Let's Examine Crusade

[Simon_Jester]

Re: Cecilia:
Maybe, but the casualties aren't so vastly higher. A lot more Americans come back from the Russian Front than don't, after all. A butterfly killing one or more of them would be possible, but far from certain. And while Stuart certainly arranges plenty of stupid butterfly contrivances, I see no reason for him to arrange those except to show off the obvious precept of "It's ALTERNATE history!"

I mean, you'd basically be rolling dice to determine who lives and who dies, and what decent story can be told that way?

The next “this happened” is a show-off of the F-108, a fighter designed in OTL but never built. I’ll take advantage of this scene to say that having OTL designs, even never-built ones, is just another example of the lack of butterflies in TBO. It’s either OTL designs or butterfly wings that only flap towards never-built OTL designs that Stuart and his fans would like to see.

In the near term post-TBO, it's probably reasonable to see such designs. It's also deliberate; Stuart wanted a world (IIRC) in which we saw some of these never-built, high-performance aircraft.

The rationale makes a fair amount of sense up through the 1960s- given the way WWII ends, it is totally sensible for the US to wind up converting its military into a large, highly capable force ruthlessly optimized for its ability to deliver nuclear bombs. That's "how wars are won," from the point of view of a late 20th century person living on TBO Earth.

The absence of a meaningful Cold War rivalry with the USSR (which is both devastated by the war and heavily indebted to the US for its support during the war) means no need to structure a conscript army to cover the Fulda Gap, little perceived need to deploy troops to hotspots like Korea or Vietnam to forestall the spread of international communism, and an environment in which the "missile gap" and related rhetoric that influenced the ICBM-vs-bombers debate is unlikely to emerge in recognizable form.

And if you want to build an optimized nuclear delivery force, it's going to look like either the existing ICBM force, or a bomber force. If it's a bomber force and it's being developed in the 1950s and 1960s using state of the art technology for the period, it will end up with roughly the force mix Stuart describes, in aircraft types clearly recognizable as such: high speed bomber basically equivalent to the B-70, high speed interceptors to stop enemy nuclear bombers from reaching things we don't want disintegrated, and so forth.

Say what you will about the man, I don't quibble with his ability to design a 1960s air defense network.

You'd expect to see more divergence in the '70s and on, as the consequences of less emphasis on tactical air support, low-altitude air operations, and the like come into play. And from what I recall, there is a certain amount of that: compare TBO's version of the "Tomcat" carrier-based fighter to what flew off USN carriers in real life. By the 2000-2010 timeframe, practically the entire US Air Force and naval aviation are flying planes that, in real life, "never were."

But for aircraft design, in terms of what kinds of performance and capabilities are valued and what kinds of performance are not- because that's what drives the designs- the point of departure isn't 1940 at all. It's some time in the 1960s, when a differing sense of the possible and a differing set of performance criteria start motivating people to depart from the historical evolution of aircraft designs.

More seriously, why is Carter even in politics? He left the Navy only because his father died IIRC and he had to go put the family affairs in order, and this in turn led him into politics.

That's not to mention the extreme unlikeliness of him becoming President at the same time that he did, or as a President with the same type of positions that he held IRL. Carter was actually a rather obscure governor at the start of the primary season in the 1976 Election, who used the caucuses and primaries to get himself the Democratic Nomination. There is no reason for Carter to become President when he did in the TBOverse, except that Stuart wanted him as a strawman to make "Ronaldus Magnus" look greater in comparison (who also got elected at the same time as he did IRL).

Yep. This ties into the repeated comments that what's skewed about TBO isn't the hardware so much as it's the people.

[Guardsman Bass]

So, deciding not to kill millions of innocents who just happen to live under a bad regime, just so you can utterly wipe out a threat, is a “mistake.” It’s not like there aren’t any other options against the Caliphate. Stuart kept saying that they were very loose and only held together by hatred for the outside world, meaning they should be easy to topple even if the defeat and the loss of their German “janissaries” didn’t cause them to be toppled already. Say what you will about CIA dirty tricks, but not even a staunch good-government leftist would consider them worse than nuclear destruction.

I can sort of understand his thinking here. The post-TBO US security strategy was built around the threat of "Massive Retaliation": i.e., fuck with us in a serious way and we'll completely nuke the shit out of you a la Germany. Rather brutal to say the least, but TBO America lost 3 million-plus people in Russia in WW2, and it was actually a real strategy in the 1950s (mostly as a way to counter the Soviets' conventional military superiority in Europe). I can understand why TBO America would be extremely reluctant to potentially get drawn into another major war.

Anyways, once the US pulled back from nuking the Caliphate when they gave in to the demands, it was basically them conceding that they wouldn't always nuke a country that seriously threatened them or the lives of their citizens. Massive Retaliation was effectively dead as a strategy after that, although the US continued to use its "nukes for everything major" position throughout the entire TBO series.

Yeah, parts of his writing seems over the top sadistic. Though, if you've read HPCA over the years, (really, it was better when it was the POW forum on warships1) you'll find lots of pent up right wing anger against the left, much of it rather nasty and sadistic.

Tell me about it. There's also the short story later on where one of the demons breaks into the home of Michael Moore (Stuart calls him the "Movie Producer" or something like that, but it's clear who he means), ties him up, shoves him into a clothes dryer, and then sets it to go until he dies.

[Xess]

Tell me about it. There's also the short story later on where one of the demons breaks into the home of Michael Moore (Stuart calls him the "Movie Producer" or something like that, but it's clear who he means), ties him up, shoves him into a clothes dryer, and then sets it to go until he dies.

I remember that. It was very disturbing.

I've read TBO, Crusade and Ride of The Valkyries and I honestly had to force my way through them. The complete lack of any meaningful danger to the protagonists and Stuart's incredibly dry prose make his novels very boring reads.

[Stark]

So... I gotta ask.

Why'd you read them?

[Xess]

So... I gotta ask.

Why'd you read them?

At the time I'd heard good things about them and I was entertained just enough to read ones beyond TBO. After that I was mostly just reading them out of obligation to try and finish the series. It wasn't a smart thing to do in retrospect.

[Stark]

Seriously. I remember the period of TBO honeymoon on SDN; but when people actually showed it to me, I just laughed at how terrible it was and tagged everyone who had recommended it as 'an idiot'. The people who slogged through not just TBO but TSW as well must be real masochists.

[Coop D'etat]

Yeah, parts of his writing seems over the top sadistic. Though, if you've read HPCA over the years, (really, it was better when it was the POW forum on warships1) you'll find lots of pent up right wing anger against the left, much of it rather nasty and sadistic.

Tell me about it. There's also the short story later on where one of the demons breaks into the home of Michael Moore (Stuart calls him the "Movie Producer" or something like that, but it's clear who he means), ties him up, shoves him into a clothes dryer, and then sets it to go until he dies.

I remember thinking about how twisted that was when I read it (motivated out of spare time and morbid curiosity). Especially since it was in response to the Moore stand in (the Filmmaker was what I think they called him) being mean to his domestic staff or something completely disproportionate to the need for assassination.

Seems to be a pattern of thinking that goes:
1) I don't agree with your opinions and think you're a threat to America because of them.
2) In light of 1 I believe every story about how nasty you are in your personal life (Moore, Carter, Hillary Clinton etc.).
3) because of 2, you are a worthy target of vigilante justice completely disproportionate to your supposed crimes (Moore, Clark, John and Teddy Kennedy).
4) Just for fun we're going to do 3 in as bizarre and lurid manner as possible rather than eliminating them like a professional would.

While I can understand political murder and in rare and extreme scenarios see how it could be justified, getting a boner about it is pretty disgusting, especially for people who are not an immediate threat to anyone's life or limb. Even if I had an opportunity to get Hitler, I'd just want to shoot him in the face to save lives rather than torturing him for personal satisfaction.

[Xess]

Seriously. I remember the period of TBO honeymoon on SDN; but when people actually showed it to me, I just laughed at how terrible it was and tagged everyone who had recommended it as 'an idiot'. The people who slogged through not just TBO but TSW as well must be real masochists.

I'm rather glad I wasted only my time with the forum versions of TBO rather than wasting both my time and money on the print ones. Honestly I've read worse, Battlefield Earth for example, I wanted to read it to see what the book that spawned the horrible movie was like. I stopped about halfway through when the Earth-liberation plot ended and yet for some reason the book kept going. Or the Left Behind series, a family friend lent my family the first book and I managed about 3 chapters before I had to put that down for good.

[Coop D'etat]

Seriously. I remember the period of TBO honeymoon on SDN; but when people actually showed it to me, I just laughed at how terrible it was and tagged everyone who had recommended it as 'an idiot'. The people who slogged through not just TBO but TSW as well must be real masochists.

I'm rather glad I wasted only my time with the forum versions of TBO rather than wasting both my time and money on the print ones. Honestly I've read worse, Battlefield Earth for example, I wanted to read it to see what the book that spawned the horrible movie was like. I stopped about halfway through when the Earth-liberation plot ended and yet for some reason the book kept going. Or the Left Behind series, a family friend lent my family the first book and I managed about 3 chapters before I had to put that down for good.

While I didn't think the stuff on the forums held much literary merit, I found them quite interesting in an anthropological sense, as insight in the viewpoints and values of conservative members of the Anglo-American government functionaries and their ideological followers and hangers on. The belief in the redemptive power of violence was an interesting under-current, as well as the fear of the other and fetishism of post-WWII as the ideal point in history and Regean as the greatest leader the world has ever seen.

One quote that particularly stuck with me as a great example of English/American arrogance was that 19th century Germany didn't produce anything of cultural value beyond a new method to cook cabbage.

[Simon_Jester]

Seriously. I remember the period of TBO honeymoon on SDN; but when people actually showed it to me, I just laughed at how terrible it was and tagged everyone who had recommended it as 'an idiot'. The people who slogged through not just TBO but TSW as well must be real masochists.

I think TSW was marginally less bad than TBO because Stuart didn't indulge himself quite so much. Also, it plays to the "religion sucks" meme which keeps bouncing around here.

[Starglider]

Ride of the Valkyries is more entertaining Crusade, mainly because it has a naval battle in which the outcome is actually in doubt (due to no Americans being present). As opposed to Winter Warriors where Stuart spends about ten chapters describing a US carrier group systematically destroying a German battleship group while taking negligible casualties. Plausible but rather boring.

I thought Armageddon was fun mainly because it was a collaborative effort. The actual writing was pretty bad - I should know, I contributed a fair chunk of it - but that's to be expected for something that originally a bizarre tangent from some fundie bashing. Trying to go back and read it now (not that you can, on SDN) would be like reading old STGODs : probably still some entertaining chunks in there but also a lot of dross and not much plot coherence. I'd note that with TSW I pushed for the portal/lava attacks to be included specifically to make the enemies at least a slightly credible threat; the typical Stuart one-sided curbstomp was getting old at that point.

[phongn]

Ride of the Valkyries is more entertaining Crusade, mainly because it has a naval battle in which the outcome is actually in doubt (due to no Americans being present). As opposed to Winter Warriors where Stuart spends about ten chapters describing a US carrier group systematically destroying a German battleship group while taking negligible casualties. Plausible but rather boring.

WW's ground combat is pretty interesting, though, even if that naval battle was so (realistically, but boringly) one-sided.

Seriously. I remember the period of TBO honeymoon on SDN; but when people actually showed it to me, I just laughed at how terrible it was and tagged everyone who had recommended it as 'an idiot'. The people who slogged through not just TBO but TSW as well must be real masochists.

Yeah, I was one of those idiots (EDIT: I was probably the one who did the most to popularize TBO back in the day, too!)

[Shroom Man 777]

I read Smarma-Get'em and Pancake-Side, so yeah, count me in as a self-flagellating member of Opus Dei.

Gods.

I can't believe we regarded him as hot shit back in the day. I am so thankful for the Curtain Click in helping squash that shit before we all rode Bart Blade's XBOX-70 VALKYLIE MINOGUE to Burpelson AFB.

[Guardsman Bass]

I actually enjoyed bits and pieces of Crusade and Ride of the Valkyries, mostly by simply skimming much of the terrible prose.

[Edward Yee]

Although I haven’t fully read Stuart’s fan fiction, in his more popular Hell Legions vs. Earth fan fiction I gather that he already got into the bad habit of making the straw-man baddies both counter intuitively strong and weak, depending on what the plot demands. Hell’s demons have the supernatural power to enter our reality then get curb stomped with contemptuous ease by the US Military, Hell’s demons have the supernatural power to project false images into people’s heads but then get stopped by tinfoil hats, etc.

I recall at the time that the "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" explanation was used and was a recurring theme, at least in "Armageddon," for the "supernatural powers." Them not actually using these as effectively as they could have? Cultural stagnation, the seeming lack of necessity, or the chance that Satan would perceive the innovator as a threat, so it's not like that was completely handwaved... even if The Message itself was. (Amusingly, I recall Pantheocide mentioning an in-universe alt-history story about what if the demons had made use of portals in the opening battles, at least tactically.)

As for "straw-man baddies"... the only incident that immediately stands out in my mind re: "skewed politics" (or rather, "plausible hardware, implausible people") was the Myanmar junta going along so easily towards a suggested war with Thailand, when even Kim Jong-un realized what a bad idea it was for North Korea to follow suit, in the same story!

[Count Chocula]

I'm sorely tempted to buy Ride of the Valkyries after reading the first chapter or two. Shit, I'll give Stuart credit: he's showing an Air Force actually USING the Eisenhower Interstate System the was it was designed! A fucking heavy bomber landing and refuelling on a highway while the taxpayers gawk at the aluminum cloud descending over their heads is real physical and mental 'git-'er-done' badassery.

[Simon_Jester]

Just remember to add the cost of traffic disruptions to the cost of maintaining the bombers.

Hey, you'd do it for rail-mobile missile launchers...

[Guardsman Bass]

I'd hate to see this thread locked, so we should probably stay away from TSW discussion.

I just re-read the first chapter in Ride of the Valkyries. The grammar and prose aren't as offensively bad as they were in the earlier books, but they're still not great. Once you got past some of the strangeness (like the French general reflecting on how great it was that the US obliterated the Champs Elysee after TBO in order to get France to "stop focusing on the past"), it was okay. Apparently kids collect bomber plane cards instead of baseball cards in this universe.

I can't believe we regarded him as hot shit back in the day. I am so thankful for the Curtain Click in helping squash that shit before we all rode Bart Blade's XBOX-70 VALKYLIE MINOGUE to Burpelson AFB.

Stuart himself usually had some interesting commentary when it came to nuclear weapons, and military matters in general. He helped to clear up a lot of misconceptions about ABM, for example.

[His Divine Shadow]

As wished. Moved to OT because it is not fantasy per se.

Delusional, perhaps.

[Stark]

I'm sorely tempted to buy Ride of the Valkyries after reading the first chapter or two. Shit, I'll give Stuart credit: he's showing an Air Force actually USING the Eisenhower Interstate System the was it was designed! A fucking heavy bomber landing and refuelling on a highway while the taxpayers gawk at the aluminum cloud descending over their heads is real physical and mental 'git-'er-done' badassery.

Do you also enjoy cook books and snuff films? Mix the two and you're only awful literacy away from Stuarts work!

[Shroom Man 777]

I can't believe we regarded him as hot shit back in the day. I am so thankful for the Curtain Click in helping squash that shit before we all rode Bart Blade's XBOX-70 VALKYLIE MINOGUE to Burpelson AFB.

Stuart himself usually had some interesting commentary when it came to nuclear weapons, and military matters in general. He helped to clear up a lot of misconceptions about ABM, for example.

But the whole him being the king of a board full of racist psychos kind of ruins it.

[Big Orange]

I recall at the time that the "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" explanation was used and was a recurring theme, at least in "Armageddon," for the "supernatural powers." Them not actually using these as effectively as they could have? Cultural stagnation, the seeming lack of necessity, or the chance that Satan would perceive the innovator as a threat, so it's not like that was completely handwaved... even if The Message itself was. (Amusingly, I recall Pantheocide mentioning an in-universe alt-history story about what if the demons had made use of portals in the opening battles, at least tactically.)

So it was a similar situation to the Goa'uld from Stargate where they strategically have huge technological advantages over us (like planet wrecking pyramid ships with FTL drives) but are tactically unremarkable, even inept due to their rigid and paranoid culture (their clumsy Jaffa mooks)? I read there's an interesting sounding backstory that Hell's demons were the cousins of Earth's humans.

Although nobody at Spacebattles never seemed to rate Stuart Slade in the first place, he seemed to have had quite a fall from grace here. It didn't seem very long ago (2008-ish) that Stuart was a fairly high profile member.

[Simon_Jester]

I think his behavior regarding TSW towards the end turned some people off- though there's also a hivemind thing going on. SDN has been trending sharply to the left ever since... around the time the current recession began. A lot of the people here who are most likely to be sympathetic* to Stuart's politics (and those of HPCA) have been getting quieter- partly because they're being driven off, and partly because they don't want to talk about anything that might get them driven off.

Meanwhile, the mirror image of this has been happening on HPCA, as far as I can tell. By 2010, the difference was getting sharp enough that there wasn't a lot of room for common ground between the two groups. With the end of TSW as a story (which brought the two communities together over issues where they could talk to each other without trying to strangle each other, like the physics of angels), there really wasn't anything to keep the two communities from becoming allergic to one another. SDN has developed a strongly allergic reaction to all things Stuart-ish simply because it regards his politics, and those of his associates, as toxic.

That encourages the SDN community to start looking at the bad side of his writing style or personality in ways that were mostly ignored when he was more widely respected.
_______________

*"Sympathetic" does not mean "agreeing." It means "I can comprehend how a person can believe these things and still be a decent human being worthy of my time and energy."

Purely to give an example, I am sympathetic to a person who genuinely believes that abortion is murder and acts accordingly, so long as they are nonviolent. I don't agree with them, but I can comprehend how a decent person can think those things, and so I'm not going to endlessly mock such a person for their opinions. There are other, more pleasant ways to interact with them than 'endless mockery.' I'll use those instead.

I can't believe we regarded him as hot shit back in the day. I am so thankful for the Curtain Click in helping squash that shit before we all rode Bart Blade's XBOX-70 VALKYLIE MINOGUE to Burpelson AFB.

Stuart himself usually had some interesting commentary when it came to nuclear weapons, and military matters in general. He helped to clear up a lot of misconceptions about ABM, for example.

Well yeah- within the area where he knows his stuff, he knows his stuff.

I think he's fallen into the expert's trap of assuming his specialist knowledge makes him more intelligent and qualified to weigh in on other areas than other people. So anyone who tries to question his judgment in any area, when it comes to his pet world-building project, is automatically stupid and/or crazy.

[Norseman]

I think he's fallen into the expert's trap of assuming his specialist knowledge makes him more intelligent and qualified to weigh in on other areas than other people. So anyone who tries to question his judgment in any area, when it comes to his pet world-building project, is automatically stupid and/or crazy.

That makes a lot of sense actually. There's also the aura of expertise about him which makes people loathe to question him when he speaks up about things outside of his field of expertise. Which of course creates a rather nasty feedback cycle, in that tons of people agree with him that anyone who argues with him is stupid or crazy. Apparently in the online comic writing world that sort of thing is called a hugbox, where everyone hugs each other and shuns the outsider.

I also think that his writings suffer from basically being webfics. I notice that a lot of online stories have the author writing chapters about stuff in order to please his audience, lots of shout-outs and so forth. This is a lot of fun for an online group activity, but it is absolutely toxic to writing a good narrative. Of course such a story could still be salvageable if the author was willing to take a big pair of scissors and cut out all of the redundant material, as well as actually seriously edit what is left. On the other hand if you take that first draft and only clean up the grammar and the layout...

Even the ridiculous nature of the world (Caliphate and the history of the German victory) could be forgiven if he outright admitted it was a cautionary tale of the "be careful what you wish for" nature. Instead he demanded that it be taken seriously as alternate history. It's like Warhammer 40000 can be great fun if you realise that it's tongue in cheek, but it becomes completely ridiculous in a bad sense if you try to take it seriously.

[Shroom Man 777]

Well, you know what they say. Fandom is one of the worst things to happen to any series/franchise, especially if the makers end up catering to their wishes or panders to them. We've seen that happen quite badly to professional works (see RTD's later Doctor Who seasons, and Moffat's). How much more in forums where the maker has direct contact with the fans? It's easy to lose perspective.