Rage Review: Resist and Bite (Chapter 10, Part B) · 9:55pm Apr 5th, 2020
Chapter 10: Rough talk with the griffons (Part B)
I broke off my previous review of this chapter when Charlie Lam and Luster Dawn headed up to the Griffons' cloud city, inexplicably named "the griffonstone cloudsdale" [sic].
Let's examine that name now. I have no idea why Author is calling the city this, as canonically Griffinstone and Cloudsdale are two separate cities; the first inhabited by Griffons and the latter by Pegasi.
One possible explanation is that Author was not aware of this, instead confusing the two places. This is certainly possible, given the other ways that he's conceptually-mangled the characters and setting.
A more interesting possible explanation is that, in the intervening decade(s) since The End of the End, the word "griffonstone" has come to mean "settlement of the Griffons," and "cloudsdale" simply "cloud city." In which case "the griffonstone cloudsdale" means "Griffon cloud city." That would actually count as world-building, as the implication would be that Equestrian language and culture are changing as other species integrate more fully into the Equestrian.
Story, sadly, is at least so far entirely silent on the issue.
We now return to Story.
Charlie has made it at the entrance of the griffonstone cloudsdale.
In what sense does a cloud city have an "entrance?" Though perhaps this isn't a cloud city? Story never gave a description of "the griffonstone cloudsdale" as seen from a distance, though one would think an engineering student would find the architecture of an alien city, especially one built on the clouds or even a moutaintop, to be rather fascinating.
This gets into a larger problem with Story, namely that there is extensive and even repetitive description of minor details which should be reasonably well-known and only moderately interesting to both Charlie and the readers (such as the sort of equipment carried by the Chicom troops), but almost no description of major details which are unknown and would be extremely interesting to both Charlie and the readers (such as the appearance of "the griffonstone cloudsdale."
As a general rule, one of the whole charms of stories in which a character travels to a civilization alien to his own is the description of the alien landscapes, people, cultures and technologies found therein, and the protagonist's reaction to the wonders (or horrors) he encounters. Even when the audience is familiar with the setting, the protagonist is naive to it, and his reactions are thus still of great interest.
And I mean specific reactions, not just some vague description. Suppose I wrote.
"Suddenly Cthulhu climbed out of the temple. He was really big about three hundred feet tall and had eight glowing eyes and sixteen tentacles on his head and was green and his head was shaped like an octopus and his body like a man with bat wings."
Would that be an adequate descrption of Cthulhu? Or:
"Johansen was petrified and traumatized by seeing the cthulhu."
Would that be an adequate description of Johansen's reaction to great Cthulhu?
Would extremely detailed descriptions of the two mundane ships involved in the story, every freaking time they were mentioned, salvage the story?
I guarantee you that if The Call of Cthulhu had been written like this, no one would have ever heard of it, save as a curiously bad attempt at science fiction horror by someone otherwise a master of the genre.
And what he saw startled him because there were debris everywhere, broken and burning homes, blood stains on the walls as well as some bullet shells some were long and some were short.
(1) I'm not sure why the fact that the Reds have devastated this town should "startle" Charlie. It's par for the course for totalitarian conquerors, and he's already been told that the Chinese hold a serious grudge for something bad they believe the Equestrians did to Beijing,
(2) If homes were "burning," then the ascending smoke columns should have been visitble to him from a distance.
(3) Not sure what Author means by "bullet shells." Perhaps "cartridges?" In which case, "long" and "short" could refer to spent rifle vs. pistol cartridges.
Then Luster Dawn teleported next to Charlie, but unexpectedly, she was holding his hoof, and the exertion has caused them to look at each other, and Luster Dawn had a huge blush on her cheeks but except for Charlie.
(1) How does Luster Dawn manage to teleport into the position of holding hooves with Charlie? This is a sight gag one would more expect of Pinkie Pie, who actually has the abilities to carry something like that off (she would appear from out of frame, grab his hoof and grin broadly at him while utterly violating his personal space).
(2) "... exertion has caused them to look at each other ..." I don't have a clue what this means. "Event" for "exertion," maybe?
(3) Luster Dawn is ignoring the scene of devastation and implied carnage of a community of a race closely-allied to her own to be embarrassed at her physical closeness to Charlie? How airheaded and horny / prudish can she possibly be?
(4) "...but except for Charlie." Here I have absolutely no idea what Author meant to say. But except for Charlie what?
Oh, and this was all one paragraph. A paragraph which, as AC97 also pointed out, begins describing the devastation of the town and then wanders into a clumsy (and, given the context, rather nauseating attempt at making the situation romantic. A paragraph which, more fundamentally and structurally, alters its subject from Charlie to Luster Dawn to (sort of) Charlie (because the sentence just trails off instead of ending properly).
"Should we traverse the quiet and wrecked town?" Charlie asked with a small drop of sweat.
A nightmarishly-bad sentence.
(1) Why is Charlie specifying the "quiet and wrecked" town? Are there any other towns before them? (Traverse is also a poorly chosen word here, but who cares?)
(2) What else can they do, since they've bothered to come all this way? Turn around and proceed to the next place without searching for survivors.
(3) The "small drop of sweat" is an anime / manga convention indicating embarrassment. Such visual conventions should not be used in an actual text-based story, where one can instead describe more realistic signs of such emotions (and as Charlie is the POV protagonist, also describe his thoughts and feelings directly).
(4) Sentence structure implies that Charlie asks by means of the small drop of sweat, which -- given that neither Charlie nor Luster is in Human form -- might very well mean some sort of pheronomal communication (though it's plainly not meant to do so).
They begin searching for survivors:
They looked through some houses but to Charlie, they were bird nests.
Griffons canonically build actual houses, similar to though less fancifully-decorated than Pony dwellings. But okay -- maybe actual houses would be too heavy for a "griffonstone cloudsdale," so let's suppose that the construction is flimsier.
The more serious problem is that Charlie knows that these are Griffon houses. He knows this is a freaking Griffon city. Narrator (presumably from Charlie's 3P POV) even mentioned that they were "homes" earlier in the description.
Now, there is a perfectly good English word for "flimsy or lightly-built wooden houses." That word is "huts." Perhaps Author should have used it?
Most of the houses have burned to ashes and had bodies in the debris which petrified Luster Dawn.
Again, Luster Dawn reliably freezes in fear and horror on seeing anything bad. She is not the ideal companion for an apocalyptic battle against ruthless totalitarian conquerors!
Charlie then activated his goggle scanners and scanned some houses made of nests, but every time he scanned one, no one was inside, just some blood stains, bodies, fires and bullet shells from some sniper rifles and a gatling gun. (Story)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but maybe it's a bit weird about the Scanner of Convenience ...(AC97)
Oh no, you're not wrong. This started, remember, as a project to build lab safety goggles. Charlie added all these absurd sensory and analytical capabilities, many of which in real life would require a towed portable generator with batteries (fairly massive even if we're assuming compact nuclear fission) to power and a whole constellation of sizable instruments to make possible. It's rather as if one started off trying to design a hunting rifle and added attachments including a 100-round magazine, Swiss Army knife bayonet, 40mm grenade launcher, and inflatable raft, while magically still having something the size and weight of an ordinary .30-03 caliber bolt-action rifle.
This ridiculous object, which sits on Charlie's head (both Human and transformed Alicorn, so it includes extremely adjustable fittings), can not only pick up bodies, spent cartridges and blood stains inside a building while Charlie stands outside the building, but even identify the cartridges by general type. This is the sort of gadget that Doc Savage or any of the geniuses named Tom Swift could only regard with envious awe.
Seriously, it's many decades in advance of anything we could actually build today.
Luster Dawn asks Charlie if he's discovered anything, and Our Genius Science Hero responds:
"Nope." Charlie said with a shake of his head "I did not manage to find even a single civilian hiding or residing here. Just some blood stains, bodies, fires and bullet shells, some are probably from a sniper rifle or a gatling gun which is kind of perplexing because, we humans can't fly." He finished with a disorientate expression.
(1) Having a character verbally repeat, almost word-for-word, a description already made by the narrator is extremely poor form.
(2) Luster Dawn doesn't know the difference between a "sniper rifle" and a "gatling gun," so this would be like a Lensman describing the exact make and model of the blasters which put scars on a wall to someone from our culture.
(3) Our Genius Gadgeteer Science Hero has apparently forgotten about the existence of "helicopters," which is perplexing, not only because they're a fairly common 21st-century Earthly technology, but also because at the end of the last chapter Author described Charlie's vertical flight as similar to one (even though it's not at ALL).
(incidentally, a high-ROF rotary-barreled machine gun, aka "gatling gun," is fairly normal main armament for an attack helicopter, which makes Charlie's failure to make the connection even more perplexing).
"I can see why, because none of you have wings."
"Exactly." Charlie said with a nod.Wait, has Charlie forgotten about all Human flight technology? This sounds almost impossible, for a man of normal, let alone superior intellect, raised in any Western culture from the early 20th century on.
Helicopters aren't even the only VTOL or STOL aircraft capable of landing in the town described, and in any case, landing is hardly necessary to explain the devastation. Strafing passes with automatic cannons or machine-guns would perfectly explain the death and damage he's observed.
This is hardly obscure military technology. It's been a standard tactic since around 1916. This is inexcusably-silly of Author.
Charlie and Luster Dawn decide to leave, when ...
Just as Charlie turned around, he saw a dark eagle with a body of a lion standing in front of him and Luster Dawn and it looks like it has gone through some rough and terrifying times. It had scratches on it's whole body, it was bleeding from his beak and head, and it's tail was messed up.
He saw a griffon.
This is a common legend, and one with which Charlie should be familiar; if he somehow missed hearing about it when he was busy inventing his Skylab Orbital Hair Salon and his Robot Rocket Wheel Backscratcher, outcompeting Swift Industries and causing the immortal Doc Savage to take to drink in despair, wouldn't he have asked Luster Dawn about the inhabitants when they set off for this place?
Heck, he's seen plenty of Griffon corpses by now.
How is her tail "messed up," and why is this injury serious enough to class with bloody head wounds?
"What are you looking at Char- whoa!" Luster Dawn said startled by the griffons mysterious appearance.
Has it occurred to Author that the Griffon's descent would be noisy? Or that her wings would canonically be buffeting air all over the place, so even if Luster were deaf she could feel the landing?
Twelve more Griffons led by Gilda, also appear and land, surrounding Our Nominal Heroes.
AC97 comments:
...where'd you guys come from? And why are you two so good at getting surrounded? Your scanner sucks!
Indeed.
We're supposed to believe that the Omni-Scanner (as detailed in Charlie Lam and His Omni-Scanner Saftey Goggles, Book # 3 of the Charlie Lam series, soon to be available at a bookstore near you) is sensitive enough to pick up corpses, nay, even cartridges and identify them by type -- but it can't pick up lion-sized creatures in FLIGHT?.
Furthermore, unlike the Kirin, there is no reason to believe that Gilda's band has any sort of magical stealth. They are, presumably, relying purely on their felinoid predator instincts to watch and pounce, perhaps supplemented by some sort of militia training in arranging ambushes.
Charlie then engages in his usual diplomatic discourse with the Griffons:
Gilda asks him:
"Okay Charlie Lam and Luster Dawn. What are you two here for?"
"Well, uh... we just want to require you and many other creatures assistance to negotiate amd fight the Chinese army and to take your land back that's all." Charlie told them, and all of the griffons got baffled.
That "require" might make more sense as "request," were it not for the fact that Alicorn Metternich and Girl Kissinger here are acting as agents of Princess Twilight Sparkle. Which, of course, they never tell the Griffons.
But "all the Griffons" are "baffled" for an entirely different reason:
"Um, pardon me but... what is a Chinese army?" A make green coloured griffon asked.
One might imagine from context that the Griffons might guess that this would be the army that just attacked their town, but the Griffons here show less intelligence (though greater verbal skills) than would be displayed by real lions, who can comprehend "friend" and "enemy" just fine.
"Well, they were the ones who invaded imprisoned you all, but rest assured if we all work together we can-"
The Griffons to whom they are speaking have been "invaded" but not "imprisoned." They are rather obviously free Griffons.
"Wait, you mean these Chinese army things were the invaders?!" Gilda yelled in a tumoultous voice which made Luster Dawn flinch except for Charlie.
Gilda Griffon, dear readers. Showing that she's every bit as smart as the Charlie-verse's version of Rainbow Dash.
Though plainly smarter than her followers.
Charlie isn't part of Luster Dawn. I can think of only one sense in which they could be "united," and, really, even if they feel comfortable with going that far on such short acquaintance, they still shouldn't be doing it in front of the Griffons.
Author, I think you meant something like:
"Luster Dawn flinched, but Charlie remained calm."
which is way cleaner!
Charlie confirms Gilda's clever deduction, and adds the information that worked so well with the Kirins:
"And I am one of their kind actually. But still, we really need your assistance in defeating them." Charlie pleaded.
CHARLIE: I'm one of the evil merciless Invaders! And I need your help. Which is why you should help us!
Gilda's reaction to this revelation is ... not entirely positive.
"NO! OUR LEADER WAS SLAUGHTERED BY THEIR STRANGE SHINY WEAPONS AND THEIR FLYING METAL MACHINES! THEY KILLED AND ARRESTED US WITH NO SIGNS OF MERCY! AND THEY ALSO CAPTURED MANY OF OUR YOUNGS!"
But the wily silver-tongued Charlie, far smoother than storied Saruman, replies:
"Look miss Gilda, you just need to calm down, take a deep breath and listen to us."
CHARLIE: Look, it's only a lot of dead funny-looking cat-eagle creatures and their children, including possibly YOURS, not real people. Nothing to get unduly upset about!
Gilda's response is:
"NO! NOT ANYMORE, WE WILL NOT FALL FOR ANY OF YOUR KINDS SICK AND WICKED TRICKS!"
Can you blame her?
After that, Gilda looked at the twleve griffons behind her.
"Throw your spears at them and make them pay!"
The griffons nodded and swung their claws back ...
Wow, it's lucky it's just Griffons, and not some sort of race with lightning reflexes and the combined natural armament of eagles and cats!
Because, well, if that were the case, you'd both already be going "Hey! What's all that stinking mess on the ground at my feet. Oh, that's my guts and lifeblood ... ARGH."
... which made Luster Dawn's eyes widen.
LUSTER DAWN: Oh, crap.
Then the griffons threw their spears in the air. They flew up for a bit then began to rain down at them in a high speed. Luster Dawn then activated her horn and stood near Charlie.
Luckily, the Griffons inexplicably forgot about their own speed and natural weapons -- because Charlie inexplicably forgot that he can generate shields.
"Time to teleport out of here!" Luster Dawn said. Then they have successfully escaped the griffonstone cloudsdale in the nick of time before the spears could bayonet them.
Talking Is A Free Action, I see.
Also, "impale" or "skewer" them might be more appropriate than "bayonet" here. "Bayonet" refers to spearing someone with a bayonet, which is done by stabbing rather than throwing.
And they get the heck outta Griffonstone Cloudsdale, courtesy of the Teleport Express.
Back on the ground, Luster Dawn and Charlie Lam were teleported on the soft grass again. And Luster Dawn had an extremely irked expression.
"Auugggh! Why is everypony so stressed because of this situation!" Luster Dawn yelled in anger.
Um, you're stressed because of the situation, Luster-girl. Also, in the case of the Griffons, it's because they were attacked without apparent provocation in a literal bolt-from-the-blue, their town wrecked and many of them killed or made captive. Including their cubs.
"Can't blame them, because the condition in your land is very petrifying right now." Charlie told her with a chuckle.
Luster Dawn groaned from Charlie's remark.
CHARLIE: Hey, it's funny that their town got wrecked and lots of them killed and all those 'youngs' languishing in cruel captivity! Because they're not Human! Get it!
LUSTER DAWN: Yeah, and they're not cute like Ponies! Ha ha! Dead Griffons! Also, the Magic of Friendship!
To be fair, Luster Dawn may now be "groaning" in frustration at how stupid Charlie is. The notion of this all being Charlie's self-deluded interpretation of how the Ponies and other creatures are reacting to him is growing ever more attractive to me.
Charlie asks where Luster thinks they should go next.
"I guess we can go to the changeling kingdom. It is pretty far but, the King is very kind and friendly."
LUSTER DAWN (*thinks*): I mean Thorax is a sweetie. Even you can't mess this up!
I'll break here, as there's a POV shift to the Bad Guys in the third part of the chapter.
"Why, that's nothing like the one the missus has at home!"
Can we take a moment to appreciate the debris, blood, and spent ammunition lingering on construction-grade water vapor? (Assuming this is a cloud city, which is... well, nebulous.
)
Ah. So we're more Griffonstone than Cloudsdale.
You assume Luster is allowed to do anything in this story beyond be flustered or make things worse.
Ah, but that only applies if she actually descended. She simply popped into being when the author decreed it so.
But yeah, the omnigoggles have a bad track record when it comes to detecting surviving natives. It almost makes sense, since even Charlie would have a hard time programming them to detect creatures that don't exist in his home universe. That would take at least a whole weekend. Though that still only works if they really did pop out of the aether due to narrative fiat.
Oh hey, Luster actually got to do something other than be flustered or make things worse! Not the best approach, but still.
Same.
Yeaah... I'm not terribly confident there. Though given the author's track record of accurately portraying Equestria, the changelings may be working for the Chinese at this point.
Man, your point about the story not describing the bigger details makes me sad, because one of the things I've found most fun about writing is exploring the setting. Can you imagine Brotherly Bonding Time written as bare-bones as that, without any introductory descriptions of each of the towns and cities that the Sandwich Bros visit, or the details of each place they end up exploring as the plot goes on? I even try my best to research those places I haven't been to (Google Maps is a friend for this kind of stuff) to at least try to get the gist of the pony-equivalent city down.
All I can gather from the snippets are that there's nests and the place has been ransacked.
I'd want that magical rifleBut yeah, it's sad that I forgot about how those goggles were supposed to be rather mundane (to be fair there's a lot of stupid to keep up with), the thing that just doesn't add up was the (later to be mentioned by you) how they randomly fail to do something simple, and the author doesn't even acknowledge that with a "why are you failing me now?".
(goes without saying, just like that damned teleporter and how it was "hacked into", even aside from teleporters obviously not being of our technology level)
"I'm just oh-so-shocked that they were the invaders."
(This guy's a lousy "genius.")
Come to think of it, yeah, they went from getting ready to slash these two into smithereens, to inexplicably throwing spears at them. The previously occurring action vanished into oblivion, in favor of half of said stuff happening!
Edited to add: Or, wait, never mind, that's them getting ready to throw. Still, a "drew back their forelegs in preparation to throw/toss," or something, might've been better. (also, furthermore, there's no reason they wouldn't be in range to melee at this point, as opposed to "throw," with the spears; they had enough time to surround them, and there's little given incentive for them not to get closer/be close enough by now, like when Gilda was really pissed off, and their attention was on her, allowing them time to close in)
That could be a good idea for a story, where the human is extremely divorced from reality (to make it better at actually being comedic, it'd be the result of severe narcissism instead of say, some variation of Bipolar or Schizophrenia/something along those lines, and/or have him be the idiot that thought using a magical artifact with severe drawbacks in regards to sanity was a good idea), and the characters around him have to salvage anything and everything he tries to do, but he just can't see/accept that he failed, and they put up with that crap for however long before they go "screw it," and put an end to that nonsense, however they carry that out.
...I definitely couldn't write that one; Comedy isn't a genre I'd expect to be good at, due to my mindset leaning on "serious," even if I'm not humorless.
(And it goes without saying that the Bad Guys are unbearably stupid, too, by this point, like they were in the first dang chapter.)
5236608
I agree. If part of the story is a travelogue, it's a huge waste not to lovingly-describe the places to which the protagonists journey. Instead, Author keeps repeating descriptions of things he's already described before and most of which we would already know from watching the Show.
With Luster Dawn's horrified reaction to seeing mass death and devastation, is that really all that odd? I get the idea she had a rather sheltered life, even in comparison to the Mane Six's generation (well, sheltered until all the magical supervillains and invading hordes showed up). Someone like that probably would have a hard time handling seeing mangled corpses scattered hither and yon. I know it'd scare me.
Oh poor Gilda and the griffons! How they were depicted here. I like those surly catbirds, along with the dragons, probably because they're the closest to 'barbarians' in the old heroic fantasy fiction sense in the show. This doesn't read like a very flattering picture of them even with their canon problems with greed and nasty tempers. I wonder sometimes if the story is at least partly a satire. Or maybe the author has problems with the English language? I get a serious 'not my first language' vibe from the way it's used in the quotes.
This is like the worst game of Dragon Age ever; if you're going to do the 'visit all the locations and recruit all the peoples' then why not let your hero actually, you know, recruit the people? If this was a game most of the players would abandon it because all the dialogue options get you bad endings.
5237079
The basic plot of Flash Gordon, but instead of recruiting the peoples of Mongo against the evil emperor Ming, Flash and Dale approach all of them claiming to be from Ming's Empire and never get around to explaining they're actually Ming's enemies.
5236757
Yeah, you're right. We don't know that Luster's ever seen anything truly violent, because Equestria seems to have been mostly at peace since The End of the End. Twilight Sparkle would realistically have told her just how bad things can get, but theoretical and practical knowledge of horrifying subjects can be two very different things.
I've seen small amounts of death, and violence, and read or watched nonfiction about horrifying levels of both (great wars and plagues, democides etc.) but that doesn't mean that I wouldn't be shocked to the point of helplessness if I ever saw, say, a machine-gunner cutting down a crowd of people. I like to think I'd retain enough composure to take appropriate action (like duck behind hard cover), but I don't know. One never really knows what one would do in such circumstances.
What strikes me as far more improbable is the way in which Charlie Lam, about whom it has never in Story been claimed that he previously experienced extremely-violent events, is so utterly calm in the face of danger. I've been in life-threatening situations before, and been calm at the time -- but I've always had emotional reactions afterward, when I was relatively safe. (And none of these life-threatening situations were lethal battles).
Charlie is (at least by Informed Attribute) a supergenius gadgeteer. But that doesn't necessarily mean that he's a cool, calculating combatant. Author has said nothing about any sort of martial training or experience which wold justify Charlie's calmness under fire.
Compare with Doc Savage. Dr. Savage was not only blessed with superior genes, but also trained from an early age to be a mental and physical superman. He then fought in the Great War (where he met his Crew), and had actual experience under fire, all before he had his first fantastic adventures.
For all his awesomeness, Doc Savage is believable (within the context of his world), because the authors of that series equipped him with the sort of background that would justify his abilities. Charlie Lam, in contrast, is not believable, because there is no explanation for his abilities, even though his abilities are not as impressive in absolute terms.
Agreed.
The first thing we learn about Gilda in the Show is that she is, by Pony standards, bad-tempered, obnoxious, selfish and violent. It's a long time until we see her again, but when we do we learn that her whole kingdom is like that, and they're like that because of their history.
The Griffons aren't just barbarians. They are barbarians who previously rose to a high civilization and were then knocked back down into barbarism. The really tragic part is that some of them remember the greater days of their past.
The Show only implies this, but Gruff is one of the Griffons who remembers some of it personally. He probably had a position in the court of the last king. And he may still retain some of the dream of a high civilization: notably, he acts as mentor to both Gilda and Gallus.
Gilda is probably descended from the old Griffonstone royal dynasty, though she's not queen (which may make her a literal Barbarian Princess). She eventually accepts the quest to reunite Griffonstone and restore its high civilization. For all her surliness, she is noble and brave, and deserves far better than to be treated as "just another crazy native" by the Author.
I don't know about satire, but some of the word usage in the story does imply an imperfect grasp of English.
5236635
All the Omni-Scanners (both Charlie's and PRC) in this story seem to have or lack capabalities based purely on the demands of the plot. For instance, the Red Chinese Omni-Scanners enable tracking two individuals even when one of them has changed physical form, but never warn any of the Chinese troops about ambushes, even if the ambushers have the numbers.
Also, I noticed that the Red Chinese have reconnaissance and communications abilities, aside from the Omni-Scanners, equivalent to that of a modern Great Power on Earth. Very well, you may say, the PRC is a Great Power on Earth.
Fair enough. But the real-world capabilities of America or China in this regard are based on recon and com sats.
Did the battalion to brigade size force General Jin commands bring orbit-capable rockets with them? Mind you, those would be big rockets -- basically, ICBM sized rockets. The smallest ones would require a rather large transporter vehicle or prepared launch site or silo.
If they didn't, how do they have satellites?
If they don't have satellites, then long-distance recon and commo tasks must be handled by various kinds of aircraft, scouting on foot, and powerful radios. Which they may have, but if they do must have the requisite men and equipment -- and would be vulnerable spots in the PLA force structure.
Instinctive attacks for Griffons would probably be flying or leaping (in both cases aided by their wings) to fall upon their foes and rend them with foretalons and hindclaws, possibly also attacking with their beaks (but that's obviously more dangerous to the Griffon). Spears offer the advantage of greater reach, but then Griffons would be a lot faster (in terms of reflexes) than Humans (or for that matter most Ponies not named Rainbow Dash). Why not? Both big cats and birds of prey are!
I think the reason why Story shifted to spear-chucking is because this was an attack that Our Nominal Heroes could plausibly escape unscathed. More charitably, Gilda may have been aware that she wasn't sure of the situation, that both of her visitors looked like Ponies, and that it might not be the best idea to actually kill them instead of merely driving them off.
Oh yeah.
The Chinese act as if they are trying to be the Mook Army with occasional Minibosses in the game to keep the PC Protagonist moving while providing the occasional action encounter.
They do not at all behave like a believable military force from a first- or second-class early 21st-century nation.
5237703
All the Omni-Scanners (both Charlie's and PRC) in this story seem to have or lack capabalities based purely on the demands of the plot. For instance, the Red Chinese Omni-Scanners enable tracking two individuals even when one of them has changed physical form, but never warn any of the Chinese troops about ambushes, even if the ambushers have the numbers.
It seems to me that some of this could be explained by having the Omni-Scanners be some new, very potent but still experimental technology. When they work, they work very well; but they often break down and need repairs, and you need specially-trained personnel to properly interpret the information they provide. Of course a line or two of dialogue in the story to this effect would help.
5237799
That's a really good idea!
5238440
Isn't that how it goes with field testing and initial use of any fancy new technology? The users have to learn all the myriad ways the new tech can go wrong or break down, usually at the worst possible time?