Hayden stood on a mountain of torn paper. The torn wreckage of dead plans was broken at her hooves like the soldiers of the invading army. They had so little time. Three months until the soonest the enemy could arrive, with twice that as the most optimistic estimate.
She had solved so much. Outside, Icefalls was changing. She wasn’t alone—she had most of the soldiers of Defiance, many of which were already trained in her strange methods. The city already had a sewer—in a few weeks, its frozen fields would be growing crops. Its mines sung with the sound of pony pickaxes, and soon forges would rise over the city.
In the absence of the Stonebeaks, it would be a glorious new future for Icefalls—an industrial powerhouse to dwarf anything in the empire below. But with so little time… how could they possibly defend it?
Basic training is ten weeks. I have more than that with my recruits. Surprisingly little of that time was devoted to the use of weapons. Of course, they couldn’t put off that time forever. American soldiers would have been taught every aspect of care for their expected service weapon. Her growing troops needed to know how to fight together, how to follow orders. They could be the bravest ponies in the world, but if they had sticks and rusty pitchforks, they would all die. Not to mention every single bat has a little demon inside them. She couldn’t let herself get distracted with things she couldn’t control. Avalon would have to solve that one, or else Equestria was doomed.
The door opened, and Hayden looked up. There were few ponies who would dare to interrupt the general of all the north while she was working.
There was one, though. Nightbreeze wore an ill-fitting noble’s dress, pale blue and glittering with glass imitation gemstones.
“What’s this mess?” she asked, bending down to scoop up the nearest sheet. “You know paper is expensive, right?”
She spread the sheet out on Hayden’s desk, frowning at it. “What is this?”
“Simpler rifle,” Hayden muttered. “Trying to get it down to a single cast-forging. But no matter what I do, there’s always too many parts. Avalon was supposed to be making all this for us, and… he can’t.”
Nightbreeze looked between the ruined sketch and Hayden for a long time. Hayden wasn’t sure what she was looking for. “You really do care about them. About… ponies. All those hours wasted making pipes back in Harmony, remember? I thought you were the strangest, wildest noble I’d ever had the displeasure of caring for.”
She set the sheet down, gazing into Hayden’s eyes. “Then, after you cursed me… and convinced Luna to send me away… I thought you were the worst pony in all Equestria. Selfish, blind, stupid… it didn’t matter who you hurt as long as you got what you wanted.”
Hayden couldn’t meet her eyes anymore. “You still think all that?”
“No.” Nightbreeze set a hoof gently on hers, pushing her to put down the quill. “I wish Princess Luna was as brave as you are. Equestria would be safe right now. There would be no poor, no enemies trying to invade us… nothing.”
Hayden rose to her hooves, pulling away. “I wish. Nightbreeze, it’s not enough. I couldn’t get Avalon to help us. We have eight thousand soldiers with their old Equestrian army weapons and armor. How many recruits?”
“Just… over ten thousand,” Nightbreeze said. “And a third of those are mares. Still not sure what you wanted with them. We don’t need three thousand scouts and messengers.”
“Ten thousand. Even if we armed them all, we would be outnumbered. And we won’t arm them. At this rate, they’ll be fighting with spears.”
“That isn’t what you told us before.” Nightbreeze stared around at all her designs, plucking one off the wall. “These cannons. We can shoot their airships down before they’re close enough to bomb the city.”
“We will,” Hayden agreed. “Gunpowder and cannons… we’ll do that. We’ll drop them out of the air. But we’re fighting an army of birds. They’ll come for us, with claws and armor and all the swords they stole. What do we do then?”
“You’re asking me?” Nightbreeze turned away from her. “What happened to that big scary general? What was it you said to Celestia? Threatening her in front of the court… can’t you be that pony? Think of the worst weapon you can, it’s still not worse than what the Stonebeaks want to do. They eat ponies. They keep slaves. We must win. We both know Celestia won’t change her mind.”
The most terrible weapon she could. Nuclear—impossible. Might as well teach them how to build space shuttles while she was at it. After that?
Hayden walked away, not even hearing Nightbreeze anymore. She lifted her Kindle off the shelf, opening it up and scrolling through her books with stylus in her mouth. Until she found what she was looking for. The Illustrated History of the Weapons of World War One.
Hayden skimmed past the parts of the book that had interested her most before—early tanks, U-boats, those parts she had enjoyed reading about back when she’d been enlisted and vaguely interested in military history.
Tanks? Impossibly complex. Artillery? She was already making canons, and they would have next to no ground targets. She lingered a little on the Vickers gun. Still too complex. Not enough time to come up with something simpler.
She stopped when she got to the section about poison gas, though she didn’t stay there long. Getting chlorine gas would be something she could do, even with her basic knowledge of chemistry. Enough sea water, a little electricity, the right catalyst… but no good.
Their enemy would be fighting them in their own territory. Even the worst gasses she didn’t have the chemistry to make required soldiers to be trapped with them—every enemy soldier had built in tools to disperse them, not to mention a coat of feathers to keep the poison from contacting skin.
The Germans made 88 tons of chlorine, their enemy were all trapped in trenches, and they only managed to kill a thousand people.
Hayden sighed, shutting off the Kindle. An army of many times that size would not be deployed to Icefalls all at once, even if they somehow had a way of protecting the residents of the city and all their soldiers.
She’d already played with crazier ideas. Floating nets, mines hidden in clouds—both seemed interesting as tricks for her toolbelt. Neither seemed like they would win her a war.
“I just don’t think there’s a way to cheat this,” she finally said. “Lodestone told me I would need a hundred thousand ponies to stop the Stonebeaks when their fleet arrives. We’ll probably kill a lot when we bring down the airships, so… call it half that many. We have less than half of the ponies we need, most of them are new, and as of right now they’re going into battle naked.”
“Don’t tell them during your next recruitment speech,” Nightbreeze said, eyes scanning her sketches and drawings again. Looking for something she had missed, maybe? “What did you manage to bring back from Avalon, anyway? Most everypony saw your caravan headed into the vault and didn’t ask questions. Yet. Were those shiny boxes all empty?”
“No,” Hayden muttered, not even looking back at her. “They’re mostly just full of gold.”
“Don’t lie to me, Hayden. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Hayden turned sharply on her hooves, making for the door. “Come on then. See for yourself.”
They made their way to the treasury, and Hayden unlocked the door. She was the only pony with a key anymore. The new steward seemed loyal and eager to prove he was better than his family, but he was also a potential danger. Besides, there wasn’t much left of the city’s original wealth.
There were also two of Hayden’s new elites stationed here—soldiers being trained to human methods, selected from the best pony troops, with access to their very limited supply of firearms. Only one of the guards in four would wear a rifle—they were too valuable to risk having too many out at once. Not to mention the energy cells were impossible to replace once depleted.
They would all be trained on the weapons, even if she could never hope to arm them all that way. But if we last long enough for Avalon to solve our Outsider problem, then I can. We’ll need them if Celestia decides to attack us next.
“Just the two of you, ma’am?”
Hayden nodded, and pushed the door open. “See we aren’t disturbed.”
She took one of the torches off the wall by its holder and tossed it onto the stone floor near one of the plastic crates.
There were a dozen of them—three held weapons. The other nine… she spent a few seconds struggling with the plastic locking mechanism, before the lid sprung off and open. Revealing the interior.
Gold commodity bricks, stacked up in neat rows. Each of these bars were small, ready to be melted in one of Avalon’s advanced fabricators and make computer parts. Each tiny bar weighed one kilogram, though there was plenty of foam in the case as well. Otherwise, it might weigh so much nopony could lift it.
“Two point seven tons in all,” Hayden said. “Two thousand, four hundred and fifty little bars like that.”
Nightbreeze stumbled past her, mouth opening and closing but no words coming out. She lifted one of the bars to her mouth, imprinting the edge slightly with one of her pointed bat teeth. She squeaked in shock at the taste. “I-it is…” She dropped it onto the ground, then glared up at Hayden.
“This has been sitting here for three days now, and you spent all that time confused about whether we would be able to find weapons? With this much, you could… you could buy every mercenary in Equestria! You might even be able to pay off the birds!”
Hayden laughed bitterly at that last. “Yeah, sure. Because once they had the gold they’d honor their promise for sure.”
Nightbreeze didn’t laugh—she met Hayden’s eyes with deadpan seriousness. “Griffons are serious about their word. They’d never break it, if they gave it to us.”
“Then they’d never give it,” Hayden said. “I already spent weeks going over this with Lodestone, and he knows how they think. They want to move into Equestria too badly. They hate the cold. They were waiting for their friend Sombra to lead them, but now he’s dead, the Empire’s gone, so…”
“Why not mercenaries, then? They’d come with their own weapons. They’d already be trained, we could use all our ponies for other things.”
She shook her head. “My world tried that a few times… I don’t like it. Even if it works, maybe tomorrow Celestia comes around and offers them a better deal. Or the Stonebeaks do… not a chance I’m putting Icefalls in their hands.”
“Hands being…”
Hayden turned away from her, ignoring the question completely. “What if we wanted to hire an army of… workers. Do you think crafts-ponies would take our gold?”
“Why?”
“Well… they’re harder to train than infantry. Star Swirl is incredibly fast, and he said there were unicorns who do nothing but make things all the time. But that kind of skill takes a lifetime of practice. If Avalon won’t be our assembly line, we might need to make our own.”
“I could…” Nightbreeze hesitated. “I still have contacts in Equestria proper. If you give me a few days, I could inquire. Bring in a few.”
“Not a few,” Hayden corrected. “Bring in all of them. Anyone who works in metal, wood, or alchemy. Get the best prices you can, but… get them. Tell them we’ll have work for years. Offer them twice their regular wage, and work for any apprentices or assistants they keep as well.”
Nightbreeze glanced past her to the crates of gold, picking up the single brick and settling it into a pocket of her dress. “I suppose we have the gold to pay. I assume you’ll want this to be in the name of the Equestrian Army?”
“No,” Hayden corrected. “Princess Luna’s name. You probably know her signature, right? Forge it.”
Nightbreeze opened her mouth to protest, then shut it again. “I… that’s a lot to ask. But if Princess Luna were here… I wouldn’t have to risk it. It’s her fault we’re in this position, isn’t it?”
Hayden shrugged. “It’s many ponies’ faults. I think if we manage to protect Icefalls, she won’t even notice what you did, or care. And if she does… we can tell her I did it. It’s my fault, not yours.”
“I’ll get as many as I can,” Nightbreeze said. “Though I think we might want to consider buying some things. Armor, for instance. We can’t make everything here, even if your method is faster. There are many good armorers in Equestria.”
“Fine.” Hayden turned to leave. She reached into a pocket and tossed the key to the treasury at Nightbreeze’s hooves. “You know how to manage bits better than I do. Just make sure the money lasts until spring. After that, buck it.”
Hayden hurried past the guards, speeding into a gallop. Pony craftsmen would not be skilled enough to make cartridge firearms for her soldiers, but they wouldn’t have to in order to give them a strategic advantage.
Where did I leave those Arquebus designs?
What about napalm? Sure, you will still need petroleum or a similar substitute, natural or artificial rubber and phosphorus. But can be worth the cost in such a situation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stymphalian_birds - for no particular reason.
Greatly enjoying this!
Arquebus? I would think a Minie ball ought to be within the tolerances of unicorn craftsponies. Civil War weaponry in general seems like an easier target to hit that World War I, and still pretty devastating, especially if she can put one or two Gatlings together. But if she doesn't have a book on the Civil War, then never mind.
Never underestimate the power of gold, Hayden. Those arquebuses will be a helluva of an advantage. But flintlocks are probably achievable with magical crafting too, and quite faster. Well, even if not the fact that Hayden knows what rilling is already helps.
Oh, and I'm happy about that approximation between the two of them. They shall still be together again!!!
Paying their way to victory isn't guaranteed, especially if Celestia tries to undermine their efforts to get more skilled labor, but it's still the best option Icefalls has. Given the techniques and orders involved, Hayden may well start an industrial revolution by accident.
Finally! Arquebus are a start, but why is Hayden so focused on guns? Crossbows, especially if she can enchant them like the ice bows of the games, would be so much easier to build. Then there's the fact she hasn't made or try to make better armor, which again would be easier to make.
Hayden didn't happen to spot Barrage Balloons in there, did she? They'd be even more practical for ponies than for humans of similar technological abilities, since the ponies could just tie nets of cables directly onto clouds, skipping the need for manufacturing a lifting gas.
They'd be pretty effective against airships, and somewhat effective against griffons themselves, either forcing them to fly slower or taking some of them out of the air as they fly past.
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Not really very accidental, I'd say. Hayden pretty much has been tinkering away and laying foundations for that since she arrived. Getting sent to Defiance just turned the decades that would've taken into years, and the griffon threat turned those years into months.
8689663
Surprisingly, no. A crossbow would be much harder to make, and not only that would be harder for a pony to use without hands.
fthmb.tqn.com/lV8p5RetZP0hIswsBLpVVONEXoU=/735x0/crossbow-56aff55e3df78cf772caaf16.jpg They're actually quite mechanically complex.
Compared to the arquebus, which is really just a hollow tube with a lever that moves down a slowfuse to ignite gunpowder in the pan.
static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/378220/26857928/1455550393863/Screen+Shot+2016-02-15+at+15.32.07.png?token=D0bYKHuUE%2Fo409MYjNYT66a5LzU%3D
Silly Hayden, hilariously unsafe gun-type nuclear bombs are easy. It's the enrichment that's hard, but you've got access to magic that doesn't even blink when turning inanimate stuff into living stuff. Whipping up a few hundred kilos of fissionables should be a small matter.
It's a little amusing to me that while Hayden knew how much gold she had, she really didn't understand how much money that actually translated into.
Can we assume that the ships she has now can go higher then the Griffins can fly?
If so she could just bomb their cities/forts out of existence (various bombs; kinetic, explosive, fire-base).
...and now you surprise me by downplaying your twist with who Avalon is and the nature of the transformation that, once again, I'm wondering if I'll wind up deciding to add it to my recs group.
Honestly, were I in your situation, I'd probably have edited both of those out and come up with some way to source the gold and some weaponry locally. It'd make for a more coherent story.
8699475
I still enjoy reading it. I'm just saying that it fails certain objective indicators of quality I try to hold my recs group to.
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You're free to disagree, but what you did with Avalon is essentially the textbook definition of the detrimental sort of deus ex machina.
It comes across as a blatant "You thought this was an immersive world? Forget that! The author just admitted defeat and rearranged the chess board outside the normal rules!"
It came out of nowhere, doubled the scope of the story without any warning or justification and did it well into the story, added sci-fi to a setting that had given no hint of it until then, shattered the tone and sense of atmosphere that had been building, left me feeling like you were planning to just throw out everything you'd been building and take the story in a whole new direction... and those are just the things I can quickly find the words for.
If nothing else, consistency of tone, atmosphere, and setting, immersiveness, and presenting a representative first impression are objective metrics which can be applied to prose writing. (The expectation that such things will hold is the core of the old saying "reality is stranger than fiction". We hold fiction to stricter standards than reality.)
8699512
Yeah, that's why I said what I did about this story not being for certain readers. Basically, nothing you just said was accurate. Except for all the stuff about how the story made you feel. Obviously one can't be wrong in what they enjoy, what they don't enjoy, etc. I don't expect any story is going to work for everyone, which is why even the most inoffensive stories posted to fimfiction typically acquire at least one or two downvotes.
You can see the signs if you check out some of the comments on previous chapters--the hints of what was coming have been there for quite awhile. Had your reaction been a universal response, I would've gone back and revised the previous chapters here and there to make my foreshadowing clearer. But that wasn't what happened, and thus I'm quite happy with the direction things have gone.
But that still doesn't mean you're going to enjoy it. It's written exactly as intended and nothing will change, but just because the narrative is structured the way I want doesn't mean I think it's objectively the right way to structure fiction. There's no such thing.
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If you're going to blanket dismiss everything I said as not accurate, then we're clearly not going to reach common ground, because, for example, "this is a deus ex machina" is not my opinion. It's based on the Avalon reveal matching the actual definition of what a deus ex machina is.
That said, aside from that scene, which I think is a contrived, less-than-ideal way to make the pieces fit together, I do like the story and will continue reading it... I just wouldn't recommend it to others.
I went into the story knowing about the sci-fi tag on it and commenters made me aware that "Avalon" was some kind of reference to another story... despite that, you spent over 50,000 words lulling me into the impression that you had a much looser definition of "sci-fi" than I did.
I firmly believe that a narrative should be evaluated on its own "internal" merits. (ie. judged on its ability to accurately manage expectations when a reader's only context is any prior works in the series plus "general cultural knowledge" that it's reasonable to expect everyone is likely to be aware of.) If anything, it counts against the story that I was still so blindsided, despite knowing what tags had been applied and what comments were made.
As for your deferring to the readership, if there's one thing looking at reviews of fanfics and looking at my old reviews from the last decade and a half (I save copies) have taught me, it's that you shouldn't defer to the collective opinion, because:
When I use the word "objective" in this context, I generally use it as a concise way to say "patterns that have become so universal in modern fiction in western culture that breaking them is perceived as a failing on the author's part" to contrast against "subjective". (ie. The kinds of things that you'd be taught in a literary theory course.) By that definition there are such things as objectively wrong decisions if you intend your story to be read by people other than yourself.
For example, Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a classic work of comedy despite its frustrating choice of ending which denies viewers the satisfaction of having closure, but, on further contemplation, it does work in its own unusual way. However, like works such as Finnegan's Wake, it is a case of "the exception that proves the rule".
8699597
Yes, this is precisely what I meant when I said "everything was wrong." That right there is objectively wrong. Quick recap of the definition to make sure we agree on what it is. (from Wikipidia) "a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly resolved by the inspired and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object."
Avalon's appearance objectively fails both halves of this definition. Failing either half would disqualify it from counting as "deux ex machina", but it doesn't even match one of the halves:
1. No seemingly unsolvable problem was solved by Avalon's introduction. Starswirl and Hayden arrived at his lab with the intention of getting weapons for the army--that problem remains unsolved when they leave. Later on, Avalon revealed a problem they didn't know about (void infection, which Star Swirl believed did not exist prior to that event), then solved it, but a character revealing a new problem and then solving it fails to match the definition.
Avalon does provide aid (in the form of gold), but this does not reveal itself to be a solution to helping make guns for some time. Not only that, but not having money is not seemingly unsolvable. There are many other ways the characters could've earned money. Even if you wanted to stretch things to the breaking point with gold, it would still fail, along the "suddenly" point. As of the current chapter, the problem of weapons for the army is still unsolved, though the characters are preparing to use the aid they've been given. Through great effort and involvement on their own part this may eventually lead to a solution.
2. Avalon's appearance is neither sudden not unexpected. Avalon had already agreed to provide aid to Icefalls in the form of food and other supplies prior to popping up on the screen. His existence in the story as a great inventor with advanced technology was already known. That he was going to be helping with the defense of Icefalls was established by Star Swirl in his first appearance in the city, many thousands of words before his actual appearance onscreen.
Though the simplified definition does not include a third part, there is an optional part of the definition often seen in literary criticism. As you might expect, it fails here too. The only appearance of this word in the definition is 'inspired'. IE: The agency for solving the problem is typically in the hands of the character or force who shows up to clean things up.
3. Obviously, this isn't the case. Getting Avalon involved was first Star Swirl's decision, then later became Hayden's decision once she hoped that he would help. Avalon himself had no intention of helping and as a matter of fact fought hard to get rid of the active players before eventually being won over by great effort on their part.
What would it have looked like if it actually met the definition? Avalon not being a well established skilled inventor to whom Hayden has been compared for the whole story, but not mentioned at all. Not already helping Icefalls before Hayden did anything. Then, he'd actually have solved one of their problems. Probably (though not necessarily), completely of his own volition, showing up with crates of guns to dispense and resolve their helpless lack of firepower.
As for the rest of the comment, not much more to say other then at the sheer stones of it. What boils down to "I failed to notice something that was obvious to many others, and that's more points against it! Also my interpretation is more accurate than theirs!"
To be more charitable for a second, what you incorrectly identified as deus ex machina is more accurately termed an unexpected shift in tone. The dissatisfaction you experienced is a result of my writing having provided an inadequate level of foreshadowing that the shift was coming. Other characters mentioning Avalon's prowess and amazing machines were clearly not enough, nor were the discussion of Carcosa and its lost technology. While it utterly fails to meet the definition for deus ex machina, it does indicate what Brandon Sanderson might call a literary promise broken. You expected one thing, and got something else.
That is the sort of thing I would seek to improve in a second draft, if and when I ever do one. You are not the only one who was bothered by that shift.
8699648
Sorry for taking so long to respond. I had to go to bed before your reply came in.
We don't quite agree due to two mistakes on my part. (I was already several hours overdue for bed and I do have a problem with impulsiveness and uncaught mistakes when that happens.)
First, I wasn't paying proper attention to what I was writing when I wrote "essentially the textbook definition". (Hey, everyone, come and laugh at the guy who made his own "using 'literally' for emphasis" mistake because he wasn't paying attention!)
I was actually working from the Merriam-Webster definition:
Second, I got a bit sloppy in delineating things because, based on my prior experience reading Message in a Bottle, I didn't expect such a defensive response.
My definitions of the bounds of "suddenly and unexpectedly" and "apparently insoluble" in deus ex machina have been adjusted over the years by observing generally-agreed-upon instances, which indicate that, as with many other fiction terms, the term is defined partly by the overall effect, even if that means the specific points of the definition must get fuzzy around the edges at times.
(A practical concern because language's purpose is to communicate and, if you define your term a little too narrowly in order to snap it to nice, neat boundaries, it winds up seeing use primary as part of awkward phrases intended to loosen its definition. Thankfully, in practice, humans aren't machines, so we generally just agree to such "nudged" definitions and move on.)
Giving someone in a feudal setting an unarmed sci-fi ship, fifty futuristic rifles, and large supply of gold when the inclusion of this type of sci-fi was insufficiently foreshadowed for over 50,000 words definitely meets the "contrived" criterion and falls within the "incomplete solution, but balanced out by being on the more contrived end of things" corner of what deus ex machina can include.
In this case, the perceived insoluble problem that winds up getting a giant, contrived step toward a solution is the more general "apparent hopelessness of the situation" to which "get 50,000 rifles" was only one possible solution.
With that said, before I address your other points, I want to make it clear that "deus ex machina" was never intended to stand alone as a criticism... I just drew a little too much attention to it as part of the "If you're going to blanket dismiss everything".
I will be bringing up my other points again.
Again, leaning on the "overall effect" factor I've observed in real-world declarations of deus ex machina, I have to say that the deus ex machina isn't the reveal of Avalon's existence or tales of his achievements, but, instead, the reveal that he's not something that fits with the setting and tone as established to that point.
(ie. That he wasn't, at most, another transformed contemporary human with a lot of knowledge who'd had much more time to build up a tech base and acquire a group of followers.)
First, you might want to rethink your dialectical technique as I actually had a family member who read this paragraph over my shoulder and asked "Are you sure this person isn't an intellectual troll?"
Now, to attempt a reasonable response:
Imagine that,instead of "a diamond dog inventor named Avalon", it was "a diamond dog inventor named Tiberius" and, when they arrived, they received an unarmed shuttlecraft, a handful of phasers, and a bunch of gold from a marooned James T. Kirk.
I'm honestly curious how you consider that more obviously ill-fitting example significantly different from what you wrote, aside from Kirk being from a more famous source. (I think that knowledge of the "T." in "James T. Kirk" being "Tiberius" is sufficiently uncommon to serve as a viable analogue to having read the source which Avalon comes from.)
...or, if you need a more clear example, perhaps dropping Avalon/Kirk in to contribute to solving the major problem in a similar "contemporary human dropped into a fantasy and/or medieval setting" story like Rick Cook's The Wiz Biz, Terry Brooks's Magic Kingdom for Sale series, Leo Frankowski's The Cross-Time Engineer, The Man from Mundania from Piers Anthony's Xanth series, or Eric Flint's 1632 series (in the last one an entire American town gets transplanted into the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years War).
Calling it "an unexpected shift in tone" is, charitably speaking, an understatement and I have yet to see any evidence that the benefit it brings to the narrative as a whole even balances out its detrimental effects, let alone exceeding them.
I also dispute the fact that it can be justified as an unexpected shift in tone when the aspects of the tone and setting which were problematic are reverted in the following chapter, leaving only the problem of a sci-fi ship, 50 futuristic guns, and a large amount of gold coming out of left field into a fantasy setting.
(I don't really have a problem with your reveal of the nature of the transformation. In fact, I thought it was clever because, combined with Hayden's origins, it foreshadows a reveal that Luna is Patient Zero, which I think would be a very elegant and clever reveal. The the issue is that the reveal was done by cutting out a piece of a different story's setting crudely scotch-taping it into yours.)
Because the most reasonable assumption for someone who has no idea what other story "Avalon" is a reference to is that Avalon's prowess and amazing machines are something that fit with the tone established up to that point... like another contemporary human who's had more time to build a technology base using local materials and skill.
Again, because, given the tone and setting established, it makes no sense to expect Carcosa to imply technology less fantasy-esque than Hayao Miyazaki's conception of Laputa from Castle in the Sky. (And, also, because the amount and type of foreshadowing felt more like a justification for Celestia's behaviour than a foreshadowing of actually seeing advanced tech.)
Combining sci-fi and fantasy in the same story is something which requires a certain degree of setup from the beginning (eg. something like Piers Anthony's Apprentice Adept series) because it's atypical and, thus, something that habitual expectations wander away from unless integrated into the tone of the story at a sufficiently early point.
(Partly because the genres tend to attract settings with opposing approaches to exploring and portraying moral conflicts and inquiry about the nature of the setting. That's actually the underlying reason you see "fantasy" series like Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels and Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels having "regressed colony" sci-fi backstories. To prime readers to expect a more sci-fi philosophical outlook despite the characters existing in feudal-esque settings with fantasy trappings.)
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Yeah, if that's not a good enough sign I've probably said too much. Seeing obvious errors described in terms of objective fact got me responding in more detail than I should have.
So I think I'll just leave it at something simple.
Thanks so much for your input! I appreciate the time you took to type out the way you felt, and I hope you'll continue to let me know how you feel in the future. I don't want to give the impression I'm not grateful for your time, even if in this particular case I wasn't convinced by what you had to say.
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Likewise. I tend to get frustrated when I know the core of my argument has roots in well-established literary theory but my lack of a formal education in the subject prevents me from properly refining my argument and incorporating the correct jargon and citations... and I have a chronic problem with not realizing how much my emotions are compromising my judgment until someone else manages to draw my attention to it.
Will do. Thanks for your part in bringing things to an amicable conclusion.
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Actually, even those kinds of nuclear devices are MUCH more complicated than you might expect.
8704615
Yep one wrong move- BOOM!!!!!
Thank God I did this in a blast room and no one else is in here that isn't immortal
8700898
Plot devices really can be different and there is thin wibbly-wobbly line between plot device and deus ex machina solution, with alot of broken plot devices between. Ironically , the most common broken plot device in fantasy is... Magic.
Quite alot of worlds created by authors are unable to coexist with magic described. Some authors do not care at all, some try and work out evry detail from social to economical and political. Try to read "Schooled in Magic" by C.Nuttall series, if you're curious how that can be done and how much work and knowledge that requires.
On opposite side of demarkation line stands the world of J.Rowling, which cannot exist in a stable form. Ministry's being all-powerful (if Voldermort is not involved) plot device that stops mundane and magic worlds to mingle.
Rowling didn't had expertise to create more survivable world and didn't tried. The goal of book was to to provide fun and to focus on single character, not on the world around him. Same approach is repeated but in much better form in writing of "Fantastic Beasts". At least there author doesn't try to create dramatic plot and comism of situation paint picture of somewhat surreal and cute story. Movie focuses on "cute" part and on stylistics of early 20th century and promptly wins the prize.
It's just matter of methods , but in end result goal is not to create a methodically correct world or story. Goal is to carry some idea to the reader, to carry a imaginative experiment of "what if"s. If current world replaces that with creation of deus ex machina, then it's failure. If deus ex machina helps that... well, it's matter of taste. Some people love candies, some like spicy food.
In Sci-Fi setting technology plays very same role. Technology either creates conflict, provides means to it or is plot device to solve conflict, be it a force shield generator that can either stop wars or spark nuclear war or a time machine used to film movie about vikings in Americas - just to solve momentary funding problem.
It is much harder to do this right if both are intermingled. You have two plot devices of opposite nature: one logical and one surreal. It's like combining sugar and pepper, one step done wrong and you'd better off to not even try it. And still, the readers are the final judge. There would be some who dislike it and those who would swoon about it , and those who still would look for each grain of thought put in there.
For example, I like magic/technology mixture, but WH40 (which is an obvious magitech) usually causes a gag reflex in me, because of xenophobic content and cardboard/cast-iron personages. They are so solid, immutable, homogenous, that one can use them as ammunition for orbital bombardment. I consider Dr.Who series being succeful example of such mixture: replace sonic screwdriver with magic wand and nothing is changed. But what is in focus? People's emotions through prism of Doctor's perception, people's moral. And he's not the judge, he's oldest criminal and oldest hero in universe at same time.
There is third common type of plot device and source of story conflict. It's called "outside context" or "outside-context problem". Europeans reached Americas, Bolo tank had been found in Equestria, a human appears in Everfree forest, Amy had found her raggedy doctor in backyard - it's visit of something that never been here before, something outside of expierence. Something like chucking piece of technology into magical world or vice versa, and watching how it would react to the irritant.
What I wanted to say by all that? Just that plot devices are mere tools. Look at goal first and then decide if tools are matching the task and aren't proverbial hammers. Especially if it's a squeaky inflatable hammer.
Honestly she should build like, 5 Vickers guns or maxims or something, it's too hard to mass produce... but those could kill hundreds each before griffins even made it to the frontline, hundreds out of thousands isnt much... but itd help.