SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VI

[PeZook]

Will this be announced or will it be your usual show up outta no where style? Because I have claimed A26 which contains earth and I will actually have enough fleet in system (Because CN only has 1 system per sector) to comfortably take down a single monolith. That said I would be happy to give you all of Earth for a reasonable trade (like shoal navigating hyperdrives ) as long as you let me kill that bitch Sasha.

That's why we'll be doing that while fighting is still going on. As to whether or not this is going to be announced or not, it depends on the situation.

[Simon_Jester]

First, I actually planned this budget out sometime around January. I just never got around to posting it because of school and generally laziness.

Without prejudice to anything else you've said, I'm sure you understand why this is... not a highly appealing explanation, DH.

I like the Clinical Psychopaths. And, perhaps to do that special procedure wherein they too experience that stuff, they'd probably have to be clinical psychopaths to do what they do.

Eh, I don't think that would actually make them better at dealing with it; psychopaths can dish it out but aren't necessarily good at taking it.

Indeed, if we view telepathy as something that extends naturally from other faculties of the human mind, rather than just being grafted onto it wholesale,* I'd expect actual psychopaths to be utterly terrible at any form of telepathy other than blatant attempts to turn others into puppets. Their ability to synchronize with other minds, to tune in and place themselves en rapport, would be... honestly, I'm not sure it'd even be there at all. I think it would be like a blind man trying to project the idea of color.

*Which is how I choose to portray it; others' views may legitimately vary. I feel that doing it my way is more in keeping with the traditions of science fiction in which the idea of telepathic powers grew to its modern popularity- but then, that's just me.

[Shroom Man 777]

SINGULR INTELLECT!

LIEUTENANT LIONEL JOHNSON!

ORKS!

It's pretty good. I like how it's shown that the MEH are putting up a good fight, and are killing the crap out of the Orks, but the greenskins are simply overwhelming them. And... Lieutenant Lionel Johnson jiggled!

[Mayabird]

I'm a bit disappointed in how this last post turned out. I was hoping it'd be a lot better, but oh well. It's stuff I wanted to say and set up for a while, so I hope it didn't curve back around towards lameness, even if it wasn't all that awesome.

But now that I'm done with that, on to other things!

[Shroom Man 777]

I liked it.


...



THE REGENCY OF THE ENGINE!

[Simon_Jester]

There is no Regency of the Engine? What are you talking about?



All hail the Hypnotoad!

[Shroom Man 777]

They must be hanging out with the RIS.

[Simon_Jester]

Hmm. Maybe I should be sending a Umerian contingent out there after all, just so there's someone who isn't totally psychotic participating in the war.

I mean, Shinn, I get the logic of strategic bombardment on that scale when you can't secure the territory, I despise it but I get it. But what possible sense does it make to use scorched-earth tactics against an opponent you're planning to roll over with overwhelming force in a matter of days? There's nothing there you won't already be sitting in orbit over in a position to demolish at will; what possible purpose would this genocide serve?

[Dark Hellion]

If Homura is anything like her source character this is perfectly in line with what she would plan. Homura is an ends justify the means style character who carries a lot of self-resentment and tends to take it out on other people. She is cold, clinical and numbed to the horrors of death or at least pretends to be, which in itself perpetuates a vicious cycle.

BTW Shinn we should work out a group story sometime. There are a lot of manga characters that I would love to see in pain.

[Simon_Jester]

If Homura is anything like her source character this is perfectly in line with what she would plan. Homura is an ends justify the means style character who carries a lot of self-resentment and tends to take it out on other people. She is cold, clinical and numbed to the horrors of death or at least pretends to be, which in itself perpetuates a vicious cycle.

Thing is, in this case the means aren't logically connected to the end. Destroying MEH industrial bases and civilian populations after having already annihilated their armed forces in a lightning campaign, when they are helpless to resist to any effect, makes no damn sense.

"The ends justify the means" is only a valid argument when the means contribute to achieving the end. And scorched earth tactics only contribute to achieving your goal when you aren't planning to have the war be over in a month or so.

You know what? Fuck it. I'm sending the Umerian contingent after all, so you people have a non-cackler character to compare against [shakes head]

[Dark Hellion]

You are assuming that destruction of the MEH military is the objective. Rationally it probably should be for most of the Coalition but that doesn't mean that everyone sees it that way. Others want to see the MEH totally destroyed as a galactic power forever. It's similar to the debates over the fate of Japan at the end of WWII. Some in America wanted to utterly crush Japan so that it would never be anything more than a subservient vassal. In the end wiser heads prevailed but that doesn't mean that people in the military didn't want to crush them.

Aside to Shinn. You said you wanted to work Kyubey into your story, why not have him as the AI that coordinates for the Puella Magi. His cheerful disposition and lack of empathy can just be programming quirks.

[Simon_Jester]

Huge problems with that:

1) That is a political decision, which should be made by the civilian government (in the Holy Empire, at Haruhi's level in all probability). The senior admirals responsible for a war effort do not get to decide whether it will annihilate the civilian population of half an enemy's planets, along with all the industrial base that would make them self-sustaining during an occupation, or rewarding to loot (which is not a trivial concern).

Or if they do, there is effectively no such thing as civilian control of the military, which is usually not a good sign: if the military is setting its own top-level strategy, there is a serious dysfunction in the state, as the case of WWII Japan illustrates.

2) Homura, by all appearances, has the authority to do this bombing on her own. She is not making a plan and submitting it to the Empress; she is simply talking about up and doing it. This ties into (1), the question of political control of the Imperial military. It also means that this is a step above the Morgenthau plan or other schemes to "de-industrialize" defeated nations; it's a plan that someone in a position of high authority seriously proposes to carry out, and apparently will carry out if she isn't stopped. Oh. And which involves, more or less, her shrugging off the projected deaths of roughly half the civilian population of the country she's fighting.

In short, we're looking less at the Morgenthau Plan being drafted and handed off to Roosevelt, and more at the preliminary administrative paperwork for Reichskommissariat Ukraine

3) The precedents you cite make no sense, because the MEH hasn't done anything known to outside observers that would sanely drive the Haruhiists (or anyone else, really) into such a fit of berserk rage. You're talking about something like the Morgenthau Plan here, or worse (because of the whole "kill roughly half the people in the country" thing, which was not part of plans to de-industrialize Germany).

The Morgenthau Plan did not emerge until after Germany had started or been heavily involved in the starting of two massively destructive world wars that led to the downfall of multiple empires, killed something like 5% of the entire population of the continent they were on (twice), deliberately and without provocation conquered or drove into subjugation roughly a dozen sovereign states, and committed atrocities of cruelty and evil that would shock the conscience of Attila the Hun.

In short, people had really fucking good reasons to hate Germany in 1943-44 when the Morgenthau Plan was proposed. Between the conquests, the blatant pissing on every concept of human rights or decency, the Holocaust, and their occupation of most of Europe, the Germans had managed to make a lot of really determined enemies.

Japan, likewise, abused prisoners at every turn, engaged in massive high-profile raping and pillaging of Chinese cities (the US in the 1930s was rather fond of China, really) and seemed to have no goal to fight for other than the conquest of as much of the Pacific Theater as possible. All of which they capped off with a sneak attack on the US military which killed over a thousand US personnel, which is the sort of thing that really is effective at creating massive hostility in the armed forces.

Why the hell are people that determined to massacre the population of the MEH? They've only been around for nine months!

The only way this makes sense, psychologically, is if people who prefer massacres to "not massacres" are basically using the war against the MEH as a pretext to launch massacres. They don't need a reason to hate someone enough to want to kill half their population and demolish their industrial base; they just need an excuse.

And bluntly, that would seem to apply OOC as well as IC; I am honestly disturbed by the level of glee people seem to be showing here.

[Darkevilme]

It seems a little weird to me as well Simon. If only cause sharing my own prior perspective the Chamarrans believe they must run this invasion in a comparatively clean and humane fashion or they'd earn massive outrage from the human powers. Judging from what we've seen since we wrote that either Tia Kithandra is right about this possible outrage and there's merely a valley of hypocrisy you could drive a Bolo through about what human and inhuman nations can and can't do or she's just plain wrong about humanity's general opinion on indiscriminate and possibly unnecessary death.

[Siege]

I will say this: the extreme measures people are willing to take against the Multiversal Empire have not the slightest whif of in-universe justification, and in fact the entire war is in my opinion on extremely thin ice with respect to proper separation of OOC and IC knowledge. The Empire's actions vis-a-vis psions are despicable but hardly unprecedented, so frankly from an IC perspective I'm at a total loss to explain the sudden emergence of this giant coalition when Shepistan is quietly allowed to practice the art of not even recognizing psions as human for centuries on end.

Suffice it to say that anyone getting their genocide on during the war better not hope to share good relationships with the Sovereignty for the next century or so. Which in case of the Holy Empire would be a pity, but we're hard pressed enough trying to rationalize the actions of the Imperium, and we need them a whole lot more than we need the Haruuhists. At some point we're going to have to wonder that if we consider these people our friends, what was our problem with the Bragulans again?

[Simon_Jester]

A fair point, and the flip side of my thoughts about whether to get involved- it's such a horrid mess that I'm not sure I want to be a part of this.

Because the thing is starting to turn my stomach- out of character and with modhat on, in all seriousness, what the hell is wrong with some of you people?

[White Haven]

I'm just going to step in here and say, on the backhand, good. If the MEHstomp produces breakdowns in international relationships all across the galaxy, maybe people won't be bored enough to try to put another stomp together and instead can actually get around to fighting one another. Silver linings, eh?

[Master_Baerne]

A fair point, and the flip side of my thoughts about whether to get involved- it's such a horrid mess that I'm not sure I want to be a part of this.

Because the thing is starting to turn my stomach- out of character and with modhat on, in all seriousness, what the hell is wrong with some of you people?

I'm with Simon on this. Why exactly are people plotting to slag the MEH's planets, exactly? What, apart from some astoundingly bad diplomacy (reason enough for a war, perhaps, but not for an extermination) has the MEH done? I've got ships in the coalition as a PR move, international goodwill and such, but the deaths by orbital bombardment of hundreds of billions of mostly-innocent fatties strike me as... unjustifiable.

[Steve]

Given that the Haruhists had to outload their ships with such weapons, and such might be noticeable to various intelligence sources...

[Simon_Jester]

Yep.

I'm sending a Umerian contingent after all, with a bright young (recently promoted) full admiral in charge- though a Umerian four-star really should be counted equivalent to other people's three-stars because of the way our rank structure works.

Of course, he's probably not going to thank me. Poor guy. Maybe this is where his drinking problem starts.

"Alcohol is humanity's friend. How can I abandon a friend?"

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The Imperium's position is more subtle.

The Imperium has taken note of the sudden appearance of many extra-dimensional entities of late, and it is extremely curious as to whether these entities pose a threat not just to the Imperium but to the current universe as a whole. Because of this, we are very interested in capturing and interrogating this God entity and to determine if the MEH is tainted by Chaos.

Yes we have legitimate reasons, and the religious prattle is for public consumption. If we find that the MEH humans are tainted in some way, they will simply be destroyed. If not, we will simply destroy their capability to make war and leave them be thereafter.

[Simon_Jester]

Now see, that at least makes sense; there's an internal logic to it, and it comes from a state which has much more logical precedents for the kind of total-war mindset that makes large scale massacre plausible. It fits together in character with what, most of the time, you pitch the Imperium as being- though you do occasionally veer off that track quite a bit.

But for the same thing to come out of a war-weary Haruhiist high admiral doesn't make nearly so much sense- doesn't fit with their characterization.

Well, looking over the outlines of history that Shinn never really fleshed out, maybe it would; I can read between the lines and see how it would fit together, that over the excessively long tenure of some of their senior military officials, they actually have fought enough wars on enough fronts to develop that mindset. But that characterization has to be penciled in by inference from their backstory; it is not and was never there in the full, proper sense.

To tell you the truth, it's a damn good argument for a shakeup in the Imperial high command; the Haruhiist senior officers may be superficially young in body, but they have grown far, far too old in spirit, too prone to fight the next war as if it was the last one, for the good of themselves or anyone else.

[Ryan Thunder]

I'm with Simon on this. Why exactly are people plotting to slag the MEH's planets, exactly? What, apart from some astoundingly bad diplomacy (reason enough for a war, perhaps, but not for an extermination) has the MEH done? I've got ships in the coalition as a PR move, international goodwill and such, but the deaths by orbital bombardment of hundreds of billions of mostly-innocent fatties strike me as... unjustifiable.

Yeah, frankly I was just gonna send an Avenger squadron after one of his big ships. Like a Pellaeon or something. But if we're just gonna blow up a bunch of helpless fatties, I may not even do that.

[Simon_Jester]

Oh, don't be like that, Ryan! Join the Umerian Expeditionary Fleet! Save the whales!

[Ryan Thunder]

Oh, don't be like that, Ryan! Join the Umerian Expeditionary Fleet! Save the whales!

Alright, I'll deploy some expeditionary troops, but only if I can get some guarantee that they won't get the planet they're freedomizing exploderized by my overzealous allies.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

But for the same thing to come out of a war-weary Haruhiist high admiral doesn't make nearly so much sense- doesn't fit with their characterization.

Well, looking over the outlines of history that Shinn never really fleshed out, maybe it would; I can read between the lines and see how it would fit together, that over the excessively long tenure of some of their senior military officials, they actually have fought enough wars on enough fronts to develop that mindset. But that characterization has to be penciled in by inference from their backstory; it is not and was never there in the full, proper sense.

To tell you the truth, it's a damn good argument for a shakeup in the Imperial high command; the Haruhiist senior officers may be superficially young in body, but they have grown far, far too old in spirit, too prone to fight the next war as if it was the last one, for the good of themselves or anyone else.

You got it perfectly. It really is my fault that I haven't fleshed out the Haruhiist backstory as well as I should have, and you are right in that some of these officers really should consider retiring for good.

As my latest story post has shown, Madoka, Mami, Sayaka, and even Kyoko are just as disgusted by Homura as the rest of you are, and the Empress has seen it fit to put her foot down. Homura will get to watch the invasion from inside her cell if she doesn't mellow out.