Non-threaded

Forums » Writing Workshop » Read Thread

Find proofreaders here, useful resources, and share opinions and advice on story crafting.

Nevermind. Can someone just critique my first page

6 years ago

The room was candle-lit and windowless, the radio was playing a slow, syrupy jazz tune translated to Mandarin, and between your cigar and his pipe, a decent fog had gathered around the ceiling before the meal even began. It was a pleasant evening, and the Agency knew it. That's why they scheduled the rendezvous here, after all. Colonel Lloyd Leighton (if that was his real name) rotated a bird toward you on a lazy susan. It was a small duck, vibrantly red with caramelization and full of rice, bits of meat, and salted egg, whatever that is.

"Notice how the cavity's torn?" Leighton said, pointing at the hole with his chopsticks, "They don't use a knife. A knife disconnects the muscles altogether, where pulling 'im open keeps more muscle systems intact."

"Oh? Why do they do that?" You asked, piling some stuffing into your bowl. It was an interesting factoid, but the old man had that excited glint in his sunglasses that he always got when he was going somewhere with something. You figured you'd ought to humor him.

The Colonel slurped his soup and scraped a bit of shallot out of the silver horseshoe on his face, "The muscles have to be kept together, or the duck becomes inert. the muscles become stiff and unusable."

"Weren't they already unusable? It's a dead duck." You dug into your rice. It was a delicious collection of tastes. A shame you had to enjoy it under such unfortunate circumstances.

"Sometimes you have to work with something in all its faculties. That's where all these muscles come in. If they're all connected, they'll all pull on each other. The bird will be able to stretch, and you'll be able to put more stuffing in it. More food for everybody to enjoy, right? If the muscles are just stiff, inert rocks, you can force in everything you have to offer, but the duck will be unable to cooperate, ya dig? Instead of stretching, it'll just push the muscles around, deform, rip, and suddenly you've gone and doomed the thing, because it'll never cook evenly."

"What's your delicious metaphor for this briefing, Sir?"

"Sometimes a scalpel is better than a hammer. But sometimes, what a country really needs is a good pair of hands guiding them somewhere. If Shanghai is gonna be a state in this century without having trouble for centuries more, they have to be guided, not cut up, not subjugated. Do you think you can do that?"

"Am I supposed to sabotage Han Tsin or not?"

"By all means, but try to make sure there's something constructive to fill in the power vacuum, right?"

"Am I supposed to judge what's a constructive influence or not?"

"Call me a sentimental old man all you want, 827, but I'm pretty sure you and I both know you're a boyscout at heart. An assassinating, womanising boyscout, sure, but hey, we're not all perfect. Deep down, you'll do what's right for America and Democracy in general. That's why you're Agent 827, not pencil-pusher 942."

"You've got a mighty high opinion of me, Sir. I hope I can live up to them."

"I've got a feeling you will, kid. Any questions?"

"Three."

"Well shoot."

"Who am I allowed to piss off, who am I supposed to be friendly with, and is it sacrilegious if I pour this stir fry over the plate of duck rice and eat that?"

"Friends and enemies are your prerogative, kid. I'd just recommend trying not to get any wizards or ETs after us, and don't make any alliances too contingent on the Commies... Because, as much as we're talkin' about statehood and rebuilding, when push comes to shove, we want the next Chinese regime holding American bombs. A little something to counterbalance the Cuba situation, y'know?"

"And mixing up dishes?"

"I guess that'd be pretty touchy. Like asking for condiments, you can't do that here."

"Well shucks. I guess I'll have to make this combination myself sometime."

"Heh, maybe."

You were full now that the conversation had ended, with just enough space left to finish your wine, "Until next time, Colonel. Thank you for the evening."

"You're welcome. Do us proud."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shat out this mess trying to haphazardly establish my setting. It's an alternate reality where China was Axis, the war lasted 12 years, and the Cold War gets a little bit lukewarm and salty, since England had nukes first (Or, rather, they reverse-engineered them from the ruins of a nuked London and their half of Germany) and the technology was stolen from them by the Soviets and America. China's invasive empire gets divided amongst the Allies, and Russia makes Mongolia, Japan, and Manchuria into Soviet countries in order to form a buffer against an increasingly capitalist China.

Basically, how do I improve this? Nothing's flowing right, and I need some help with this, because sometimes a story I write is fluid and sometimes it isn't, and I don't know any specific techiques that'll get my ideas out and also not be choppy or run-ons.

Also, there are actual ETs and Wizards in this story. Just wanted to ge that out there so that Aliens and Wizards wouldn't be out of place when they actually showed up. I need them in here. Not just because fantasy universes are fun, but because fantasy is all I have. After all, 'realistic' spy thrillers are only credible when the author is a 60-something ex-marine whose picture in the back of the book always shows him wearing a leather jacket and/or holding a wine glass. Anyway, is there any way I could better work wizards and aliens into the story so that it doesn't sound offhand and forced, when Lloyd could easily just be using the terms sarcastically and/or using codenames?

Nevermind. Can someone just critique my first page

6 years ago

Quick disclaimer: I don't know shit about duckbody physics. The dish is fictional (Loosely based around 8 treasure duck) which can be made with a knife depending on the recipe book, and very probably isn't stretched out. I've just heard about certain chefs not using knives in their butchery in order to keep certain muscle systems intact, so I figured it'd be a fun metaphor for how you're supposed to alter the course of politics here rather than just fight James Bond supervillains.

Nevermind. Can someone just critique my first page

6 years ago
So, where did the bugbears go?

Nevermind. Can someone just critique my first page

6 years ago

I figured catapults were enough to justify their use, and decided that since James isn't here, the ethics of certain animals being used in warfare was probably going to be a less hilarious question than I originally thought, so I figured I'd ask something that was actually helpful on an active project rather than hobbyist worldbuilding.

But if you have any alternate ways to use giant pangolins in medieval war, go ahead.

Nevermind. Can someone just critique my first page

6 years ago

You stumble on the first line, I'd have opened with the following:

The radio played a slow Mandarin jazz, its syrupy tune echoing in the small, windowless room. Under the candle-light, plumes of smoke from your cigar and his pipe had wafted together merging into an unpleasant cloud of smoke hovering near the low roof. The rumble of your stomach reminded you that it was nearing dinner time.

It was a pleasant evening, and the Agency knew it. That's why they scheduled the rendezvous here, after all. Colonel Lloyd Leighton (if that was his real name) rotated a bird toward you on a lazy susan. It was a small duck, vibrantly red with caramelization and full of rice, bits of meat, and salted egg, whatever that is.

Beyond that, it sounds fascinating for a premise (more than those crusaders in hot air balloons). Things to watch out for - the war lasting 12 years would be really unlikely unless hostilities waned after the first five years into border skirmishes and went hot again after a year or so (resources were fairly exhausted all around, the entire reason the Axis opened the ill-fated Russian front was to make a bid for their Eastern European resources). Did America not enter the war, or did they do significantly worse at Pearl harbor (actually losing their carriers?). Japan and Germany were both losing the resources war, so I don't believe they had the stamina for a 12 year war - and before I forget, that includes male population as a resource. A war dragging out would also have had significant effects on colonies such as India and Vietnam.

China going Axis would be strange, as they were pretty disorganized fighting the Japs in Manchuria IIRC. Would they have expanded north into Russia or south into South East Asia? When is this story taking place? In real life the Soviets fell because they prepared guns and not butter in anticipation of an attack from Europe that never came to pass, what is the outcome of that decision in this world?

I'm not happy with including the Aliens and Wizards, because that makes things infinitely harder to anticipate and plot out for story purposes.

Nevermind. Can someone just critique my first page

6 years ago

I think I'd probably be able to justify a forever war with alchemist bullshit, but I think World War 2 sort of dying down with flashpoints every now and then would be much more easy to hear. America did enter the war out of paranoia (China was snapping up islands, getting closer and closer to them and fucking with, if not outright conquering trade allies, and the Nazis had nukes.) and the European Theatre sort of stagnated because Russia was under too much pressure from China to truly blitz and became more focused on holding their borders.

America tipped the scales over to the Allies' side when they finally barged in and the Chinese Empire sort of crumbled into Allies-owned states due to a combination of invasion and violent uprising. Now only needing to hold off one front, Stalin devoted Russia's massive manpower into charging into a pretty harshly attritioned Axis territory and claimed an absurd portion of Europe, before promptly having a stroke in 1951. (War stress made it happen 2 years earlier. Hitler had already died in 1949 on account of his brain syphillis, though he may have been assassinated by the Nazi Party on account of becoming too incoherent to use as a figurehead.)

Basically, China became a militiarised facist state due to Han Tsing shooting Mao behind closed doors and steering the revolution toward nationalism and world domination. He disappeared mysteriously when rebellion started cropping up, and allegedly became a "Reformed Socialist" dealing arms and funding communist revolutions on the black market, but not before putting together a pretty big industrial infrastructure and a large, relatively organized land army.

This was enough to make it a viable threat during the initial Axis craze, but the resource exhaustion and civil unrest eventually returned the army to its diminished, disorganised state as it tried to control its blobbed-out borders. Han made too many enemies at once, believing he had enough people to simply storm in and intimidate governments into subjugating, but it never really panned out once the British Raj and other allied colonies pushed back, letting people know they were spreading themselves thin and could be conceivably warred against. In other words, I'm justifying everything that's happened based on how I lost Hearts of Iron the first time I played.

It takes place roughly around 1968. The Soviets initially made the same decision here, because England had nukes and were Capitalist, but since the UK was pretty big on 'safeguarding he information for the good of humanity' and never built any missiles, they decided to just prepare for running their massive country in the long term using all this new land... And covertly start attempting to beat America in the race for stealing/developing functional nuclear blueprints once  they felt they were comfortable. The outcome would probably remain the same, with endless dick-measuring slowly petering out as the Soviets overextend themselves economically, but they would be more self-sustaining, and the cold and proxy wars may continue well into the 2020s in this setting.

Aliens and Wizards are a necessity. This story was going to be a post-apocalypse urban fantasy starring a snarky Adventure Games protagonist before I realised I was including a lot of old-fashioned things figuring it'd be a semi-period piece (A fight-scene with a dialup telephone, nobody ever using computers, etc.) and it was in Chinatown, but I included too many gangsters doing things in broad daylight (And a few too many people here practicing actual Shenism and living with folk monsters from the other side of the pond) for this place to be anything other than a 1930s Shanghai with Americans in it.

However, this was pretty incongruous, because there were a lot of American characters in governing positions, and everything from the cars to the music was not from the 30s, so I figured World War II occupation would keep Shanghai about as rough of a city despite the multiple police crackdowns and drug wars that cooled it down into the 60s. Also, they simply are my jam, and I'm not sure I'd be able to plan out a story as affectionately pulpy as this without them getting involved.

And hey, this setting actually has a Story I've exposed. Imho, this setting and the Napoleonic setting aren't on grounds for comparison, because this was a world meant for this particular kind of spy action, while the fantasy universes I periodically build on were made to fit whatever adventure I decide to put in them for adventure's sake. They were built for the occassional visit by readers and heroes to see some problems be solved, but never all of them, where this story is built very much around a hero going to various lengths to defeat one or more antagonists and problems, even if he doesn't find the right answers.

I'd call "Airship Crusaders" a sort of tabletop setting, but even those tend to have world-saving quests and modules, where this doesn't really, or it isn't the goal. 827 is a straight-up protagonist that saves Shanghai, for example, and Gimbledon, the guy I've planned for the Napoleonic setting, is just an encyclopedia author that invents the in-universe equivalent of D&D to bring his friends together and cope with traumatic situations in a warzone.

Nevermind. Can someone just critique my first page

6 years ago

Alright, but how did American prioritize between China and Japan - which one to attack first? Furthermore, if China joins the Axis, do they (somehow?!) form an alliance with the Japanese, or do they dominate them beforehand? You'd have to throw in a few wizards or their ilk to explain how the highly underdeveloped fighting forces of China were able to overwhelm the Japanese in this scenario.

For Hitler to have not been killed till 1949 means that something went very wrong with D-Day / the Allied reconquest in France, while at the same time allowing the Germans to have had the resources to build nukes (they didn't all that talent had fled to the States). Another question - are nukes really the scariest thing on the battlefield when you have Aliens and Wizards? Their presence should have had some consequences into troop arrangement and more (which is why I don't like throwing them into this setting).

I strongly doubt the British Raj could have survived beyond 194X. The nation had been seeking independence for a long time, and in requesting wartime resources (leading to the Bengal famine) and military men to fight on various fronts, they had dug their own grave by giving the Indian people self confidence to assert themselves in negotiations (a nuked London means even more so). Read up on Subhash Chandra Bose's revolutionary army - he successfully lobbied the Germans and Japanese for a fighting force in Indochina to use to recapture India from the Brits. It failed, but that doesn't have to be true in this reality

Would there be a taboo on the use of nukes, or did wizards find a way to contain radioactive fallout, making them fair game as weapons go? Again, wizards just ruin everything -_-

Seeing you've played Hearts of Iron, I'm surprised that I'm telling you anything about resource shortages, the game does a fair job of portraying that side of the war well.

Nevermind. Can someone just critique my first page

6 years ago

Japan just became a very large occupied Island to Island-hopping generals, since it was conquered by China. Mostly by a constant charge of troop boats storming beaches and spreading out the land defense enough that a few haphazard paratroopers were able to get into Tokyo and force capitulation. However, China was fairly organised in the beginning of the war, and had some good, experimental generals. By the time America got there, most of those generals had been killed or sent to contested borders and replaced by sloppier, old-fashioned occupation forces. But China also managed to convince one giant maneating centipede named Bao to hop on a boat and start making grisly urban legends in Japan, which certainly helped matters. The more superstitious (Who didn't know/think that centipeople were sapient beings) figured that nature itself was against them in this war at that point and generally refused to fight for anything other than a change of leadership, even if that meant being fucked by China for the forseeable few years.

Something did sort of did. France was mostly recovered at that point, but the war had pretty much ground to a halt. UK would have had to make this push into Germany entirely by itself, and Russia was pinned between 1.5 big armies on almost all sides. England already wasn't prepared to storm the beaches during this time, and when combat kicked off again, London had been nuked. No one was prepared to get into Germany until America came in to properly take pressure off the other Allies.

Because China had declared its loyalty to the Axis early, a large British force was already occupying and drilling in the raj. Lots of supplies were already being sent there, and rebellion was delayed when China started to encroach on their borders. They were more concerned with blocking and reclaiming Chinese expansion, rather than actually controlling territories. It got to the point where BR was basically just India and Co. with a lot of Indian and British soldiers in it, but a lot of Martial Law and British occupation were going on to prepare to stop China, which slowed the exact transition, and kept German forces out.

The talent had nowhere to go. While the American Government was able to get away with things the populace didn't much pay attention to (Like trading things to the Allies and sanctioning Axis powers) the anti-war, isolationist sentiment only got stronger as time went on. It got to the point where borders were closed off as best they could be, and there was heavy focus on being entirely self-sufficient and getting no one else involved. Then they remembered how great taking land was once they finally got scared enough to join World War 2.

On the contrary, Wizards make everything much more entertaining for me to write. Nukes are still the scariest because they represent an existential threat. Aliens could invade, but their homeworlds are far off, and total conquest wouldn't be endorsed by mainland civilization. Human extermination would be dangerous and too difficult to pull off. They may have lasers, but they can only fight traditional wars. It's the same with Wizards. They have aspects that make them much more powerful than a mundane human, but even Lich Lords (Despite their best efforts) still leave an area habitable after passing through.

Nukes destroy an area, and though they still don't know to what extent at this point, they know people on the outskirts of London are still sick and dying. As such, there's still a taboo, and Wizards can do some things about it, but there's nowhere near enough power in one or any group of wizards to reliably contain a nuke for any length of time. If they contain the bomb, they cannot contain the blast, if they contain the fallout, they cannot contain the explosion, (And likely will be killed if they're in range, releasing it anyway) and since magical shields are made from energy, they can stop spells take the concussive force from some explosions, which are energetic forces, but radiation is solid and will pass through. If physical shields are created, then they will be irradiated.

I was playing with friends as Germany and Italy. We managed to take land up to the point where Germany and China's borders met in the middle east, and that allowed them to send me all their shit whenever I said I was running out of things. This gave us a lot of rubber and oil, and Italy was pushin into other places to get more resources for all of us, so we were all pretty much fine on that front. But the game pretty much crapped out when what remained of the British Raj (It was incredibly slow and slugfesty to grind into, and I was running out of mans trying to slugfest with Russia) pushed in, and between me not slaughtering enough rebels and England and America coming up and using the raj as a jump-in point, everyone came in from underneath me and I pretty much buckled, much like China does in this story.

Nevermind. Can someone just critique my first page

6 years ago

Japan is the size of Germany, it's no normal island, and the residents would have been fairly fanatical in their defense. If you persist with them losing to China that easily, they'd not have any forces in Manchuria (the zeal to defend the homeland would have led to a recall). What government was China in at the start of the war? They had a pre-industrial war machine in real life, you'd have to buff them up significantly, and throw in an elite soldier training academy along the lines of the Prussian Kriegsakademie (which was formed in the aftermath of the humiliation of the Prussians in the Napoleonic wars)(for comparison, Japan did have an academy, and an officer culture at that time) in order for the Chinese to have had an elite cadre of generals ready for war. The Chinese had no need for such an academy in real life, so I do not understand its existence in this setting, which war caused it to arise? Generals with a rebellious nature, en masse, are not a natural thing to a military, which promotes mostly on homogeneity to the required standards, standards usually laid down in a previous war.

No comment on the centipede, I cannot begin to fathom how to integrate it into this setting (I'll leave all the mythic interventions to your own gut feeling)

How did the Germans nuke Britain? V-2s were still in the oven when the war was ending in '44-'45, and without them you'd have to have the Germans take air superiority over Britain (i.e. win the Battle of Britain) in order for them to have a chance to launch nukes in the first place. Further, you're forgetting that while the Germans did not like the Brits, there was enough mutual blood that they would not nuke the capital of a civilization often intertwined with their own by blood. Even the Yanks reconsidered putting Osaka and Kyoto on the list of possible nuking targets when they realized the symbolic importance of those cities. In war, unless you're aiming for a decapitation strike (and willing to pay the cost of enraging a civilization till its death and the constant threat of overwhelming reprisal including and beyond nukes), you do not nuke the enemy's capital. If Hirohito had been attacked by a nuke on Tokyo, and somehow survived, believe me the Japs would not have lost WW2.

British forces stationed in India would have diverted their forces that in real life fought in Africa, which would mean Britain would have lost Africa to Rommel. Troop allocation has consequences, you'll have to understand the tradeoffs and roll for outcomes of significant battles. Also, in that scenario, what's the stop the Indians from having a rebellion and offering to side with the Chinese if the Chinese were to guarantee recognition of the newly independent India? In that case, India and Pakistan and Bangladesh would be one gigantic country, there'd probably be less tension with Muslims within India and the entire geo-political framework of the world would be fundamentally different.

Another issue with Aliens, which should be more stark if you've read Watchmen, wouldn't the existence of invading aliens spur on all humans to unite to kick out those Alien bastards who dare defile our soil? Aliens aren't New Zealanders (heard of but rarely seen, but you trust they exist), they're a whole different species with different life cycles, food requirements, mating methods, culture, and a whole lot more. You're underestimating the world's reaction to their existence, I'd say reconsider.

Nevermind. Can someone just critique my first page

6 years ago

At the start of the war, China was being revolutionised and primed for war by a dictatorship verging on the supervillainous. They had developed several military academies for the ongoing Sino-Japanese war and for Han Tsing's future plans. Han considered himself a bit of a modern-day Caesar, and heavily militiarised China for the explicit purpose of creating the largest empire that has ever been. He wanted to have the best of the best in soldiers, generals, and organization, and put several militiary-industrial systems in place to ensure that he'd get it. Many highly organised legions of dudes pushed Japan out of manchuria and started bombarding Japan for The Empire. 

I'd attribute the motivation of the nuking to Hitler's deterioration getting so much worse in his later years, and him taking more and more power and influence away from his underlings, making it entirely possible for him to launch his own subversive nuclear campaign. It wasn't dropped or launched, rather, a warhead was put together in a barbershop basement by spies and sympathisers, and then exploded on site by the fanatics.

It's not at all a likely task, but this is a world where spies and dictators have abilities on par with Bond and pulp superheroes, so even barring the fantasy elements in play, some lunatics in the nazi's sympathy would be skilled enough to pull it off. The fact that he did nuke England, against the wishes of every strategist, was definitely the biggest contributing factor to his sudden death. (Canonically, the Nazis did assassinate him for getting so out of control, and then played it off as the allies to keep war morale up and make him a martyr. Allied historians attributed it to his disease, but the 'theory' persists.)

Italy's puppetted Ethiopia and taken what it wants. What's happened is that there was a big push to take all the oil and and rubber in the Middle East and establish the China-Europe supply route so that all the axis could push up into Russia. It wasn't really worth the expenditure in Africa, because Italy somehow managed to piss off Switzerland, and France, Greece, and Spain started having Communist revolutions and civil wars.

Russia sort of intergrated the uprising communes into the Soviet faction and, in essence, caused so much border gore in peninsula Europe that controlling the Mediterranean through North Africa would've been an expenditure that left the rest of their Mediterranean territory in serious trouble. The Communists were eventually crushed, but with Russian and British assistance, they became such a thorn in the side of the Axis that the Middle Eastern supply route was considered fundamentally more important than securing the Mediterranean.

There was probably some fighting in Africa, but the Axis had to withdraw to secure the European side of the coast from Communists. The Axis planned to instead take Egypt from England with a great flood of Chinese Blitzkrieg once the Middle East was taken, but everyone vastly underestimated how much of a pain in the ass the desert was, and overestimated how much army China really had.

If India would have agreed to ally with China to overthrow Britain, there would have been no India. It would have been China. There's no middle ground for Han Tsing's China. He was planning to own the entirety of Asia, and you were either with him or against him. England would be replaced by another foreign occupation. This China would not recognize an independant India, in the same way that our China does not recognize an independent  Tibet. Except things get even more violent, and Chinese government officials are sent to replace Indian ones.

It's been generally revealed that Humans have been already living with them anyway for about a century, doing nothing but existing and causing no real problems. Customs can be strange, but the fact that some aliens are "our" aliens (And any Democapitalist alien is a good alien, or Communist if you're Soviet) that will promote influence for countries in nearby space is enough that governments generally promote them in propaganda and pacify the general populace. Aliens believing in their earth countries is enough that ET immigration is generally allowed.

There is some bigotry and protests to be had, but, as said before, they've been with humanity for a long time and are used to some people being pissed, if not generally out of harm's way on the matter. That, and the fact that the space race has been a thing, FTL is within the grasp of both alien trade federations and nations willing to cooperate with them. Knowledge of outsiders, combined with the fact that humanity may very desperately need a place to go in the coming decades, makes an allance seem not only conducive to winning the cold war, but seemingly necessary to avoid total MAD.

Nevermind. Can someone just critique my first page

6 years ago
I could go into everything earlier as well, but I need to stop you at Aliens reaching Earth around 1860, and Earth not being extremely better united/more technologically advanced than it would have been in our 1960. I'm watching Gundam 00, which runs the premise that the Mobile Gundams are 70 years or so ahead of contemporary technology. The entire first season of 25 episodes is about everyone else seeing what they're using, reverse engineering it, and going after them, to great effect. Their existence probably allowed science to leap forth by atleast a generation's worth of progress within a few years.

In science, often the greatest problems are about what is possible. If you were to show a working steam engine to scientists before one was discovered, they would have dropped what they were doing and immediately set about recreating their own versions. Similarly, the existence of any Aliens would have caused a scientific race of unimagined proportions, leading to advancement in technological and cultural avenues radically different from our version of reality.

No sell. If you want to make a Chinese madman story, make a Chinese madman story. If you want to take a hey my neighbor's an Alien and though I'm cool with it he won't let me bum Alien cigarettes of of him story, by all means make a hey my neighbor's an Alien and though I'm cool with it he won't let me bum Alien cigarettes of of him story. But if you intend to merge the two, you'll have to seriously compromise your world building as of now. Unless of course it's all for the giggles, in which case you may as well write what you want, no one will be stopping you, and arguably outside of maybe four people on the site, no one would really mind.

Nevermind. Can someone just critique my first page

6 years ago

Oh, I can just say that they aren't more united or better advanced, because the aliens aren't much better themselves. At best, they'd reach James Bond levels of innovation plus reasonable commercial interplanetary travel, which they have. However, aliens having lived with humans and coming from all walks of life all over the planet has resulted in the political factions of the cold war being better united with themselves, against the others, not uniting humans against aliens. The notion that there were aliens all along living on earth, and the fact that so many of them vehemently agree with one side of the cold war or the others, was a lot like the discovery of digestive bacteria. They were here all along and they're the good guys, so let's not send antibiotics after them. 

The first travelling alien race in their distant galaxy had built their society on interplanetary travel, and getting to the point of interplanetary travel, very early in their civilization due to their hivemind and religious motivation. (It viewed stars and planets as gods, and believed that it was their duty to personally praise all of them.) Various societies that they visited were able to reverse-engineer the travel and war with them, and eventually a sort of galactic federation (more like an interplanetary UN managed by the votes of planetary sub-UNs.) was born out of semi-medieval aliens with big rockets and fusion cruisers. Then various scientists (and wizards, because how else would aliens get all the way over here) opened up studies into teleportation. Using portals and pods, hundreds of prisoners, vagrants, and glory-seekers from all over the galaxy were sent to random astral bodies with makeshift "terraforming gear" so that their descendants would live there and eventually find a way to contact them if they found a habitable place with life.

Now, aliens like these don't have very much at all to offer the world in the late 1860s. They have an accurate view of just how huge the universe is, but all of their complex space travel equipment, giant telescopes, satellites, etc. was at home. They had notions of conducting electricity and how to do it, but that was pretty much already being done. (Tesla and Edison, not having to be afraid of showing themselves in public, had covered all the bases alien researchers had covered, and Edison had basically monopolised the electric process by then.)  They had Newtonian physics down, but... Well, Newton. There was automated farming, but there was plenty of that doing the same thing on a larger scale on earth, in the form of combines, ploughs, etc..

Hell, in some ways, humans were even more advanced. They had long-range guns that fired more than once, rendering their medieval-with-missiles style of combat obsolete. They had instant over-land communication and the printing press, making wizards and seers useless. The only thing the aliens could bring to the table were repurposed biodome-building sets as scuba gear, and the ideas of  various technologies. Few of them knew how to actually build the flying machines and automobiles that they had at home from scratch. Fewer still knew how to describe or hand-make the parts. Ironically enough, when aliens came in peace, they migrated to Earth as wilderness pioneers, early scuba divers, and Science Fiction authors. Since we've got wizards and other folklore fantasy creatures, it's not too much of a stretch to assume that humans wouldn't give that much of a shit about a few more races coming out of nowhere and not even bringing the ancient blood feuds with them that, say, an orc and an elf would. (Orcs and elves are theoretical in this universe, aliens are arguably one of the only talking humanoids joining humans in this story outside of lizard people.)

Space aliens came into the picture fairly recently after extraterrestrial magiscientists finally re-created the old wormhole technology (This time, they managed to make sure it wasn't a one-way portal) and got in touch with the galaxies they sent people to generations prior. Now that humans and alien civilizations finally were in touch, they were able to properly share technology. At that point, there was a bit of a scientific race, but since neither was that much more advanced than the other, things continued to advance at a regular Cold War rate (Aside from the instant space cruisers and bond gadgets) until Earth became part of the interplanetary UN using their real UN as their membership party. Thing is, most planetary national coalitions are just about as unstable as Earth, and only a few are reliably globablised. The Aliens have the disadvantage of having to manage an entire solar system rather than just their one planet, and introducing another planet way the fuck over here may push their instability to a tipping point. But that's an espionage story for another gamebook.

The key to not being trite and obnoxious in storytelling when you have a matter-of-fact tone by default is to not simplify your reasoning as to why things are happening, so no giggles. Just about nothing here is for giggles, except the fact that the Centipedes were introduced into the universe initially because I wanted a very dangerous criminal faction to intergrate and I saw 'Centipede Mafia' on a list of good names for a band, but they still have an established culture and are worked into world history.

Nevermind. Can someone just critique my first page

6 years ago

Interestingly, it seems the ancients did know about digestive bacteria, in the story where Solomon judges the two women who claimed to be the mother of the child, it describes the genuine mother's bowels were aflurry (can't remember the exact wording). In that age they ascribed to bowels what we call the heart today (so her bowels being aflurry is the modern day equivalent of having her heart being rend).

I see you've put in a good deal of thought about the Alien part, but it throws all the power equations and tech out of whack. Plus, once again you have to think of mundane made missile, such as space engines being used as ramming bombs (the kinetic and thermal energy), with potentially enough output to make a 195X nuke look like a tinder spark compared to the power of those engines. Now, when tech is large enough to support an alien empire, they'd at least have long range communication suites and environment stabilization methods, if not bio-modification tools for good measure. Most of modern warfare's difference from old days comes down to better comms (GPS, Better Radar for starters) - it's the reason AWACS exist, so that's one mundane thing that would revolutionize war. Environmental modification tools would also be a major tool, such as for making bioweapons that target genetic markers or what have you. The point is that the same way magically taking guns away from the world wouldn't allow for Chivalric Knights in the 2000s, adding tech, even if some of it is better done by humans, still causes major changes to the world. Heck, we're xenophobic enough to hate other humans for something like religion, do you honestly doubt we'd call the aliens benign and move on, without the bare minimum of an Anti-Alien branch of the KKK equivalent? The only scenario in which there isn't hostility towards Aliens is if they explicitly pull off something like group mind control on every human to prevent humans from treating them as hostile, which is a major crime in its own way (what else could they be swaying?).

Just to address a quick point, Earth is a relatively uncommon planet type, if there are space factions, you'll see space politics affecting Earth politics, so opening up fragmented galactic empires is a whole other messy can of worms. In any case, I won't be able to be of much help beyond this point with the Aliens in the setting.

I do miss Commendations though, by now atleast one of my posts would have gotten one in ye olde days, when Commendations were new. *wistful sigh* (I know, 3Js only been gone a month, but with no Commendations running I have no material to update lists with either)

Nevermind. Can someone just critique my first page

6 years ago

It's probably good to mention that, aside from Wormholes, nobody here has anything near total lightspeed technology. Cruisers are shuttle-sized little diddies, rarely getting bigger than that, and pretty much powered by conventional fuel allowing them to fling themselves using the gravity of space station asteroids balanced precariously between the gravitational pulls of various planets during different times of the year. Because of the (literally) astronomical cost of putting shuttles and stations into space, ships are entrusted to rich noble families and are taken over via piracy rather than used as weapons, much like metal armor was only given to a select few, and it was more efficient to capture the guy inside it and hold them for ransom/reach a diplomatic negotiation rather than go right on and kill him. Space was feudally run, so only the very rich/influential were permitted to use satellite communication technology. Internet was fledgling, and computers were positively enormous megastructures made by electrocuting ingots of alien metal on crystalline boards. Sending a message anywhere further than the next planet was pretty much the equivalent of sending a Telegraph back then.

Life in space generally happened in bubbles on these asteroids, and it still does, since the technology hasn't pushed that far forward from supermodern 60s sci-fi. This is largely due to the fact that it's not so much an 'empire' as 'Loose coalitions of loose coalitions of nations/states making vague agreements not to kill each other and attempting to create galactic peace. So, basically, entire networks and vast, complex  space structures get repeatedly destroyed and have to be rebuilt (Often with fatal mistakes) over and over again over the course of years. Invention is a process that occurs when civilization is still up, but due to the age of space and vague interconnectivity, civilizations continue to overrely on technology they don't have a lot of other maintaining/supporting technology to keep up with, and political factions frequently reduce each other to hunter-gatherers with laser rifles.

They have/had no bio-modification stuff outside of some attempted eugenics and attempted interbreeding, they only created various equipment to technologically adapt to different environments. Genetic befucklery was, technologically, very far out of their league, and outside of some chemistry experimentation, it was tough for them to prove that DNA was anything more than standard protein. I'm not exactly sure how this is a byproduct of reverse-engineering some very basic space-travelling technology, but I'm also fairly certain that it's something they wouldn't have been able to do with their AM-sized Space PDAs. They have lasers with a devastating kill range for use in zero-oxygen warfare, but with their recharge rate, they are pretty much electronic muskets and melee combat up close piracy was very much alive and well in warfare.

Basically, the fact that earth has developed all this technology over time makes them pretty powerful, even from the stance of an otherwise ignorant newbie to space. However, the Aliens have developed a fair bit since then and Earth doesn't know how to have quite as much fun with portals as everyone else is having.

Anyway, this is still very much a world where people other than humans have been taken for granted. People have always been living alongside (And under) Vampires, Megacentipedes, Waspfolk, Wizards*, Cyclopes, Lizardmen, Large Psionic Ibis, and FSOUS**, among other things. Humans have very rarely been in charge, and they had to learn how to be okay with that. Humans that didn't want to cooperate, or humans that couldn't handle something like an inhuman leader, were very often outnumbered and killed by a diverse regime. It's the same thing with other races. The only reason that the Nazis were able to pull off doing what they did is because the genocide was kept secret, they only picked out minorities among the majority (German Humans, in this case) and other races enjoyed equal rights and were (relatively) exempt from death camps and hate speech so long as they did not attempt anything resembling "Interspecies relations" and were not working against the state in any way.

*Technically just humans or any of these other races, but they've been doing Wizard Yoga and reading Wizard books. Hell, any mammal can become a vampire, too, but they're often considered "Extrahuman" due to their supernatural characteristics.

**Flying Squirrels Of Unusual Size.

Nevermind. Can someone just critique my first page

6 years ago
Your posts are kind of daunting to read on a 4 inch screen, but as far as the technical aspects go, I'm with Stryker about that first sentence.

Most of this is dialogue so it's really only noticeable in the first paragraph, but you really want to watch out for passive language, telling instead of showing, etc.

I'd assume you already know this stuff, it's just a matter of identifying it when it crops up in your work and either breaking yourself of the habit or being ruthless when it's time to edit. Reading out loud can help.

Nevermind. Can someone just critique my first page

6 years ago

Can anyone tell me what centipede hatchlings look like? I find it hard to believe that a creature can spend so long as a house pest and nobody's seen or photographed any eggs or larvae whatsoever. Yet, here I am, without even descriptors to go on.