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Pelranius wrote:Well, cleaning up is often the hard part. Speaking of heavy artillery, what about the Republic of China (Taiwan) Army's 240mm howitzers. They have a few on Kinmen and I believe they are still fully operational. Speaking of the ROCA, which Army group did they get bunched in with?

They're in with the Chinese Army Group. The 240mms are towed guns IIRC so they're around but probably a way back in the marching order.

And yes, cleaning up is the hardest part; all too many people forget that.

so this is pretty much what's going to happen :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKZZEPoVb4c

HAPPY SALVATION DAY EVERYONE! GO COMMIT A SIN OF INDULGENCE TO CELEBRATE OUR EXISTENTIAL FREEDOM!

Now, the hard part begins.

Bayonet wrote:Now, the hard part begins.

Why do you think there's gonna be a third book?

Werrf wrote:

darksoul wrote:mind numbing, actually. which leads us to another potential problem in the future: if we stablish Michael or any other puppet government in Heaven, and embark ourselves in a series of stargate-y explorations in buble worlds, preemptively, I suppose, if we find some race looted by angels, would they be entitled to ask for reparations? will we pressure angels to return something to them, an apology at least?

I got the impression that once Yahweh is done with looting a species, they get handed over to Satan to be destroyed, so there's not going to be enough left to demand anything.

but what if? besides, the other pantheons retreated, they were defeated but not destroyed and are powerful enough to strike some deal with us involving the angels giving some of the stolen/taken/destroyed goods back.
that would make a good court case.
With the succubus as a lawyer for, say, the Aesir. Talk about Devil`s advocate...

Happy Salvation Day!

We need some traditions...

Fireworks! (duh)
Alcohol! (well...)
Food! (...)

We're not very original at this holiday thing, huh.

The Aesir are pretty cool guys in my opinion.
They never pretended they were perfect or omnipotent and they had very humanlike behaviour.
Indeed they acted mostly like humans, along with the Greek & Roman pantheons.

Stuart wrote:

Pelranius wrote:Well, cleaning up is often the hard part. Speaking of heavy artillery, what about the Republic of China (Taiwan) Army's 240mm howitzers. They have a few on Kinmen and I believe they are still fully operational. Speaking of the ROCA, which Army group did they get bunched in with?

They're in with the Chinese Army Group. The 240mms are towed guns IIRC so they're around but probably a way back in the marching order.

And yes, cleaning up is the hardest part; all too many people forget that.

That should make future Cross Straits ties a bit more interesting. I imagine the reason for that would partially be due to language issues.

darksoul wrote:

Werrf wrote:

darksoul wrote:mind numbing, actually. which leads us to another potential problem in the future: if we stablish Michael or any other puppet government in Heaven, and embark ourselves in a series of stargate-y explorations in buble worlds, preemptively, I suppose, if we find some race looted by angels, would they be entitled to ask for reparations? will we pressure angels to return something to them, an apology at least?

I got the impression that once Yahweh is done with looting a species, they get handed over to Satan to be destroyed, so there's not going to be enough left to demand anything.

but what if? besides, the other pantheons retreated, they were defeated but not destroyed and are powerful enough to strike some deal with us involving the angels giving some of the stolen/taken/destroyed goods back.
that would make a good court case.
With the succubus as a lawyer for, say, the Aesir. Talk about Devil`s advocate...

Somehow I don't think we humans would be very sympathetic to be giving anything to any pantheon, and other 'ex-worshipping species" probably have first dibs on the loot.

Simon_Jester wrote:They usually do it by making the wizards the protagonists (many examples, Harry Potter being perhaps the most famous one that is both recent, well received, and artistically decent), or by giving the hero an excess of manly determination (Conan the Barbarian).

The point being that there's a genre convention whereby superpowers must confer a significant advantage, without any corresponding disadvantage to offset it: the wizard's magic blasts give him firepower equivalent to a guy with a pistol, but for some reason you won't see him going down to a random guy with a pistol.

That would be pretty silly, yeah.

Stuart's entire story is built around the subversion of that convention, by creating supermen who are actually kind of dumb and easily beaten by a savvy opponent with better engineering and organizational skills. Hence the screaming from the anti-fans; they can feel their genre convention being violated and it hurts, but they don't quite understand what the problem is*, and that makes them angry.

Well, I can clearly articulate what the problem is; defeating the villains is simply a matter of getting to them, but the story isn't about that process. It tries to be about everything else that happens while that goes on.

The only tension we get is from "what ineffectual, outmoded quackery are the poor, stupid widdle demons/angels going to pull on us next? Oh wow, that one might inconvenience us for a few months. (It will have next to no effect on our warmaking efforts whatsoever.)"

Stuart wrote: They're in with the Chinese Army Group. The 240mms are towed guns IIRC so they're around but probably a way back in the marching order.

And yes, cleaning up is the hardest part; all too many people forget that.

The 240mm howitzers are towed, but in two pieces as you have to dismount the barrel and move everything on dolleys. A 6x6 20 ton crane was used to assemble in position, after which you have a 60 degree arc of fire. The US Army managed to get that process down to 1-2 hours in Italy though it was supposed to take at least 4 hours by the book. Heaviest shells of any operational artillery piece today. Mind you making the weapon self propelled would be easy today, the US Army actually ordered a Pershing tank based SP mount for both the 240mm howitzer and 8in gun into production in WW2. Stupid war had to get nuked before more then two had been produced.

Wow. Very nice, Stuart. I'm impressed.

Remind me: Is this the last chapter in this book, or are there a few more coming (I thought I read some reference to there being 87 chapters or some such number...and yes, of course I'm left wanting more)?

Erra wrote:Happy Salvation Day!

We need some traditions...

Fireworks! (duh)
Alcohol! (well...)
Food! (...)

We're not very original at this holiday thing, huh.

We'll pretty much just have the BATF just operate in reverse for a day. Also more sex.

Simon_Jester wrote:Stuart's entire story is built around the subversion of that convention, by creating supermen who are actually kind of dumb and easily beaten by a savvy opponent with better engineering and organizational skills. Hence the screaming from the anti-fans; they can feel their genre convention being violated and it hurts, but they don't quite understand what the problem is*, and that makes them angry.

*If they did, they might be less enthusiastic about stories where the superheroes always win, because they'd be thinking through the implications of that...

That may be true for some of the critics but not for all of them. I quite like the idea of magic users going down hard before technology because technology has a huge inherent advantage of being more democratic - see any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced for a nice explanation of what I mean. The thing is making this the theme of the story, and making the tech users the good guys, and making it so the good guys are superior to the bad guys and the bad guys stand basically ultimately have no chance, and continuing this for two full-length novels ... well, IMO it takes a certain level of subtlety to keep that from looking wanky, and IMO TSW does not have the necessary subtlety.

You can, of course, disagree with that, it's inherently subjective, but it doesn't have anything to do with wanting any particular presentation of magic.

Ryan Thunder wrote:

Simon_Jester wrote:They usually do it by making the wizards the protagonists (many examples, Harry Potter being perhaps the most famous one that is both recent, well received, and artistically decent), or by giving the hero an excess of manly determination (Conan the Barbarian).

The point being that there's a genre convention whereby superpowers must confer a significant advantage, without any corresponding disadvantage to offset it: the wizard's magic blasts give him firepower equivalent to a guy with a pistol, but for some reason you won't see him going down to a random guy with a pistol.

That would be pretty silly, yeah.

Stuart's entire story is built around the subversion of that convention, by creating supermen who are actually kind of dumb and easily beaten by a savvy opponent with better engineering and organizational skills. Hence the screaming from the anti-fans; they can feel their genre convention being violated and it hurts, but they don't quite understand what the problem is*, and that makes them angry.

Well, I can clearly articulate what the problem is; defeating the villains is simply a matter of getting to them, but the story isn't about that process. It tries to be about everything else that happens while that goes on.

The only tension we get is from "what ineffectual, outmoded quackery are the poor, stupid widdle demons/angels going to pull on us next? Oh wow, that one might inconvenience us for a few months. (It will have next to no effect on our warmaking efforts whatsoever.)"

Wow, are you seriously back again?

We get it, you don't like the story, or at least think that it has gone in a bad direction. You've managed to say the same exact thing every time you post. One would wonder, for someone who is so vehemently opposed to the story, why are you still in this thread, commenting, and probably reading that same story?

Oh, because you're a fail troll.

Aaand Junghalli puts it way better than I did.

Erra wrote:Wow, are you seriously back again?

We get it, you don't like the story, or at least think that it has gone in a bad direction. You've managed to say the same exact thing every time you post. One would wonder, for someone who is so vehemently opposed to the story, why are you still in this thread, commenting, and probably reading that same story?

Oh, because you're a fail troll.

Good to know that "story has gone in bad direction" means "story is unreadable" to you. You must have a very black and white view of things.

Ryan Thunder wrote: Good to know that "story has gone in bad direction" means "story is unreadable" to you. You must have a very black and white view of things.

You're putting words in my mouth. I could have assumed you still read (and partially enjoy) the story, even though you dislike it, if it weren't for the fact that every single post you make in this thread make it sound as though you wouldn't be caught dead reading it. Since that is, in fact, the case, I can only assume that you are trolling out of ignorance or for laughs.

Junghalli wrote:That may be true for some of the critics but not for all of them. I quite like the idea of magic users going down hard before technology because technology has a huge inherent advantage of being more democratic - see any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced for a nice explanation of what I mean. The thing is making this the theme of the story, and making the tech users the good guys, and making it so the good guys are superior to the bad guys and the bad guys stand basically ultimately have no chance, and continuing this for two full-length novels ... well, IMO it takes a certain level of subtlety to keep that from looking wanky, and IMO TSW does not have the necessary subtlety.

You can, of course, disagree with that, it's inherently subjective, but it doesn't have anything to do with wanting any particular presentation of magic.

Actually, I'm inclined to agree, because I think that's a valid criticism of the work. But you're not one of the screaming anti-fans; in hindsight, I should have defined my terms better.

Unlike the people I'm talking about, you do recognize the genre convention, rather than just assuming it will hold in the sense that fish might assume that the universe is full of water. And you've got a good grasp of why that convention is used, and what can go wrong when you violate it. Your criticism is more founded in questions of art, rather than being a case of "waaah this isn't like all the other stories with magic I read!"

I wonder if Michael knows that we can be as cruel in peace as we are in war...

Nematocyst wrote:I wonder if Michael knows that we can be as cruel in peace as we are in war...

Really? Is 'We' America, or Humans? In the last 60 years, whenever Western powers won a war, we usually send massive aid and help rebuild.

PaperJack wrote:The Aesir are pretty cool guys in my opinion.
They never pretended they were perfect or omnipotent and they had very humanlike behaviour.
Indeed they acted mostly like humans, along with the Greek & Roman pantheons.

Yes, and unlike Greek and Romans, they weren`t idiots drunk on their own powers and tyrannical with humans. they were more like very very powerful and wise humans. And evil, when they wanted to be

Erra wrote:Happy Salvation Day!

We need some traditions...

Fireworks! (duh)
Alcohol! (well...)
Food! (...)

We're not very original at this holiday thing, huh.

we can burn crosses. it`s not as if it means anything anymore.

Somehow I don't think we humans would be very sympathetic to be giving anything to any pantheon, and other 'ex-worshipping species" probably have first dibs on the loot.

you have a point on that. So i guess I`ll have to force my point. If the orcs wanted to sue the baldricks, or the Elders want to sue the "Yahwe Estate", if there is such thing, what would humans do?

hey, we should totally sell bracelets with WWHD printed in Heaven! Although irony would be largely lost

Erra wrote:Happy Salvation Day!

We need some traditions...

Fireworks! (duh)
Alcohol! (well...)
Food! (...)

We're not very original at this holiday thing, huh.

Angel-shaped pinatas.
Instead of fireworks, Annual Grenade-Tossing Contests and Ceremonial Fighter-Plane Duels.

And the whole end seems ... anticlimactic. Not to mention Belial is still at large. A third story is in the works.