For three thousand years, humanity has waited for the coming of its saviour: the one who will deliver them from servitude under the equine race. In slave pens and hidden chambers, humanity waits. They wait for the Heavenfall
I loved the amount of detail you put into everything, it made it so easy to paint a picture in my mind. Great chapter, I really want to read the next one.
Well It's official and ODST would chew this guy's ass out for dropping like that. Now humanity is coming back with anger, rage, and hatered to boot. Look out Celestia and Luna the human race is going to kick your oppressive asses.
...Why is all the human technology 20th century sci-fi?
You completely overpowered pony kind, and completely underpowered humanity. What, is there no nuclear material on Equiis? No metals and minerals for self defense and technology? Equiis has been shown to have an abundance of such materials, so humanity could get everything except aluminum for our technology. Heck, they're put in hoards for us! How easy would it be to harpoon a dragon in both eyes, send a bomb down their throat (nuclear if they're overpowered), and have a building full of rare material?
It's like playing sci-fi role-play with a child who cant bear to lose: You explain to them why they can't have sudden upgrades, then they complain about what you have and refuse to continue playing until you remove one of your upgrades. And now you decided to cheat and throw all your upgrades to one guy, and forced your guy through some million to one chance...
Seriously, your writing and descriptions are... well, they're overly long and boring actually, I can't bring myself to read through them. It's like reading through a physics textbook to find a few equations and derivations of them, and every equation has seven pages of history about some old guy mixed with one page of derivation, and you don't know which is which. Situations which should last seconds take minutes to read because of extraneous detail, and I read at ~600 words per minute while skimming, and around ~1000 WPM at max. But I should feel comfortable reading at 300WPM if it's a good story.
You're definitely not an engineer: you don't know about technological development throughout the past ten years, and possibly the past twenty, and it shows. Why can't the ship heal? I can make a machine that heals! It's huge, but it works. All I have to do is take the used materials like metals from broken machines, then use induction melting and 3d-printing, then put them back. I don't have to worry about rust because I'm in space, but even if I did, I'd just heat it up a lot in the presence of something not as important. I could get extra material from meteors. And I could power this all from the sun. Why is this not being employed now? Because it's fucking expensive and doesn't make sense with our abundance of material. But in space it makes sense.
Also, you have to have some sort of nanorobotics for EVE to be inside the angel's head. Computers can't communicate that well yet, especially not with that volume, and we're already developing nanorobotics. I'd be surprised if someone isn't doing an experiment right now feeding nanorobots chemicals to have them produce more nanorobots. (I have an idea: make several different ones produce unique parts, then have an assembler grab those parts by their identifiers and put them together... I'll just need a few thousand runs in a supercomputer so I can play with individual atoms.) If you have nanorobots, then you can have an even better self healing spaceship.
And has humanity not killed a single unicorn? Even if they couldn't, why couldn't they just dig a recently deceased one up, then study their biology? It'd be as hard as studying a human to make a robot that walked, but in 3000 years they'd have some understanding of magic.
Also, Word found several grammar errors like it's when it should have been its, and overly long sentences. But I can't be bothered to go through 8000 words of a story that makes me hate its author to find them. (My hate should be directed at the AU ponies, not you.)
Honestly, It never fails to baffle my mind about how people like you can come out of the blue from fucking nowhere, and then proceed to bomb the shit out of one guy's fan-fiction as if you're the fan-fiction God . Come on, let's be realistic about this, shall we?
What you see:
It's like playing sci-fi role-play with a child who cant bear to lose: You explain to them why they can't have sudden upgrades, then they complain about what you have and refuse to continue playing until you remove one of your upgrades. And now you decided to cheat and throw all your upgrades to one guy, and forced your guy through some million to one chance...
What everyone else see's:
Mommy, I couldn't come up with a story idea, and now I've got soo much butthurt the only way for me to feel better is to try an belittle other people
.
Look, Kid. I've put up with a lot of shit, from a lot of people. So I'm gonna sum this up really simply for ya.
I don't give a buck.
This is fan-fiction you dumb arsehole, fan-fiction! If you don't know the definition of the word and all its attach connotations, I really suggest you get off this website, because you'll find nothing of value here.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to roll about in all my favourites. See ya
If you don't want blunt and honest reviews, you should probably remove your story from the blunt reviews group. I decided not to sugar-coat things because I noticed your story was already in that group.
Here's the sugar-coated version: this story is incredibly frustrating to tech-savvy and science savvy-people, because they know it's unrealistic, and it breaks their suspension of disbelief. Being led in to a sci-fi story like this and losing the suspension of disbelief can cause those readers to hate the author, instead of the intended ponies. Please consider reviewing the more important technological advancements of the last 10-20 years, and how they can be re-purposed. If you have questions, feel free to ask.
Okay, I saw this and laughed. Apparently our friend Cypher has a thing for odds that are more likely to get him killed.
"Nine-hundred and thirty-six to one?" That is correct. "I'll take those odds."
And yet....
"Are you sure about this?!" I am thirty-nine percent certain that this shall succeed, with an error margin of three percent. "I... I'm not so sure I like those odds."
So, Cypher likes it when he has less of a chance to live? I'm sure this wasn't intentional, but it was funny.
The landing was a bit confusing, for me. Since he has wings, why not glide off the falling life pod, as opposed to waiting to the last moment? Seems a bit risky to jump off so close to landfall and at that speed.
As for the rest of the chapter, I was somewhat disappointed that our look at Celestia and Luna didn't reveal nearly as much as I had hoped. Still, what we did see does not bode well for our poor human population.
I hate to agree with that Artichoke fellow, but this fic does tend to be a lot more on the long-winded side than Terminal World. I'm not yet sure whether this is good or bad. The verbose style is nice at some points, but it feels like everything is being dragged out. I actually found myself skipping large portions of what seemed like extraneous text (particularly in the moments before Cypher landed). Having skipped them, then gone back and read them, they didn't really add all that much to the story. Seeing Canterlot and presumably Ponyville was nice, but the massive amount of FEELINGS, NOTHING MORE THAN FEELINGS was a bit unnecessary.
Well, I thought he could take harsh criticism, so I let loose and didn't bother changing "I thought this was shit because reasons", to "Your story is good, but here are several ways your story could be improved."
I don't consider using analogies like I did and using "you" a lot when talking about someone's work attacking them; it's just rude and blunt. I suppose the analogy with a kid could be calling the author childlike if he took it that way, but that was just a memory, and wasn't intended to insult. Pointing out someone's ignorance is also blunt, but not an insult. Calling them stupid because of their ignorance would be an insult.
After reading his blog-post though, I am annoyed at his apparent willingness to ignore input and not level with some of his readers. I agree with his attack against comments hating on his work because of OOC, but his attack still did him no good. It mostly looks like he's trying to remain willfully ignorant in a very childish way
GLORIOUS UPDATE!!!! I gotta say that I really like the way you didn't immediately start off from where you left it, but instead creating the atmosphere and setting through various short but juicy perspectives that manage to showcase the complex viewing that a species should have. Quite possibly one of the better fic-reads in a while.
Please go read a Charles Dickens novel, then come back. Also, criticize the actual contents, not the background information. I'd criticize his over-use of "The Last Angel," because it reads wrong in my mind after its repetition, but I know that it's also there to convey the fact that Cypher is the only one left. Apart from that, nothing really shanks my mind or leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Granted, I've become desensitized to minor errors and common fan-fictions pitfalls (you lose it after reading lots of sub-par or regular-level fan-fiction), but so far all of your points have been about the background of the story and how "humanity somehow lost a war," not about the actual words he's written. The past has occurred, the present is now, and the future is later. I'd prefer for your criticism to lie in the latter two as they actually serve as the progressive motor for the story.
Now to criticize your regenerative science. Our body has one of the greatest regenerative systems in the existence of everything we know, yet it's not infallible. Your DNA is constantly degraded and destroyed by free-radicals and radiation, and it can only hold out for so long before its damaged to a lethal extent. Likewise, a machine isn't going to fare any better in the hostile environment of space. Machines slowly decay overtime, and even if you had telomere-like save-structures, you're going to lose critical functions over the course of thousands of years. The systems aboard the Ark must be massive and code for billions upon billions of processes, and little by little, they will be corrupted. And don't give me the "add more machines that double-check it" excuse. The more you add, the worse it gets. It's a cascading effect. If you can get me some HeLa-cells and make a machine that function EXACTLY like them without losing any information along the way, show me your Nobel prize in Biology when you receive it-- nothing's ever built to last. (Modified Second Law of Thermodynamics applying to everything, anyone?)
Apart from that, I feel your actions are meant to be constructive for our little writer, but let's build him up to be a better writer, not sharpen his know-how so that he can make even more lengthy descriptions. Seriously, I don't want to read about the Ark's antimatter/proton-proton fusion/Alcubierre drive all the way down to the use of negative energy or negative mass, I want the author to get a solid story foundation and make me enjoy reading. That's what we should be pursuing if we are to be successful "critics." (A laughable word on a fan-fiction site, I might add.)
I do find some of the EXTREMELY DESCRIPTIVE details of what is happening a bit repetitive to read (I'm one of those "OKAY, JEZ, I GET IT! CAN WE MOVE ON NOW!!!" kind of guys. I don't mind a little detail, its just when people go a little overboard.), but you still catch my interest.
So, although I dislike how you write it, I love the story. Keep it up!
EDIT: I thought I would add one more little thing I kind of disliked about this story so far, or at least how you are writing it. I HATE the pacing, and I am probably not the only one. I just feel that this story could have made a tiny bit more progress than it has so far, I wouldn't mind the slow updates as much if this were the case. Basically, so far, we've went from escaping the destruction of the ark, to falling from the sky under constant threat of painful death, to landing (Quite Painfully I might add!)... that is it... that is as far as we have gotten so far... AND IT IS F***ING KILLING ME!!!
Disregard the "AND IT IS F***ING KILLING ME!!!" comment, that is just me trying to be overdramatic and funny but epically failing.
Now I am not trying to be an asshole about this, but could you pick up the pacing? Just a bit more story progression next chapter, perhaps cutting a bit of the "attention to detail" (I mean if that is okay with you... )? It'd be appreciated.
In your first paragraph you say that humanity should be able to create their own weapons. First of all we have almost no information about what is happening on Earth (Equestira). Second, it is possible that ponykind after defeating humanity did not allow humans means to preserve their knowledge of technology over the millennia and suppressed their access to education. When you defeat a race and keep then technologically inferior to you it is almost impossible to produce the complex mass produced weapons and goods we have today and definitely not future weapons. However, something that I find unrealistic is that the human race could be kept in bondage for so long. In history (the only real examples we have) races kept in bondage always find a way to overthrow or integrate themselves into society as time progresses, it is inevitable. People always seem to be able to throw off their shackles after a few hundred years. I suppose that figures like millennia are thrown around a little too much in the pony universe.
Also, in you next few paragraphs you proclaim yourself an expert on technology. Well let me tell you, no one can claim to predict what technology in the future will entail and what technologies will be available. We can only speculate on the plausible future technologies in science fiction.
I have a soft spot for long winded descriptions. They seem to be able to create images in the mind like nothing else and give the story the "epic" atmosphere and setting in my mind. The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings books read like I described.
4164578 As a computer engineer, let me tell you how you can preserve programming and information for a long time with speculation of future technology. If you are going to build a self regenerating computing machine that is going to last a long time you are going to need to assume the availability of some technologies. You will need redundancy of systems, the materials, energy, and means of fabricating and duplication of computing machines. You will also need redundant self replicating fabrication facilities assuming the availability of raw materials. Today, when it comes to digital code and data if one bit is out of place the whole thing can fail to work immediately or it could fail in the future. One way to confirm your data is intact is to run a checksum which reads all of the data and generates a code. If one bit is different, a completely different checksum will be generated. In a system of multiple redundant computing machines regular checksums could be generated and checked. If one of the machines has corrupted data the system can be replaced with a copy of one of the remaining redundant systems.
Your reply to Artichoke about the "expert in technology" part made me laugh. The speculation of technology is a fallacy, and trying to predict what will happen and when it will happen is nearly impossible. We can still give some nice ranges at least though, xD.
Aye, so just basically making sure the original is always preserved at at least one of the devices. I see how it works in theory, but I'm always looking at the numbers: eventually something will screw itself over, and the system will be either fail catastrophically or catch itself and continue on. My knowledge of computers is as deep as Java and C++ and nothing beyond that, so I'm no expert at it. However, how would you know which original copy of that code is the correct one and the wrong one is the wrong one? Inter-system democracy (the ones with the most similar copies prevail and over-right the rogue one? etc.)? I'd be curious to see the odds of multiple failures and the statistical odds over the course of a few thousand years, and the overall possibility of a system failure and destruction.
To be honest, I think I need to stop thinking in terms of raw probability and think in terms of computer redundancy to realize that it's possible to create a long-lived system so long as it's done properly. Still, issues can arise, hence why I mentioned the "one wrong coded region and you're screwed" idea. You have a jacked up codon and get a mis-sense or nonsense mutation, you might be screwed. Likewise, if your computer goes drunk mode on a byte, you might be screwed. How many redundancies can be taken before the redundancies become a liability themselves? Too many questions, too little time, and too much exhaustion. I'll continue this with you tomorrow if you'd like? I enjoy chatting with people with more experience in a field.
4165301 When it comes to checksums (hashes) the point is to generate a small unique code that will be different for different files (data) but two identical files (data) will always generate the same code. Well you ask, how can this be? A file has X number of ones and zeros you would need a code of equal or greater length to ensure that every possible combination of data has it's own unique code! That is where the hash function comes in (the program that generates the code). The program is designed to make it very veryvery unlikely that two different files would have the same code.
Assume ten redundant computers are exact copies of each other. The original checksum (code) was generated from the original programming data and is stored in a special place on each computer. Each computer would routinely check the code generated from the programming data against the saved code. If they are different you know the data is corrupted and the computer can be replaced. Now it is possible that the data or the code could randomly corrupt but you will be able to tell that they are different and something is wrong when you do the code check. The only way that this will break is if both the code and the data change at the same time and in the right way so that the new corrupted data generates the new corrupted code. Or if the randomly corrupted data magically corrupted to that one unlikely file that generates the same code. The chances of that happening are infinitesimally minuscule, something like googol to one.
My god, stories like this are a godsend to fimfiction. Definitely a change from the trite, over used human slave trope. Riveting, engaging, beautiful, and brilliant are some of the words I could use to describe your work so far.
Honestly, it's easily printed author quality, maybe a bit better even, as you've had plenty of time to make a chapter.
Charles Dickens? Died 1870? You're telling me to read 1850s material as an argument for today's grammar? But that's not really the main argument.
What you call "background information" is what I call the setting, and it's what I mainly have a problem with, because I can't keep my mind in the story when I see something that doesn't seem right... It's like being in a dream, then realizing something is wrong.
Further, the past has bearings on both the present and future. I don't think historians would agree with your policy of ignoring the past. And that policy doesn't make sense either when most of what happened so far was creating the setting.
On the subject of regenerative science, it's something I've been working on for a long time... Our bodies' regeneration does not surpass that of the immortal jellyfish or the radiodurans. And give a bacterial colony access to an infinite flow of food: the entire colony may never be larger than a human, but it will last forever, just as all life has lasted till now.
In military engineering, you're supposed to reduce the number of "critical functions". There should never be single point failure. There is no, "add more machines to double check", but there is having machines replace bad ones. If 4 out of 5 machines answered a query correctly, remove the incorrect machine, destroy it, then use it to make a new machine, and test it. Have multiple testing bays. (We can then determine how long it will be until an entire unit may fail, as each cpu must fail simultaneously. If the radiation shielded CPUs have a 1 in a hundred chance of failing per year, then the chance of enough failing is 1/100^3... I can't actually calculate that since the number is so small, but it'll likely take more than 3000 years for a unit of 5 to fail, and you would probably be testing a lot more than 5 CPUs for validity at once.)
Lastly, the HeLa cell is not a multi-celled organism that lives forever. I think only the immortal jellyfish could do that, and even then the dna it's rebirthing itself with would have to remain free of errors, which goes against evolution.
But if you put life in a situation where all changes mean death, then changes will generally stop occurring, and it will be a very, very long time until the whole systems changes. Long as in billions of years.
I don't want him to write lengthy techno-babble either, I just don't want to get to the middle of the chapter and read that all the slaves died because Abraham Lincoln never tried to stop the southern rebellion and reunite the United States. I want to read about humans with history at least up to this point, because I've been led to believe there would be those, not alternate universe humans.
I don't want to burst your bubble oh great and powerful STEMlord. But Some of the greatest sci-fi works ever made had little to no logic, it was a creative outlet for what should be or could be. not what is, or else it's not science-fictoion.
Did star-trek or star-wars ever make sense scientifically? I mean, lightsabers? what were they thinking!
But what pulled it through is that you didn't need to be tech savvy to enjoy it, you could immerse yourself in the world the author or writer created!
But that's just my two bits on the subject, and for once, it's time to Gert off the high horse and let your Imagination run free
Imagine a simple hash where we take the values of all the letters in a text and add them together, then take the remainder of that number when divided by 1000* 256(one character size). Once the amount of data read was much more than 1000 characters, then there would be a 1 in 1000 chance of a checksum check returning valid for two different files. (Before that, it would be somewhere around 1 in the total number of characters in each file.)
Ouch. Someone comes along explaining the general gist of my system, and calls themselves a computer engineer, and you say they have more experience in a field.
I'm a computer engineer. In fact, I'm working towards robotics. That's the whole reason I find reading about the robotics in this story painful.
This story is amazing I can't wait for the next chapter. (Of course I can) I'm a tad concerned about the whole Magic VS Frail human body thingy. I mean it's perfectly viable for almost ANY Unicorn to pick him up in Telekinesis and snap him like twig. Or just grab his skull and pull it an inch away from the torso, Boom, dead Angel.
That's always been a concern of mine in really ANY fanfic. Stupid cheating Unicorns.
Hopefully Cypher will gain some kind of countermeasure for magic.
Star-wars was the first sci-fi show to really be done with good animation in movie theaters. Light sabers are actually pretty close to plasma beams. And Star-wars was never about earth-lings; it was about people in a galexy far, far away.
As far as I know star trek never completely abused probabilities to force a story, and many of the imagined technologies in it remain theoretically possible... Ah, that's what it is: this story feels forced. It's fine when you abuse a probability like not being near planets, but when it's something people relate to, it's going to ruin their immersion. And when you talk about the survival of the entire human race while taking an artistic license... Well, people are now willing to discuss the subject, but they don't want someone completely inept interrupting their discussion, whether it's internal or not.
That's probably the reason for all the 'butthurt' the author's been receiving. Imagine going to a group of people while like nutrition, then talking about how soylent is terrible because it's unnatural. You'll provoke a discussion, and they will want to hear more about what you think, but when they realize you don't actually have anything more than "Soylent = unnatural, Unnatural = bad", which they've already disproved with examples of modern medicine, they'll probably tell you to leave while they continue their conversation. In the end, a conversation may have been sparked, but the starter's reputation was diminished.
And now that I think about it, I may have a new idea for a fic: the ponies are as overpowered as possible with respect to cannon. (Magical shields are completely impenetrable, no matter what. Luna can move the stars. Celestia can channel the sun's heat, but doesn't for the sake of her ponies. Etc.) And we humans have had to abandon our solar system due to a gamma ray burst that left earth uninhabitable, so we went to the nearby Equestrian solar system. And unfortunately, negotiations went bad and now the ponies hate us and try to destroy our entire species up in the sky, like they would try to swat an annoying fly.
LET THE REVOLSHEN BEGIN.
Also will thier be a devil to Cypher a battel mode if you will or a other half thats sole purpus is to not free humanity but to kill the ponies
YESSSSS UPDATE!!!
pew pew
This was an excellent chapter to eat Goldfish to.
update slow but worth it... curse you cliff hangers!!!!!
guardianlv.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Daniel-Bryan-Royal-Rumble-Outrage-3.jpg
What I think of this update!
Can't wait to see what happens next. Will Cypher create a human army to fight the ponies and other species, or will he go solo throughout this?
I loved the amount of detail you put into everything, it made it so easy to paint a picture in my mind. Great chapter, I really want to read the next one.
-Missy
And thus, it was born, Padding: The Chapter.
That... is one shitty way to drop to a planet.
Planet fall at last, now make those damned rulers pay for enslaving humanity! No tyrants last forever; for freedom, for humanity!
Can't wait to see what happens next, I shall be stalking you!
Wow, this is great! Dude, you've got to upload more of this!
4163330 Not like he had much choice. :P
"Prepare for Heavenfall."
Well It's official and ODST would chew this guy's ass out for dropping like that. Now humanity is coming back with anger, rage, and hatered to boot. Look out Celestia and Luna the human race is going to kick your oppressive asses.
Now to begin the war for FREEDOM! LIBERTY! JUSTICE AND THE HUMAN WAY! TO ARMS MY BROTHERS! LET US ASSIST OUR FINE ANGEL CYPHER IN THE GOOD FIGHT!
...Why is all the human technology 20th century sci-fi?
You completely overpowered pony kind, and completely underpowered humanity. What, is there no nuclear material on Equiis? No metals and minerals for self defense and technology? Equiis has been shown to have an abundance of such materials, so humanity could get everything except aluminum for our technology. Heck, they're put in hoards for us! How easy would it be to harpoon a dragon in both eyes, send a bomb down their throat (nuclear if they're overpowered), and have a building full of rare material?
It's like playing sci-fi role-play with a child who cant bear to lose: You explain to them why they can't have sudden upgrades, then they complain about what you have and refuse to continue playing until you remove one of your upgrades. And now you decided to cheat and throw all your upgrades to one guy, and forced your guy through some million to one chance...
Seriously, your writing and descriptions are... well, they're overly long and boring actually, I can't bring myself to read through them. It's like reading through a physics textbook to find a few equations and derivations of them, and every equation has seven pages of history about some old guy mixed with one page of derivation, and you don't know which is which. Situations which should last seconds take minutes to read because of extraneous detail, and I read at ~600 words per minute while skimming, and around ~1000 WPM at max. But I should feel comfortable reading at 300WPM if it's a good story.
You're definitely not an engineer: you don't know about technological development throughout the past ten years, and possibly the past twenty, and it shows. Why can't the ship heal? I can make a machine that heals! It's huge, but it works. All I have to do is take the used materials like metals from broken machines, then use induction melting and 3d-printing, then put them back. I don't have to worry about rust because I'm in space, but even if I did, I'd just heat it up a lot in the presence of something not as important. I could get extra material from meteors. And I could power this all from the sun. Why is this not being employed now? Because it's fucking expensive and doesn't make sense with our abundance of material. But in space it makes sense.
Also, you have to have some sort of nanorobotics for EVE to be inside the angel's head. Computers can't communicate that well yet, especially not with that volume, and we're already developing nanorobotics. I'd be surprised if someone isn't doing an experiment right now feeding nanorobots chemicals to have them produce more nanorobots. (I have an idea: make several different ones produce unique parts, then have an assembler grab those parts by their identifiers and put them together... I'll just need a few thousand runs in a supercomputer so I can play with individual atoms.) If you have nanorobots, then you can have an even better self healing spaceship.
And has humanity not killed a single unicorn? Even if they couldn't, why couldn't they just dig a recently deceased one up, then study their biology? It'd be as hard as studying a human to make a robot that walked, but in 3000 years they'd have some understanding of magic.
Also, Word found several grammar errors like it's when it should have been its, and overly long sentences. But I can't be bothered to go through 8000 words of a story that makes me hate its author to find them. (My hate should be directed at the AU ponies, not you.)
Great chapter, sure did give cypher a beating.
Good to see this continuing was hoping it wasn't forgotten
4163859
Two things.
1:i110.photobucket.com/albums/n119/MCBallpeen/2a0ca-Good_Good_Let_the_Butt_hurt_flow_through.jpg
2:fc07.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/291/a/7/no_one_cares_pinkie_pie_by_caperuza-d4d88kw.png
Honestly, It never fails to baffle my mind about how people like you can come out of the blue from fucking nowhere, and then proceed to bomb the shit out of one guy's fan-fiction as if you're the fan-fiction God . Come on, let's be realistic about this, shall we?
What you see:
What everyone else see's:
.
Look, Kid. I've put up with a lot of shit, from a lot of people. So I'm gonna sum this up really simply for ya.
I don't give a buck.
This is fan-fiction you dumb arsehole, fan-fiction! If you don't know the definition of the word and all its attach connotations, I really suggest you get off this website, because you'll find nothing of value here.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to roll about in all my favourites. See ya
New Update. Now I really hate the Celestial Sisters.
4163930
Lol. I'm just being honest.
If you don't want blunt and honest reviews, you should probably remove your story from the blunt reviews group. I decided not to sugar-coat things because I noticed your story was already in that group.
Here's the sugar-coated version: this story is incredibly frustrating to tech-savvy and science savvy-people, because they know it's unrealistic, and it breaks their suspension of disbelief. Being led in to a sci-fi story like this and losing the suspension of disbelief can cause those readers to hate the author, instead of the intended ponies. Please consider reviewing the more important technological advancements of the last 10-20 years, and how they can be re-purposed. If you have questions, feel free to ask.
Okay, I saw this and laughed. Apparently our friend Cypher has a thing for odds that are more likely to get him killed.
And yet....
So, Cypher likes it when he has less of a chance to live? I'm sure this wasn't intentional, but it was funny.
The landing was a bit confusing, for me. Since he has wings, why not glide off the falling life pod, as opposed to waiting to the last moment? Seems a bit risky to jump off so close to landfall and at that speed.
As for the rest of the chapter, I was somewhat disappointed that our look at Celestia and Luna didn't reveal nearly as much as I had hoped. Still, what we did see does not bode well for our poor human population.
I hate to agree with that Artichoke fellow, but this fic does tend to be a lot more on the long-winded side than Terminal World. I'm not yet sure whether this is good or bad. The verbose style is nice at some points, but it feels like everything is being dragged out. I actually found myself skipping large portions of what seemed like extraneous text (particularly in the moments before Cypher landed). Having skipped them, then gone back and read them, they didn't really add all that much to the story. Seeing Canterlot and presumably Ponyville was nice, but the massive amount of FEELINGS, NOTHING MORE THAN FEELINGS was a bit unnecessary.
All that said, good chapter. Carry on!
4163859
Too much arguing against the author, not enough arguing against the story based on issues created by the story.
4/10 Criticism needs work.
4164125
Well, I thought he could take harsh criticism, so I let loose and didn't bother changing "I thought this was shit because reasons", to "Your story is good, but here are several ways your story could be improved."
I don't consider using analogies like I did and using "you" a lot when talking about someone's work attacking them; it's just rude and blunt. I suppose the analogy with a kid could be calling the author childlike if he took it that way, but that was just a memory, and wasn't intended to insult. Pointing out someone's ignorance is also blunt, but not an insult. Calling them stupid because of their ignorance would be an insult.
After reading his blog-post though, I am annoyed at his apparent willingness to ignore input and not level with some of his readers. I agree with his attack against comments hating on his work because of OOC, but his attack still did him no good. It mostly looks like he's trying to remain willfully ignorant in a very childish way
My friend you could have a future as a sci-fi writer with the quality of this work just place it in a world of your own design and your set.
4163930
GLORIOUS UPDATE!!!! I gotta say that I really like the way you didn't immediately start off from where you left it, but instead creating the atmosphere and setting through various short but juicy perspectives that manage to showcase the complex viewing that a species should have. Quite possibly one of the better fic-reads in a while.
4164219
I have a number of issues with your "blunt" review and your definition of criticism.
4164337
...Well, what are they?
That fall has got to be the most fucked landing I've ever heard someone survive
4163215 Cyrus:k guys lets do this LEEEEROY JEEEENKIIIIIINNNSSSS!!!!!
Humans: oh my god he just ran in. SAVE HIM! STICK TO THE PLAN GUYS!
4163859
"Overly long sentences."
Please go read a Charles Dickens novel, then come back. Also, criticize the actual contents, not the background information. I'd criticize his over-use of "The Last Angel," because it reads wrong in my mind after its repetition, but I know that it's also there to convey the fact that Cypher is the only one left. Apart from that, nothing really shanks my mind or leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Granted, I've become desensitized to minor errors and common fan-fictions pitfalls (you lose it after reading lots of sub-par or regular-level fan-fiction), but so far all of your points have been about the background of the story and how "humanity somehow lost a war," not about the actual words he's written. The past has occurred, the present is now, and the future is later. I'd prefer for your criticism to lie in the latter two as they actually serve as the progressive motor for the story.
Now to criticize your regenerative science. Our body has one of the greatest regenerative systems in the existence of everything we know, yet it's not infallible. Your DNA is constantly degraded and destroyed by free-radicals and radiation, and it can only hold out for so long before its damaged to a lethal extent. Likewise, a machine isn't going to fare any better in the hostile environment of space. Machines slowly decay overtime, and even if you had telomere-like save-structures, you're going to lose critical functions over the course of thousands of years. The systems aboard the Ark must be massive and code for billions upon billions of processes, and little by little, they will be corrupted. And don't give me the "add more machines that double-check it" excuse. The more you add, the worse it gets. It's a cascading effect. If you can get me some HeLa-cells and make a machine that function EXACTLY like them without losing any information along the way, show me your Nobel prize in Biology when you receive it-- nothing's ever built to last. (Modified Second Law of Thermodynamics applying to everything, anyone?)
Apart from that, I feel your actions are meant to be constructive for our little writer, but let's build him up to be a better writer, not sharpen his know-how so that he can make even more lengthy descriptions. Seriously, I don't want to read about the Ark's antimatter/proton-proton fusion/Alcubierre drive all the way down to the use of negative energy or negative mass, I want the author to get a solid story foundation and make me enjoy reading. That's what we should be pursuing if we are to be successful "critics." (A laughable word on a fan-fiction site, I might add.)
Love it can't wait for the next chapter :)
4163930 gifrific.gifrific.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Kelso-Says-Burn-That-70s-Show.gif
Nice chapter.
I do find some of the EXTREMELY DESCRIPTIVE details of what is happening a bit repetitive to read (I'm one of those "OKAY, JEZ, I GET IT! CAN WE MOVE ON NOW!!!" kind of guys. I don't mind a little detail, its just when people go a little overboard.), but you still catch my interest.
So, although I dislike how you write it, I love the story. Keep it up!
EDIT: I thought I would add one more little thing I kind of disliked about this story so far, or at least how you are writing it. I HATE the pacing, and I am probably not the only one. I just feel that this story could have made a tiny bit more progress than it has so far, I wouldn't mind the slow updates as much if this were the case. Basically, so far, we've went from escaping the destruction of the ark, to falling from the sky under constant threat of painful death, to landing (Quite Painfully I might add!)... that is it... that is as far as we have gotten so far... AND IT IS F***ING KILLING ME!!!
Disregard the "AND IT IS F***ING KILLING ME!!!" comment, that is just me trying to be overdramatic and funny but epically failing.
Now I am not trying to be an asshole about this, but could you pick up the pacing? Just a bit more story progression next chapter, perhaps cutting a bit of the "attention to detail" (I mean if that is okay with you... )? It'd be appreciated.
And of course, KEEP IT UP!!!
Too much detail, not enough pony slaughter. GET ON WITH IT! Although I do love how the story is written. Can't wait for the next chapter.
4163859
Bro, take a deep breath and
i.imgur.com/60tO2V0.jpg
In your first paragraph you say that humanity should be able to create their own weapons. First of all we have almost no information about what is happening on Earth (Equestira). Second, it is possible that ponykind after defeating humanity did not allow humans means to preserve their knowledge of technology over the millennia and suppressed their access to education. When you defeat a race and keep then technologically inferior to you it is almost impossible to produce the complex mass produced weapons and goods we have today and definitely not future weapons. However, something that I find unrealistic is that the human race could be kept in bondage for so long. In history (the only real examples we have) races kept in bondage always find a way to overthrow or integrate themselves into society as time progresses, it is inevitable. People always seem to be able to throw off their shackles after a few hundred years. I suppose that figures like millennia are thrown around a little too much in the pony universe.
Also, in you next few paragraphs you proclaim yourself an expert on technology. Well let me tell you, no one can claim to predict what technology in the future will entail and what technologies will be available. We can only speculate on the plausible future technologies in science fiction.
I have a soft spot for long winded descriptions. They seem to be able to create images in the mind like nothing else and give the story the "epic" atmosphere and setting in my mind. The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings books read like I described.
4164578
As a computer engineer, let me tell you how you can preserve programming and information for a long time with speculation of future technology. If you are going to build a self regenerating computing machine that is going to last a long time you are going to need to assume the availability of some technologies. You will need redundancy of systems, the materials, energy, and means of fabricating and duplication of computing machines. You will also need redundant self replicating fabrication facilities assuming the availability of raw materials. Today, when it comes to digital code and data if one bit is out of place the whole thing can fail to work immediately or it could fail in the future. One way to confirm your data is intact is to run a checksum which reads all of the data and generates a code. If one bit is different, a completely different checksum will be generated. In a system of multiple redundant computing machines regular checksums could be generated and checked. If one of the machines has corrupted data the system can be replaced with a copy of one of the remaining redundant systems.
4165285
Your reply to Artichoke about the "expert in technology" part made me laugh. The speculation of technology is a fallacy, and trying to predict what will happen and when it will happen is nearly impossible. We can still give some nice ranges at least though, xD.
Aye, so just basically making sure the original is always preserved at at least one of the devices. I see how it works in theory, but I'm always looking at the numbers: eventually something will screw itself over, and the system will be either fail catastrophically or catch itself and continue on. My knowledge of computers is as deep as Java and C++ and nothing beyond that, so I'm no expert at it. However, how would you know which original copy of that code is the correct one and the wrong one is the wrong one? Inter-system democracy (the ones with the most similar copies prevail and over-right the rogue one? etc.)? I'd be curious to see the odds of multiple failures and the statistical odds over the course of a few thousand years, and the overall possibility of a system failure and destruction.
To be honest, I think I need to stop thinking in terms of raw probability and think in terms of computer redundancy to realize that it's possible to create a long-lived system so long as it's done properly. Still, issues can arise, hence why I mentioned the "one wrong coded region and you're screwed" idea. You have a jacked up codon and get a mis-sense or nonsense mutation, you might be screwed. Likewise, if your computer goes drunk mode on a byte, you might be screwed. How many redundancies can be taken before the redundancies become a liability themselves? Too many questions, too little time, and too much exhaustion. I'll continue this with you tomorrow if you'd like? I enjoy chatting with people with more experience in a field.
Well I hope the reason for the slavery and dickery of the ponies is better than the one in Chains...
4165301 When it comes to checksums (hashes) the point is to generate a small unique code that will be different for different files (data) but two identical files (data) will always generate the same code. Well you ask, how can this be? A file has X number of ones and zeros you would need a code of equal or greater length to ensure that every possible combination of data has it's own unique code! That is where the hash function comes in (the program that generates the code). The program is designed to make it very very very unlikely that two different files would have the same code.
Assume ten redundant computers are exact copies of each other. The original checksum (code) was generated from the original programming data and is stored in a special place on each computer. Each computer would routinely check the code generated from the programming data against the saved code. If they are different you know the data is corrupted and the computer can be replaced. Now it is possible that the data or the code could randomly corrupt but you will be able to tell that they are different and something is wrong when you do the code check. The only way that this will break is if both the code and the data change at the same time and in the right way so that the new corrupted data generates the new corrupted code. Or if the randomly corrupted data magically corrupted to that one unlikely file that generates the same code. The chances of that happening are infinitesimally minuscule, something like googol to one.
My god, stories like this are a godsend to fimfiction. Definitely a change from the trite, over used human slave trope. Riveting, engaging, beautiful, and brilliant are some of the words I could use to describe your work so far.
Honestly, it's easily printed author quality, maybe a bit better even, as you've had plenty of time to make a chapter.
4164578
Charles Dickens? Died 1870? You're telling me to read 1850s material as an argument for today's grammar? But that's not really the main argument.
What you call "background information" is what I call the setting, and it's what I mainly have a problem with, because I can't keep my mind in the story when I see something that doesn't seem right... It's like being in a dream, then realizing something is wrong.
Further, the past has bearings on both the present and future. I don't think historians would agree with your policy of ignoring the past. And that policy doesn't make sense either when most of what happened so far was creating the setting.
On the subject of regenerative science, it's something I've been working on for a long time... Our bodies' regeneration does not surpass that of the immortal jellyfish or the radiodurans. And give a bacterial colony access to an infinite flow of food: the entire colony may never be larger than a human, but it will last forever, just as all life has lasted till now.
In military engineering, you're supposed to reduce the number of "critical functions". There should never be single point failure. There is no, "add more machines to double check", but there is having machines replace bad ones. If 4 out of 5 machines answered a query correctly, remove the incorrect machine, destroy it, then use it to make a new machine, and test it. Have multiple testing bays. (We can then determine how long it will be until an entire unit may fail, as each cpu must fail simultaneously. If the radiation shielded CPUs have a 1 in a hundred chance of failing per year, then the chance of enough failing is 1/100^3... I can't actually calculate that since the number is so small, but it'll likely take more than 3000 years for a unit of 5 to fail, and you would probably be testing a lot more than 5 CPUs for validity at once.)
Lastly, the HeLa cell is not a multi-celled organism that lives forever. I think only the immortal jellyfish could do that, and even then the dna it's rebirthing itself with would have to remain free of errors, which goes against evolution.
But if you put life in a situation where all changes mean death, then changes will generally stop occurring, and it will be a very, very long time until the whole systems changes. Long as in billions of years.
I don't want him to write lengthy techno-babble either, I just don't want to get to the middle of the chapter and read that all the slaves died because Abraham Lincoln never tried to stop the southern rebellion and reunite the United States. I want to read about humans with history at least up to this point, because I've been led to believe there would be those, not alternate universe humans.
4165285
I don't really disagree with anything you said, but why does everyone assume I'm angry? Honestly it's kind of funny...
4163999
I don't want to burst your bubble oh great and powerful STEMlord. But Some of the greatest sci-fi works ever made had little to no logic, it was a creative outlet for what should be or could be. not what is, or else it's not science-fictoion.
Did star-trek or star-wars ever make sense scientifically? I mean, lightsabers? what were they thinking!
But what pulled it through is that you didn't need to be tech savvy to enjoy it, you could immerse yourself in the world the author or writer created!
But that's just my two bits on the subject, and for once, it's time to Gert off the high horse and let your Imagination run free
4165439
I think an example of hashes could help.
Imagine a simple hash where we take the values of all the letters in a text and add them together, then take the remainder of that number when divided by 1000* 256(one character size). Once the amount of data read was much more than 1000 characters, then there would be a 1 in 1000 chance of a checksum check returning valid for two different files. (Before that, it would be somewhere around 1 in the total number of characters in each file.)
4165301
Ouch. Someone comes along explaining the general gist of my system, and calls themselves a computer engineer, and you say they have more experience in a field.
I'm a computer engineer. In fact, I'm working towards robotics. That's the whole reason I find reading about the robotics in this story painful.
This story is amazing I can't wait for the next chapter. (Of course I can)
I'm a tad concerned about the whole Magic VS Frail human body thingy.
I mean it's perfectly viable for almost ANY Unicorn to pick him up in Telekinesis and snap him like twig. Or just grab his skull and pull it an inch away from the torso, Boom, dead Angel.
That's always been a concern of mine in really ANY fanfic.
Stupid cheating Unicorns.
Hopefully Cypher will gain some kind of countermeasure for magic.
4165745
Star-wars was the first sci-fi show to really be done with good animation in movie theaters. Light sabers are actually pretty close to plasma beams. And Star-wars was never about earth-lings; it was about people in a galexy far, far away.
As far as I know star trek never completely abused probabilities to force a story, and many of the imagined technologies in it remain theoretically possible... Ah, that's what it is: this story feels forced. It's fine when you abuse a probability like not being near planets, but when it's something people relate to, it's going to ruin their immersion. And when you talk about the survival of the entire human race while taking an artistic license... Well, people are now willing to discuss the subject, but they don't want someone completely inept interrupting their discussion, whether it's internal or not.
That's probably the reason for all the 'butthurt' the author's been receiving. Imagine going to a group of people while like nutrition, then talking about how soylent is terrible because it's unnatural. You'll provoke a discussion, and they will want to hear more about what you think, but when they realize you don't actually have anything more than "Soylent = unnatural, Unnatural = bad", which they've already disproved with examples of modern medicine, they'll probably tell you to leave while they continue their conversation. In the end, a conversation may have been sparked, but the starter's reputation was diminished.
And now that I think about it, I may have a new idea for a fic: the ponies are as overpowered as possible with respect to cannon. (Magical shields are completely impenetrable, no matter what. Luna can move the stars. Celestia can channel the sun's heat, but doesn't for the sake of her ponies. Etc.) And we humans have had to abandon our solar system due to a gamma ray burst that left earth uninhabitable, so we went to the nearby Equestrian solar system. And unfortunately, negotiations went bad and now the ponies hate us and try to destroy our entire species up in the sky, like they would try to swat an annoying fly.
4163930
Instead of wasting your time with a reply like that, you should just go:
"I'm sorry, what was that? I can't hear you over the sound of all my favorites."
4165875
Butthurt, yes, of course you're right.
Just look at all these likes and favourites and positive comments; I'm absolutely drowning in butthurt.
Oh, wait, no I'm not!
My god... it took 8000 words to describe him smacking a planet.
Don't get me wrong, I love your writing style, but still!