the moment off the event horizon of the black hole which shears the atoms into radiation.
The Mono-pole method pretty much pokes the quarks apart in the atomic core causing a massive energy release. This is possible because the atom can't deflect the mono-pole with electromagnetics? that's about the edges of my understanding of sub-atomic physics.
Nice chapter, ensou. I didn't see her being dimension-napped by U&L happening at all, and it came as quite the sudden surprise after her having fun flying her boat-plane about the seas and sky. The dragon was completely unknown to me as well, and I find it amusing she decided to beat it up like it was a real creature vs the videogame logic method others aware of its origins might've employed.
What purpose did the sword serve, in U&L's minds? A weapon to poke the weak spots in the dragon's back?
The only thing better then antimatter for power per kg is a total conversion drive... and the two ways I know of to physically do that is shakey in it's ability to exist (magnetic mono-pole) or really heavy on it's own (black hole).
It's pretty much the standard power source for anyone with high energy needs and a lack of total energy density hand wavium.
Its a Joke. In Gumm 2/Battle Angel Alita 2nd part/whatever subtitle it has. There is a point where everything is about to be consumed by a giant ass Black Hole, because some aliens couldn't stand losing a tournament, so they went, eh fuck it, lets take ALL people with us.
It backfires as Alita:
a) Takes Control of the systems.
b) Drains them and the Blackhole.
c) Goes through an spiritual enlightenment of sorts and thus ends with a shitload of power.
d) Absorbs the Blackhole turning it into her own power source.
e) Makes herself a new body.
Wow, Last order finally got completed! 3 years ago! And there is a 3rd part! Holy shit.
Am I the only one that thinks that the chapter was incredibly bloated? I think you could have written the exact same thing in half the words and half the internal monologue. Was it cool? Hell yeah. Was it tedious to read in some parts? Absolutely.
I didn't even think it was that cool. I was bored enough that I started skimming. I paid attention through some of the tech description at the start but wasn't drawn in for most of it, enjoyed the flying scene on its own as an expression of emotion, and then was abruptly jarred by U&L (where my initial snap reaction was "okay, how the fuck did they find her and nab her without any of her sensors detecting anything wrong?"). And afterwards, I just felt it was a filler fight with stakes I didn't really care about, beyond Taylor actually managing to do things without getting embarrassed on the Internet and maybe learning some more stuff, because I never felt like she was threatened or had anything or anyone she cared about threatened (the other classic ways of adding drama to fights involving other invulnerable people).
The Mono-pole method pretty much pokes the quarks apart in the atomic core causing a massive energy release. This is possible because the atom can't deflect the mono-pole with electromagnetics? that's about the edges of my understanding of sub-atomic physics.
Broadcast asks, Shards reply as part of their nature.
But that's because the shards aren't taking orders from a higher authority to deny that communication. He can ask, but if Relentless.exe shuts him out of the network, it's not going to get anything.
<Unauthorised access detected from secondary processor [Queen Administrator]>
<Quarantining [Queen Administrator] and re-aquiring control of nanomachines>
I must say all the thoughts that U&L won does get kinda grating, because it's binary and just doesn't work for me in this context. Like, when you say win or lose for a Parahuman fight, my perception is that it usually ends with one side standing and the other retreated or crushed into the dirt (wait that did happen literally, but I meant it metaphorically...) defeated. That didn't happen here. Taylor took out the dragon, but can't be bothered to search for U&L. U&L didn't do any real damage to Taylor barring the reveal that she's very much tougher. It's a draw if a result where both parties walk away relatively unharmed counts as a draw, from my perspective.
This is an incredibly reductive way of looking at fights. I'm going to be referring to the original version of the chapter, since that's the one the feedback was about and the new version avoids this, but the reason why so many people felt like U&L won is very simple: they got everything they wanted out it, and Taylor got nothing she wanted out of it.
Uber & Leet came into this hoping they could:
get a good video for their stream
show that Leet's tech is no joke
force Taylor to fight the dragon for their hidden sponsor (presumably so he or she could get a better gauge on her abilities).
Note that doing any kind of harm to Taylor is completely missing from this list. In fact, they actively didn't want to kill her, and worried that she might not be durable enough when she was stomped into the ground. It was always part of the plan for Taylor to defeat the dragon, that's they why they made sure to include weak points on it's back. Her defeating the dragon like she did and walking away without a scratch is even better for them than her getting hurt or failing would be, since it makes the video even more epic than it would otherwise be.
U&L absolutely nail every goal they had. The video apparently turned out fantastic from the comments they made, Leet showed he is capable of doing some amazing things from the comments Taylor made, and they got great shots of Taylor in action, not just demonstrating the powers people already knew about, but getting her to show off completely new ones, probably exceeding their sponsor's wildest hopes.
Taylor actually only expressed one goal during the whole thing and that was when she told Uber, "I'm not going to play your stupid game." As it turns out, she had no choice. She completely failed at trying to get out, and had to play their game, letting them achieve everything they want, and getting nothing out of it but a sword that she hadn't really wanted in the first place. U&L got everything they wanted and got away scot-free; Taylor failed at the only thing she wanted and had no choice but to actually help U&L along the way. That's why people felt like it was so one-sided in the original chapter.
The new version of the chapter is significantly better about this. Now it makes clear that she derived considerable satisfaction at taking down the huge beast, so that she actually got something out of the encounter, and she resolves to track them down at some point, so there's probably going to be consequences for Uber and Leet down the road. It still feels like Uber and Leet came out ahead in this exchange, but it doesn't feel anywhere near as one-sided, and it's a good thing when your protagonist doesn't win every time, no matter how overpowered they may be, as long as it's believable.
To think of the hyper advanced sentient machine to be limited to just boats is a gross underestimation.
What I'm worried right now would be the Klein Field. In the original series it was said that Zuikaku (I raised my eyebrow when I-400 and Takao are both terrified of facing a berserk Zuikaku) and the other Aircraft Carriers lost their airwings because the planes have little to no Klein Fields due to having less dense nano materials (Or something, not sure though). Is Taylor's aircraft the same?
Which begs the question, 'What about Taylor?'
Reason for the question: Taylor exchanged some of her nanomaterials and changed them into the diamond bone structure and enhanced musculature. Ensou didn't tell us how much she exchanged (If she really did at all) but it could be around 40% to 70% nanomaterial body loss. Since the Klein Fields are dependent on nanomaterials to form could such loss result in a tiny or extremely weak Klein Field like what happened to Kirishima when she got stuffed in a teddy bear?
And a final note but I'm not entirely sure. I know that Diamonds are the hardest of carbons but wouldn't that mean that its extremely weakened against blunt force? Since I notice that the harder the materials, the more brittle it becomes. Granted, I only tested that on iron and aluminum (Or I think is aluminum) when I experimented on heating and hammering some construction materials when I was a kid but that's the conclusion I got.
One important, to me, at least, thing in the perception of the outcome of this encounter, is whether Uber and Leet intended this to be their retirement show. Because this (pocket dimension and everything in it, the dragon, the sword, etc) had to have burned through a lot of potential Leet had left in him.
To think of the hyper advanced sentient machine to be limited to just boats is a gross underestimation.
What I'm worried right now would be the Klein Field. In the original series it was said that Zuikaku (I raised my eyebrow when I-400 and Takao are both terrified of facing a berserk Zuikaku) and the other Aircraft Carriers lost their airwings because the planes have little to no Klein Fields due to having less dense nano materials (Or something, not sure though). Is Taylor's aircraft the same?
Which begs the question, 'What about Taylor?'
Reason for the question: Taylor exchanged some of her nanomaterials and changed them into the diamond bone structure and enhanced musculature. Ensou didn't tell us how much she exchanged (If she really did at all) but it could be around 40% to 70% nanomaterial body loss. Since the Klein Fields are dependent on nanomaterials to form could such loss result in a tiny or extremely weak Klein Field like what happened to Kirishima when she got stuffed in a teddy bear?
And a final note but I'm not entirely sure. I know that Diamonds are the hardest of carbons but wouldn't that mean that its extremely weakened against blunt force? Since I notice that the harder the materials, the more brittle it becomes. Granted, I only tested that on iron and aluminum (Or I think is aluminum) when I experimented on heating and hammering some construction materials when I was a kid but that's the conclusion I got.
It's Black Diamond. A diamond aggregate, in other words. It bypasses the issue of diamond being brittle by having no exposed cleavage planes, and having the cleavage planes brace against each other through layering. Also, light doesn't get out of it because of internal refraction, which is why it's black.
I think it would be rather too OP for Taylor's stealth to be capable of completely defeating all sensors, even Tinkertech ones. I'm sure that given the existence of flying parahumans, the military would at least try to upgrade their radars to track human sized contacts.
That being said, it isn't unrealistic to have limited or even no follow up on the detection. Such a sensitive system probably throws up a lot of false positives and noise, and a super stealth not-a-jet probably doesn't match the profile of known threats such as flying humans or tinker tech missiles or what not. The detection could easily be logged as an anomalous contact and since there weren't any reported incidents, no one followed up on it. Probably only Dragon would care about such things.
I liked the chapter. Lots of munchkinry on Taylor's part :lol Shame the fake Deathwing couldn't do magic, that might have made things more epic, although it's already awesome enough methinks.
How do you think ANYONE could miss a several meters long object covered in plasma flying across the sky? Heck at that speed if she was anywhere near a city (and by near I mean within several miles) she'd have injured thousands of people just from the shock wave.
Yup. And to make it worse than decided to give up and not try for a rematch. Although at least she didn't give up after losing the first round, as she did in the first version.
Except that seems to have been their plan all along. Given that they weren't planning on killing her I can't think of what other plan they had. Uber&Leet got one of (if not the) best video of their careers and not only got away clean with it, they got paid for it. How exactly isn't this a win for them?
To clarify, I'm talking about the revised chapter where Taylor has lines like:
Didn't mean I wasn't going to just let it go, though. They were dead meat when I got out of this.
I took another breath, ignoring the fact that I didn't actually need to, and that the act of breathing didn't really do anything for my parasympathetic systems either, as I didn't even have adrenaline or a heart rate or anything.
It just helped, okay? It wasn't like I could mainline calm or anything.
Taylor did not seem to enjoy the fight at any point. Mad and scared(to the point she needed to reduce the emotional emulation? Yes. Annoyed/Resigned (after she reduced the emotional emulation and figured out how to kill the Dragon? Yes. But she didn't seem to enjoy it and seemed quite definite about wanting revenge on U&L for what they did.
Then suddenly..."oh I actually did enjoy this". If you were hinting at some subtle mind control device Leet was using to discourage her from hunting them down, great job. Otherwise that was jarring.
At least Taylor is planning to hunt them down eventually, so that's a definite improvement over the first version.
This. The only thing that bothered me about the chapter was Taylor so quickly dismissing U&L as not worth tracking down after being seemingly very pissed off at the way they trapped her and the fight.
