Best giant space battle series in recent years?

[Batman]

I essentially brought it up because the statement was flat out wrong, Honor wasn't the worst character wank ever by a long shot, but if it managed to get on your nerves yes, that would have been a perfectly sufficient reason to do it too.

[Connor MacLeod]

Fucking thrilling. It might sound rude, but people who enjoy stuff like that are just emotionally children and probably unable to engage with anything with actual content more sophisticated than TOUGH GUY PUNCHED THE MAN.

I suppose that depends on whether oyu meant 'people who enjoy explosions in general' or 'people who can enjoy nothing in sci fi BUT explosions and hate everything else.' If the former, then it would probably apply to me and I *probably* should feel insulted, but in the case of the latter I can see where you're coming from, but that would IMHO reflect the fact that anything one dimensional is boring. A sci fi or fantasy story that was just about fancy magic (or HARD SCIENCE) without explosions oculd be just as boring to me as anything that is nothing BUT explosions. Heck anything that is purely thematic tends to be pretty dull for me too because there's nothing to balance that out. Its quite possible to get tied up in any element of a story to the exclusion of all else, and have the story suffer, after all.

And that's really what the problem is with the Honorverse. It isn't that Honor is a bad character per se (Baen has alot worse writers than Weber...). boring certianly, because she has literally nowhere left to go other than 'take command and blow up more ships.' but its that the stories have become literally nothing more than... data and facts and explanations. We get explanations about the technology. We get explanations about the ships. We get explanations about how the military works. We get explanations about how literally everything works. Weber has some gift for worldbuilding, but his stories have basically become novellized worldbuilding, and that's dull (not unlike Tolkien I find. Good worldbuilding but shitty storytelling.)

It's telling that some of the more interesting Honorverse stuff I tend to read is when other authors are contributing to his universe, either in the spinoff works (like with Eric Flint) or in the anthologies, because anything Weber writes invariably becomes bogged down in technical details, and at this point we don't even have real space battles anymore. Its just 'throw tech at enemy, watch them die.' and we sometimes don't even get to see THAT. But next chapter we'll get pages and pages about the politics and economics of the Star Kingdom down to the tiniest minutae.

Part of me suspects that the decline in quality is due to Weber interacting with the fans directly. Not only in the sense is it creating an artificial sense of what is 'important', but I've long had the feeling Weber is in a sort of conflict with his fans - basically his fans try telling him how his own damn series works . HE gets into lengthy responses trying to explain why that isn't so... and it invariably creeps inot his writing (I suspect in an effort to prevent further efforts by the fans to trump him on the universe.)

I'd actually argue many of the Posleenverse characters are worse than anything in the Honorverse. I especially have grown to hate Mike and his entire family.

[Stark]

I don't doubt you're right; if he became aware of what his fans want (ie meaningless minuatae and contentless 'battles') it's almost certainly easier to write such a story than one with actual things in it. Its a natural progression; as characters become more bland and are forced through yet more false jeopardies and receive more reams of fluff, it becomes harder to raise any kind of response toward them. If you don't care about anyone or anything (which can mean you either have no stake or you understand that there is no stake, in narrative terms), how can something be anything but boring? If something is in the literal sense of the word meaningless, how can it have meaning?

Of course, the fans don't want meaning. They want codex entries and reader-empowering 'battleporn'... so thats what they get. 'Just make more stories with space explosions and worldbuilding that validates my political beliefs, please'.

And frankly, 'worldbuilding' as it is understood by fat people is probably always destructive. If the reader notices the author is showing off his elite worldbuilding, the story sucks (Tolkein is a good example).

[Connor MacLeod]

The thing is I'm not sure if Weber is catering to his fans this way, or if he's actually fighting with them. I suspect the latter, but that's just a guess, and either way it results in the same decline of quality. What it comes down to, ultimately, is that Weber has sacrificed any broad appeal the stories may have had in order to focus more exclusively on the datadumps on every facet of the universe, resulting in something that will appeal to a very narrow segment of sci fi fandom.

You can actually see that in lots of 'popular' writers both in fantasy and fiction. In fantasy for example you had Robert Jordan, who was obsessed on characters and politics (in the sense he kept INTRODUCING MORE FUCKING POINTLESS CHARACTERS) that bloated his works until nothing interesting at all happened. Terry Goodkind is another in the 'thematic' vein, as he likes to try to inject 'themes' into his stories, but he fixates on these so much he isn't writing characters so much as authorial mouthpieces, and the works come off as needlessly preachy. Star wars introduced that sort of formulaic repetition in the EU by having the 'movie cast SAVING THE GALAXY' in book after book.

You can find this in even supposedly 'beloved' authors. People (at least on this board, but otherS) absolutely LOVE George RR Martin, but I find the guy to be tedious at times for the same reason Jordan can - he obsesses WAY too much about characters (and many of the characters he writes, I find, are boring as fuck.) There's also, to me, very little cohesion in his writing, and its hard to follow matters without a fucking roadmap (I'm not so into the series that I'm going to remember every little fucking detail from book 1 and thus catch a reference in latter books.) Alot of people like Frank Herbert, but some of his latter works (particuarily God Emperor of Dune) were incredibly tedious because they were basically just platforms for Herbert to wax poetic about his 'ideas', and anything like plot or character development were sacrificed.

Like most anything in life, too much of one thing can be bad for you. Its kinda nice to have dessert or sweets to enjoy and for variety, but it will fuck you up to rely exclusively on that. Ideally you need at least some variety. My personal favorite sort of fiction is the ones that can really engage you on multiple levels at once - characters, plot, theme, action/mindless explosions, technical shit, etc. Sort of like what you find in some of the Japanese sci fi for example

[Stark]

I agree with this - and this is what art (and art criticism) is supposed to be about. If you can identify the content of a work, or even look at what the author might see as their goals, its pretty interesting to see how one shapes the other.

Its an interesting idea that an author in a niche with a vocal fanbase might feel they need to 'reclaim' the direction of their fiction from fans - but I can certainly see how this can come about. Imagine the frustration of creating something that is only popular because sad people take it the wrong way. Imagine how tiresome it is for those people if what the author views as important is extremely tedious!

[Batman]

Japanese SciFi has the vast drawback of largely only being available in japanese/with subtitles, and not only do I seriously not like subtitles on principle, but I have had bad experiences with them. (Unless a 3 minute monologue in japanese can accurately be translated as 'Fuck' I'm not trusting those translations all that much).

[Stark]

One note 'analysis' that doesn't engage with work at all from scifi 'fan'? No way!

What interests me about the authors Connor mentions is that they are very popular, but regarded by not inconsiderable groups as rubbish. How would that act to shape an author's work? As a creator, can you be as flexibel as a product marketing team, or are you naturally pushed towards the fans and their expectations (even without the modern disaster that is the web forum)?

[Batman]

I wasn't aware I presented this as 'analysis'. I just stated I hate subtitles, especially subtitles I very much suspect aren't particularly accurate?

[Connor MacLeod]

Yeah. And in alot of writer's cases you can tell that one of their biggest problems is the absence of a strong editor to hold them in check and/or the inability of the writer to restrain him/herself. Weber is one of those authors who should just stick to ideas and let someone else write for him really (or he needs an editor to ride herd on him hard to keep him from databoxing his stories to death), because I can actually see glimpses of a good story (and good ideas) in what he's trying to convey.

One of the things I've always liked about him is that he can write villains who aren't mustache twirlers. Even the current crop of enemies are more than just 'ha ha ha I do it because I'm EVIL' - they have families and friends that they love and care about. They can feel guilt and regret for the horrible things they do, but they may still feel justified in doing them because they view it for the greater good (or they're driven by baser emotions like hate or revenge that they don't dwell too much on.) That sort of thing I could get behind, and if Weber had devoted more effort to developing those aspects, alot of what he's written wouldn't come off as silly and superficial I like to contrast things like LOGH to the Honorverse because you can see parallels, and LOGH is what I think the honorverse could be if there was more depth in the characters (and plot) and less pointless background factoids. I see certain parallels between the Free Planets Alliance in LOGH and the old Haven/Solarian League in the Honorverse, but the difference between the two is that far more effort and time was devoted to the characterizations of the FPA and the people behind it than were given to those in the Honorverse. So the HV factions end up looking like paper tigers because there really is no substance to them as written.

And again I don't find Honor a bad character. But she is a boring one, and that can stem from the fact that all the 'problems' she faced invariably got neatly and permanantly resolved early in the story, and nothing really ever replaced them. Her would-be rapist was executed, she was kicked out of the Manticoran navy for two whole books before coming back (and shortly being made Admiral, even after she was an Admiral in the OTHER navy she calls home.) She's a noble in both nations. Her political opposition swiftly gets routed on both planets, so there are no internal tensions or conflicts to drive her development. And there are no real external conflicts to develop her because.. everything is resolved decisively by who has the better tech, and the opposition never had enough effort devoted in developing them. So Honor has ultimately stagnated as a character because there is literally nowhere to go with her. Had one of those factors above changed (EG she wasn't an Admiral in both navies, or if she wasn't a noble, for example) there might be room to expand on her.. but there isn't. She just exists to blow up more of the paper-tiger enemy and feel guilty about all those so called 'losses' the technolological deus-ex-machina created. And even THAT has no emotional impact because there is no real depth to the enemy. Weber could get around this by simply NOt writing about Honor anymore, but for some reason he's loathe to do this. He.. sort of does (Shadows of Saganami or in some of the short stories he writes) but he never really throws her into the background completely the way he should, and that's yet another thing holding the story back.

It also goes without saying that more depth to his characters (villains and protagonists) would create more tension and drama - the story wouldn't be quite so 'black or white/good or bad' (again like LOGH, or like the Zeon and Federation in Gundam.) and the nuance behind the motivations and feelings of the characters (and how they interweave) would carry the story far better.

So, like I said there's nuggets of potential there, but its buried under all the bullshit that he keeps putting out that its debatable whether it will ever be resolved. I think the last story I actually gave a damn about was 'At all Costs' and that still wasnt as good as some of the earlier stuff and only had interest because there were actual space battles (and the fight was against a Haven with more depth and characters I was interested in, so the fights and all the death actually *HAD* impact.)

[Stark]

I've read many series where I've given up quite early on when they appeared to run out of steam, and then heard that the sort of thing you describe occurs - all the conflict is resolved in the early books, when the author or publisher imagine a small series. But because of market issues like branding and a niche fanbase, it remains profitable to continue to exploit it well beyond the needs of the story. I wonder if in these situations authors don't rejig their work simply because they don't really care; they don't actually want to invest any of their creative energy in it beyond that required to pay the mortgage. Maybe creators change over time from creators to curators.

I think even the worst fiction could be changed into something good... but I'm not sure the creators or marketers of it consider this a good idea.

[Connor MacLeod]

What interests me about the authors Connor mentions is that they are very popular, but regarded by not inconsiderable groups as rubbish. How would that act to shape an author's work? As a creator, can you be as flexibel as a product marketing team, or are you naturally pushed towards the fans and their expectations (even without the modern disaster that is the web forum)?

I think of it partly being a 'comfort zone' sort of thing, at least for some fans. Whether because they simply don't know anything else, or they're afraid to expand their horizons, or the idea of something different from their preconceived notions is offensive... it creates these sort of.. segregations. Sort of like how you get that 'hard vs soft' sci fi distinction and hte problems that creates. I honestly thing that much of the resistance or defensiveness you get from Hard sci fi fans to criticism stems from the belief that adherence to 'realism' or science is somehow going to make for a better writer because it forces you to be internally consistent.. when in reality that can only come from the person policing themselves, or having the willingness to have genuine critics amidst their circle of advisors.

That sort of mindset can also be a jump off point for further problems, I think.. whether its becomes a closed and fanatical sort of fandom skewing the perceived appeal of the story, or influencing the imitative nature of fiction in both a creative and economic sense (what is popular will spawn clones to make money, and people will look at what is popular as being what is creatively 'good'.) and so on and so forth. What I always find interesting in the stuff I read (and I try to read a variety of things to know what I do like and dont like, as well as to discern what does and doesn't appeal to me.) is that I can usually find SOMETHING I like, or some positive element in lots of fiction, but I can also discern things that don't work for me or seem to be holding it back. For me its rarely 'all good' or 'all bad', which is one reason I tend to dislike the idea that something can be summed up as 'sucks' or 'not sucks' it really doesn't make an effort at analysis, it just sort of waves it off ins ome superficial manner.

[jollyreaper]

When I mention hard vs soft sf, it's a descriptor, not a critique. Compare with computer shooters. A game like Max Payne is meant to be over the top. Something like Rainbow Six is trying to be more realistic. Gun-fu naturally belongs in the Payne setting but space aliens do not. Likewise, super soldier drugs fit with Payne but are a little too scifi for Rainbow.

The whole hard/squishy thing is about setting expectations, just like the blurb on the back of the book lets you know what you're in for. Is this light fantasy? Grimdark fantasy? Sparkly vampires aimed at teenage girls fantasy?

Space opera in general comes with a host of assumptions that makes it soft scifi which I'm cool with. Therefore the important parts are keeping the characters interesting, the suspense compelling, and not setting up plot complications that can't be resolved without contrivances.

The Lost Fleet lost me because the characters were cardboard and the worldbuilding was too flat to make me truly care about the combatants. It was also written way too long. And it's a shame because the premise started with such promise.

[jollyreaper]

I don't doubt you're right; if he became aware of what his fans want (ie meaningless minuatae and contentless 'battles') it's almost certainly easier to write such a story than one with actual things in it. Its a natural progression; as characters become more bland and are forced through yet more false jeopardies and receive more reams of fluff, it becomes harder to raise any kind of response toward them. If you don't care about anyone or anything (which can mean you either have no stake or you understand that there is no stake, in narrative terms), how can something be anything but boring? If something is in the literal sense of the word meaningless, how can it have meaning?

Of course, the fans don't want meaning. They want codex entries and reader-empowering 'battleporn'... so thats what they get. 'Just make more stories with space explosions and worldbuilding that validates my political beliefs, please'.

And frankly, 'worldbuilding' as it is understood by fat people is probably always destructive. If the reader notices the author is showing off his elite worldbuilding, the story sucks (Tolkein is a good example).

Well, part of this comes down to "you're enjoying it wrong." In a balanced work fans can watch it for the characters, the costumes, the romance, the drama, etc. There's something it it for everyone and a a balanced fan can enjoy every part. Some portions of the fanbase only care about a narrow sliver. For every male nerd obsessing over the mechanical designs I will show you a female nerd shipping hard, usually same sex pairings.

Exposition is snarly tough work and difficult to pull of naturally. And if a writer comes to fall in love more with some parts of the story than others, or if he caters to a vocal fanbase, the flavor of the original is lost and people start complaining its not the same thing anymore.

The problem with Honor is she was written into a Mary Sue and all of her enemies were horrid little people who just can't bring themselves to love her. There weren't any cases of her opponent not only being a good man but also right, no mistakes made on her end. In the first novel she was written as homely and somehow turned into a fashion model. I don't even remember when that happened.

I think what also kills a familiar story is that the sense of discovery is lost. A new story is a new world to explore and the next book, season, sequel etc has difficulty replicating that feeling. Even if everyone moves to a new spot in the world, the general rules all remain, especially in a scifi or fantasy setting, so there's nothing new to discover there.

When I talk of the worldbuilding in lost fleet being weak, I mean that for two civilizations locked in combat, we certainly know little about them. They just feel so utterly generic. They feel thinly drawn as places, just as the characters are thinly-drawn. There's captain brick squarejaw, his second in command plucky hotforcaptain, Madame vice-president dreadfulharpiewoman, etc. The one note their introduced with is the only note you get. Which might work on a short story but not over four novels.

[Thanas]

I essentially brought it up because the statement was flat out wrong, Honor wasn't the worst character wank ever by a long shot, but if it managed to get on your nerves yes, that would have been a perfectly sufficient reason to do it too.

I am freaking sorry, but if you have one character - without any training - beating a master swordfighter just because she has "that killer instinct" and he does not, then that pretty much beats any wank I have ever seen.

[Connor MacLeod]

Uh, no training at all? Where the fuck did you get that idea? I'm pretty sure she'd been undergoing training to learn Grayson swordfighting before she killed Burdette - that was part of the whole plot in fact (the best swordsman on Grayson wouldn't teach her cuz she was a woman, but the second ranking one did...) and as I recall that training was part of what enabled her to kill him.

[Thanas]

Uh, no training at all? Where the fuck did you get that idea? I'm pretty sure she'd been undergoing training to learn Grayson swordfighting before she killed Burdette - that was part of the whole plot in fact (the best swordsman on Grayson wouldn't teach her cuz she was a woman, but the second ranking one did...) and as I recall that training was part of what enabled her to kill him.

Nobody of the guys at the duel gave her any chance, including the swordfighters at the court. And she had been training for what, a few weeks, besides her usual duties? Real fencing takes years. Honor was at best at beginners level.

[Connor MacLeod]

Noone gave her a chance because they were a bunch of bigots thinking a stupid woman couldn't fight, and this despite the fact of actually seeing FOOTAGE of her fight. More to the point, the sort of 'fighting' Burdette had been doing had been the nonlethal practice sort that noone gets killed in - he hasn't killed anyone in a duel as I recall (and purportedly there was a difference between merely fighting in competitions and training and actually fighting to kill, as I remember the 'distinction' supposing to go.)

Burdette died though because Honor knew when he was going to strike, and struck him down with one blow. Which at the time was attributed to some sort of 'look for the signs of when your enemy will strike', but in retrospect of the latter novels indicates it was probably her own telepathic abilities at work in conjunction with her 'better than human' engineered physique (you know, faster and stronger than a human.)

If you're going to complain about her, complain about something better than 'she's psychic with superior physical abilities' man. You'd get much better progress if you fixated on the fact she's literally elevated to the point where she can seemingly do anything, has few or no flaws (I think the only one she's retained is 'she can't do math very well'.) and everyone loves her. Master of tactics and strategery, master of weapons design, master of fighting, master of politics, Admiral in two navies, nobility on two worlds, blah blah... Seriously, she's uninteresting because there's absolutely no development of her character to be had anymore. Weber closed of what roads there were long ago.

[Thanas]

Noone gave her a chance because they were a bunch of bigots thinking a stupid woman couldn't fight, and this despite the fact of actually seeing FOOTAGE of her fight. More to the point, the sort of 'fighting' Burdette had been doing had been the nonlethal practice sort that noone gets killed in - he hasn't killed anyone in a duel as I recall (and purportedly there was a difference between merely fighting in competitions and training and actually fighting to kill, as I remember the 'distinction' supposing to go.)

It still is idiotic to assume a beginner is going to be on the same level as a master fencer. No way. Fighting for competition and fighting a duel is pretty much the same. The only difference is that one is done with sharp weapons and one is with safety point tips etc. see this.

Even further, it is pretty much nonsense to have her win a duel with broken ribs and no sleep for a few days.

[andrewgpaul]

I've read many series where I've given up quite early on when they appeared to run out of steam, and then heard that the sort of thing you describe occurs - all the conflict is resolved in the early books, when the author or publisher imagine a small series. But because of market issues like branding and a niche fanbase, it remains profitable to continue to exploit it well beyond the needs of the story. I wonder if in these situations authors don't rejig their work simply because they don't really care; they don't actually want to invest any of their creative energy in it beyond that required to pay the mortgage. Maybe creators change over time from creators to curators.

I think even the worst fiction could be changed into something good... but I'm not sure the creators or marketers of it consider this a good idea.

IIRC, the later Harrington books - ever since the Mesa plot started kicking off properly with Crown of Slaves and ... that other one - were supposed to be a "scions of Harrington" series. The original plan was to kill off Honor, or at least let her retire/die of old age and then bring in the kids. That would have at least allowed for some new conflicts to be introduced for those characters. As it happened, apparently no-one told Flint and he went and kicked off the new plot 50 years early.

[Stark]

What I always find interesting in the stuff I read (and I try to read a variety of things to know what I do like and dont like, as well as to discern what does and doesn't appeal to me.) is that I can usually find SOMETHING I like, or some positive element in lots of fiction, but I can also discern things that don't work for me or seem to be holding it back. For me its rarely 'all good' or 'all bad', which is one reason I tend to dislike the idea that something can be summed up as 'sucks' or 'not sucks' it really doesn't make an effort at analysis, it just sort of waves it off ins ome superficial manner.

This is really the only reason to really hate something, in my opinion. A game or book or movie or whatever that is entirely bad is just bad; there's little point even discussing it, unless it is unintentionally amusing. The really bad things, and the things that you can get frustrated about, are the ones where there are indeed good ideas in there and they just fail. Whether its a game that implements an idea badly with predicitable problems because the developers never bothered playing any other games, or a book where obvious power curves and false jeopardy destroy the impact or a movie where none of the music works and nothing is sold, its worth talking about (and making fun of) because there was a chance of it being good, and the creators just made bad decisions.

Like in that other thread about 40k poops; its not hard to make that stuff good. But... why bother? The fans would buy it if it talked about turd cannons and normal people will probably never buy it. Maybe creators end up not wanting to squander their creative energies on a paycheck. I've seen this with many creators I have known - early in a project they can have lots of drive and passion toward their subject, but after a while (and a few successes) they seek other outlets for their creative energies. However, the nature of marketing doesn't allow an author to just change up their Branded Characters and Setting(TM).

And holy shit is jollyreaper the best or what I mean... wow.

[jollyreaper]

I'm sorry, I don't quite grasp the direction of your snark, Stark. What about me are you attacking in particular?

[Connor MacLeod]

Noone gave her a chance because they were a bunch of bigots thinking a stupid woman couldn't fight, and this despite the fact of actually seeing FOOTAGE of her fight. More to the point, the sort of 'fighting' Burdette had been doing had been the nonlethal practice sort that noone gets killed in - he hasn't killed anyone in a duel as I recall (and purportedly there was a difference between merely fighting in competitions and training and actually fighting to kill, as I remember the 'distinction' supposing to go.)

It still is idiotic to assume a beginner is going to be on the same level as a master fencer. No way. Fighting for competition and fighting a duel is pretty much the same. The only difference is that one is done with sharp weapons and one is with safety point tips etc. see this.

Even further, it is pretty much nonsense to have her win a duel with broken ribs and no sleep for a few days.

Look, I went back and actually checked up on the stuff in 'Flag in Exile', and I still have no clue what you're going on about.

For one thing, what I could find insofar as Honor's training on Grayson in the sword:

He knew the harlot had toyed with the sword since her own people haddriven her to Grayson in disgrace, but she'd been here little more than a year and spent the lastthree months in space. No doubt what little she'd learned had slipped away through lack of practice, while he held the rank of Master Second. Like any other Grayson, he'd thought thesword's serious use a thing of the past, but now he understood at last the true reason God hadinspired him to become its master.

Its not exactly vague, but we could anticipate months (up to the better part of a year) in training, and we dont really have a great deal of info on how much training over that time period she engaged in (it could have been sporadic, or very involved.) and depending on how things played out, may have been up most of (or nearly all of) a year or so.

What's more, from earlier stuff we learn her purported martial arts training (which she was also teaching the guy training her) and her prior fencing lessons when she was training in the military apparently formed some sort of basis, which may or may not have an impact. We also learn that the guy she was learning Grayson swordfighting from had joined her in doing some research on the 'history' and 'origins' and was using that to develop variations on the fighting style (whcih may or may not have been taught to Honor as well.) There's a whole bunch of subtext about the whole 'dominaince and crease' shit part of Grayson sword training, and how most people went for the former rather than the latter (although the latter was the true sign of 'mastery'.. setting up the whole thematic difference between Honor and Burdette in the scene ally near as I can tell.) Heck, they even make mention (several times) of the fact her lack of sleep and general physical condition make her unsuited to combat (Protector Benjamin AND Burdette in particular were aware of this.)

But really, alot of that is a side issue, because the 'duel', such as it was described, was very brief and very one sided. Burdette didn't even get off a single attack before he was killed:

Honor waited, poised and still, centered physically and mentally, her eyes watching everypart of his body without focusing on any. She felt his frustration, but it was as distant andunimportant as the ache of her broken ribs. She simply waited — and then, suddenly, she moved.

She never knew, then or later, what William Fitzclarence's "crease" was. She simply knew she'd recognized it. That something deep inside her saw the moment he committed himself, theinstant his arms tightened to bring his blade slashing down.

The instant in which he was entirely focused on the attack, and not on defense.

Her body responded to that recognition with the trained reaction speed of someone born andbred at the bottom of a gravity well fifteen percent more powerful than her opponent's. Her bladeflashed up in a blinding, backhand arc, and the Sword of State's razor-sharp spine opened Burdette's torso from right hip to left shoulder. Clothing and flesh parted like cobwebs, and sheheard the start of his explosive cry as shock and pain froze his blade. But he never completedthat scream, for even as it rose in his throat and he began to fold forward over his opened belly,her wrists turned easily, and she slashed back to her left in a flashing continuation of her originalmovement, backed by all the whip-crack power of her body, and William Fitzclarence's headleapt from his shoulders in a geyser of blood

That's the sum total of the battle, and its more like an Execution. And all it really requires is Honor basically having better reactions than her opponent, which her psychic abilities (and 'better than human' genetic engineering magic 'advantages') can quite easily give her, however you choose to interpret it. Moreover, its not exactly a feat or abilty unique to the Honorverse, lots of sci fi has used the idea of 'psychic or more advanced human with abilities better than normal being able to outperform other humans they're fighting' before.

So basically.. there's lots of problems with the Honorverse one can legitimately bring up and criticize it over, but this really... is not one of them.

[Connor MacLeod]

This is really the only reason to really hate something, in my opinion. A game or book or movie or whatever that is entirely bad is just bad; there's little point even discussing it, unless it is unintentionally amusing. The really bad things, and the things that you can get frustrated about, are the ones where there are indeed good ideas in there and they just fail.

In my personal case, I know that I cannot simply decide whether or not I like or hate something just by a casual observation. all too often it results that something I thought I hate or would not be interested in is something I acutally like. This was actually the case with Mobile Suit Gundam. I did not start to get drawn in until after I'd gotten past the first handful of episodes, and I really didn't get drawn in until sometime after Ryu sacrificed himself and we started learning more of the events surrounding Gundam and White Base. It really was great by the end, but had I let my judgement of those first few episodes guide me, I probably would not have watched the series. Interestingly enough, I had the opposite experience with NGE years ago when I watched it. I really liked the earlier episodes, but about halfway to 2/3 of the way through the series my interest started waning, and it just really didn't appeal to me by the end. I even tried watching EoE to see if it would change my opinion (it didn't.) That isn't to say Evangelion is bad per se, its just that whatever draws others to it really didn't engage me in quite the way Gundam did. But if I had based my feelings on those early eps alone, you probably would say I am an NGE fan.

Whether its a game that implements an idea badly with predicitable problems because the developers never bothered playing any other games, or a book where obvious power curves and false jeopardy destroy the impact or a movie where none of the music works and nothing is sold, its worth talking about (and making fun of) because there was a chance of it being good, and the creators just made bad decisions.

I agree. Its also part of the whole discovery process... even if the topic is bad in general, discussing it or making fun of it can have value or entertainment. I also found doing this with stuff like 40K has helped me get more comfortable with the idea of people criticizing stuff I like and not being offended just because they criticize it. Its amazing how often 'criticism of a work' gets conflated with 'person must hate it.'

Like in that other thread about 40k poops; its not hard to make that stuff good. But... why bother? The fans would buy it if it talked about turd cannons and normal people will probably never buy it. Maybe creators end up not wanting to squander their creative energies on a paycheck. I've seen this with many creators I have known - early in a project they can have lots of drive and passion toward their subject, but after a while (and a few successes) they seek other outlets for their creative energies. However, the nature of marketing doesn't allow an author to just change up their Branded Characters and Setting(TM).

40K has alot of problems with it, grimdark and the Space Marine/Imperium obsession being one of them, but I do believe there are some genuinely good authors in the universe - at least as far as the novels go. It may just be a matter of taste and what one wants/likes from their fiction, but guys like Abnett and Mitchell and even that Aaron Dembski-Bowden are just the ones who appeal to me as 40K writers on varying levels (characters, story, etc.). They seem willing to buck the trends and the codex crap (I should note I consider the Codex and core rule mateiral to be the worst story-based shit in the setting.) Even if I don't always like the story of a different writer (and even the guys I mentioned can fall flat on story) the characters are usually deeper and more interesting than in most 40K and make it worth it for me. and of course, my fascination (or fixation) on the technical is always a draw, whatever you think of that

I also like the RPG stuff because it seems to want to take a more nuanced, deeper approach to the setting, which given the supposed importance of storytelling in RPGs, makes sense.

Overall 40K may not be the 'intellectual' or 'thematic' type of fiction that some people favor, but I find its got enough interesting thematic stuff for me if I look for it. and the process of sifting it (Both in a technical and thematic sense) has an appeal to me in that 'puzzle solving' way. And if I can enjoy it on both levels, so much the better.


Funny enough, having expanded my exposure to 40K fandom its amazing to see how... fixated it can be. I mean on one hand you have all that uproar over Mat Ward/Necrons in 5th and all those changes and how poorly they went over. Or how people reacted to alot of the rumors in 6th (ULTRAMARINES X TAU 4 EVAH)... but there's even some of the 'game' fans who hate the novels (or even particular writers I mentioned) simply because they feel they aren't 'true' to the setting. Abnett in particular has been criticized (multiple times) for depowering Space Marines and Primarchs in his novels (which is not only untrue, its hilariosu for 'Space marines don't kill enough' being a reason to dislike an author. Even me in my technial obsession finds that rather trivial.) It can really illuminate you on just how bad preconceptions can influence our thinking in matters when we get comfortable in our little mental grooves.

[Thanas]

That's the sum total of the battle, and its more like an Execution. And all it really requires is Honor basically having better reactions than her opponent, which her psychic abilities (and 'better than human' genetic engineering magic 'advantages') can quite easily give her, however you choose to interpret it. Moreover, its not exactly a feat or abilty unique to the Honorverse, lots of sci fi has used the idea of 'psychic or more advanced human with abilities better than normal being able to outperform other humans they're fighting' before.

So basically.. there's lots of problems with the Honorverse one can legitimately bring up and criticize it over, but this really... is not one of them.

Have you ever fenced, Connor? The problem is that the entire passage is filled with HONOR SO RIGHTEOUS AND GREAT wank.

His right hand fisted at his side, and his eyes went bleak and cold. In that moment, he wanted nothing in the universe as much as he wanted William Fitzclarence dead on the Chamber floor. Yet whatever he wanted, he also knew Honor had slept for less than three hours in the fifty since her pinnace went down, that she had four broken ribs quick heal had only begun to repair, and that under her clothing she was covered with brutal bruises. She was running on adrenaline and stim tabs, and he had no idea how she could show so little sign of fatigue or physical pain as she stood proudly erect before the Keys, but he knew she was in no fit state to meet a man with Burdette's sword skill. Even if she'd been fresh and unhurt, she'd first touched even a practice blade barely a year before, while Burdette had advanced to the planetary quarterfinals no less than three times, and the rogue steadholder would never settle for first blood. He meant to kill her, and the odds were overwhelming that he could.
He could renounce his own decree, Benjamin thought, and in the renunciation accept his Champion's defeat without exposing Honor to Burdette's blade, but the entire population of Yeltsin's Star was watching. The blow to the Protectorship's power and prestige would be severe, and if the people of Grayson thought he'd surrendered because Honor was afraid to face Burdette—
But then he looked down at Honor, at her waiting eyes—calm and still, despite Burdette's challenge and her own pain—and knew he had no choice. Legally, it made no difference if the Protector accepted defeat or his Champion was slain. In either case, his decree was nullified, and Benjamin Mayhew had no right to ask this woman he owed so much to throw away her life on the threadbare chance that she might, somehow, defeat an opponent with thirty times her experience.
"My Lady, I know of your injuries," he said, and pitched his voice so that it carried to every ear and microphone. He was determined that everyone watching should know he'd surrendered only because of her injuries, and not because he'd ever doubted her courage. "I do not believe you are physically fit to accept this man's challenge in my defense, and so—"
Honor raised a hand, and shock stopped him in midsentence. No one ever interrupted the Protector of Grayson when he spoke from the throne! It was unheard of, but she seemed unaware of that. She simply gazed up at him, never even turning to glance at Burdette, and her cold, dispassionate soprano was as clear and carrying as his own voice had been.
"Your Grace," she said, "I have only one question. Do you wish this man crippled, or dead?"
Benjamin twitched in surprise too great to conceal and a gasp of disbelief went up from the steadholders, but her question had snatched any chance to avoid the challenge from his hands. It was her choice now, not his, and as he gazed down into her dark, almond eyes, he saw again the woman who'd saved his own family from assassination against impossible odds. For just one moment he prayed desperately that she could somehow work one more miracle for herself, for him, and for his world, and then he drew a deep breath.
"My Lady," the Protector of Grayson told his Champion, "I do not wish him to leave this Chamber alive."
"As you will it, Your Grace." Honor bowed in formal salute and stepped up to her own desk. She lifted Nimitz from her shoulder, and he sat tall and still, ears flat but quiet, as she took the Grayson Sword of State from its padded brackets. That jeweled yet deadly weapon had been forged six hundred years before for the hand of Benjamin the Great, but it remained as lethal as of old, and its polished blade—marked with the ripple pattern of what Old Terra had called Damascus steel—flashed in her own hand as she stepped back down to face her enemy.
"My Lord," Lady Honor Harrington said coldly, "send for your sword—and may God preserve the righteous."
* * *
William Fitzclarence stood with his eyes on Harrington, and sneered inwardly at her stupidity. Did she actually believe even her demonic master could protect her now? Was she that stupid?
He glanced at his chrono again, taking care to look almost bored. By law, he could not leave the Chamber without forfeiting the legal protection of his challenge, so he'd been forced to send one of his armsmen to fetch his sword. How fortunate that he'd brought it to the capital with him. He always did, of course, when he was unsure how long he would be here, for he made it a point to work out with it regularly. But, no, it wasn't fortune at all, was it? It was part of God's plan to make him the Sword of the Lord.
There was a stir among the steadholders seated above him, hovering like so many frightened birds, as the Chamber doors opened once more. His armsman entered, carrying the sheathed Burdette blade that forty generations of steadholders had called their own, and he held out his hand. The well-worn hilt slid into his palm like an old and trusted friend, and he turned to the harlot.
She stood as she'd stood since he'd sent for his sword, waiting, the Sword of State braced upright on the polished stone floor before her, hands folded on its pommel, and there was no expression on her face. Not fear, not hate, not concern, not even anger. Nothing at all, only those cold, still eyes.
He felt a sudden, unexpected shiver as his own gaze met those eyes directly, for their very emptiness held something frightening. I am Death, they seemed to say, but only for a moment. Only until he reminded himself of his own skill, and he snorted in contempt. This fornicating trollop thought she was Death? His lip curled, and he spat on the polished floor. She was only the Devil's whore, and her eyes were only eyes, whatever lies they tried to tell. The time had come to close them forever, and steel whispered as he drew his blade.
* * *
Honor watched Burdette draw his sword and saw the glitter of its edge. Like the ancient Japanese blades they so resembled, the swords of Grayson were the work of craftsmen who knew perfection was an impossible goal yet forever sought to attain it. For a millennium they'd polished and perfected their art, and even today, the handful who remained forged the glowing steel blow by blow upon the anvil. They folded each blade again and again to give it its magnificent temper, then honed it to an edge any razor might envy and few could match, and the very perfection of its function defined the form which gave it such lethal beauty.
No doubt modern technology could have duplicated those swords, but they weren't the proper product of modern technology. And preposterous though it was for a modern naval officer to meet a murderous religious fanatic with a weapon which had been five hundred years out of date before ever Man left Old Terra for the stars, there was an indefinable rightness to this moment. She knew Burdette was far more experienced than she, that he'd spent years proving his ability in the fencing salles of Grayson, and she felt the aches and stabbing pain flashes of a body too battered for something like this. But that didn't change her strange, perfect sense of rightness.
She toed off her shoes and stepped forward, gown swirling about her legs, her stockinged feet silent on the stone floor, and despite her fatigue, her mind was as still as her face. She took her position directly before Benjamin's throne, and knew every man in that enormous room expected to see her die.
Yet for all his confidence, Burdette had forgotten—or perhaps never learned—something Honor knew only too well. He thought it would be like the fencing salle. But they weren't in a salle, and unlike him, she knew where they truly were, for it was a place she'd been before . . . and he hadn't. He'd ordered murder done, but he himself had never killed—just as he'd never before come in reach of an intended victim with a weapon in her hand.
Burdette advanced to face her with the arrogant, confident stride of a conqueror. He paused to execute a brief limbering up exercise, and she watched impassively, wondering if he even began to appreciate the difference between competition fencing and this. Fencing was like a training kata in coup de vitesse. It was designed to perfect the moves, to practice them, not to use them. And in the salle, a touch was only a touch.
* * *
Burdette finished loosening his muscles, and that confident corner of his mind sneered afresh as the harlot took her stance. She'd adopted a low-guard position, with the blade extended at a slight diagonal, the hilt just above her waist and the tip angled down. She tried to hide it, but she was favoring her right side—perhaps that was the "injury" Mayhew had mentioned? If so, it might well explain her stance, for the low-guard put less strain on the muscles there.
But the low-guard, as his very first swordmaster had taught him, was a position of weakness. It invited attack rather than positioning to attack, and his sword rose into the high-guard as he took his own stance, weight spread evenly, right foot cocked and slightly back, and his hilt just above eye-level so that he could see her clearly while his blade hovered to strike.
* * *
Honor watched him with the eyes of a woman who'd trained in the martial arts for almost forty years, and the hard-learned, poised relaxation of all those years hummed softly within her. She felt her weariness, the pain of broken ribs, the ache in bruised muscles, the stiffness of her left shoulder, but then she commanded her body to ignore those things, and her body obeyed.
There were two terms Master Thomas had taught her in her first week of training. "The dominance" and "the crease," he'd called them. The "dominance" was the clash of wills, the war of personal confidence fought before the first blow was struck to establish who held psychological domination over the other. But the "crease" was something else, a reference to the tiny wrinkling of the forehead when the moment of decision came. Of course, "crease" was only a convenient label for an infinite set of permutations, he'd stressed, for every swordsman announced the commitment to attack in a different way. All fencers were taught to look for the crease, and competition fencers researched opponents exhaustively before a match, for though the signal might be subtle, it was also constant. Every swordsman had one; it was something he simply could not train completely out of himself. But because there were so very many possible creases, Master Thomas had explained while they sat cross-legged in sunlight on the salle floor, most swordmasters emphasized the dominance over the crease, for it was a simpler and a surer thing to defeat your opponent's will than to look for something one might or might not recognize even if one saw it.
But the true master of the sword, he'd said that quiet day, was she who had learned to rely not on her enemy's weakness, but upon her own strength. She who understood that the difference between the salle and what Honor faced today—between fencing, the art, and life or death by the sword—was always in the crease, not the dominance.
Honor knew she'd taken longer to grasp his meaning than someone with her background should have. But once she had, and after she'd studied the library information on Japan, she'd also realized why—on Grayson, as in the ancient islands of the samurai—a formal duel almost always both began and ended with a single stroke.
* * *
An edge of puzzlement flickered in Burdette's mind as she simply stood there. He, too, had been taught about the dominance and the crease, and he'd used both to his advantage in many competitions. But he was certain she had no more idea of what his crease was than he did of hers; surely she didn't think she could somehow deduce it at this late date!
Or perhaps she did. Perhaps she was too new to the sword to have sorted out all the metaphysical claptrap from the practical reality, but William Fitzclarence was too experienced to allow himself to be distracted from the real and practical when he held a live blade.
He held his position, and his upper lip curled as he reached out for the dominance. That was the part of every match he'd always enjoyed most. The invisible thrust and parry, that tension as the stronger will drove the weaker to open itself to attack, and he licked mental chops at the thought of driving the harlot.
But then the curl smoothed from his lip and his eyes widened, for there was no clash. His intense concentration simply disappeared against her, like a sword thrust into bottomless black water which enveloped it without resistance, and a bead of sweat trickled down his cheek. What was wrong with her? He was the master here, she the tyro. She had to feel the pressure, the gnawing tension . . . the fear. Why wasn't she attacking to end it?
* * *
Honor waited, poised and still, centered physically and mentally, her eyes watching every part of his body without focusing on any. She felt his frustration, but it was as distant and unimportant as the ache of her broken ribs. She simply waited—and then, suddenly, she moved.
She never knew, then or later, what William Fitzclarence's "crease" was. She simply knew she'd recognized it. That something deep inside her saw the moment he committed himself, the instant his arms tightened to bring his blade slashing down.
The instant in which he was entirely focused on the attack, and not on defense.
Her body responded to that recognition with the trained reaction speed of someone born and bred at the bottom of a gravity well fifteen percent more powerful than her opponent's. Her blade flashed up in a blinding, backhand arc, and the Sword of State's razor-sharp spine opened Burdette's torso from right hip to left shoulder. Clothing and flesh parted like cobwebs, and she heard the start of his explosive cry as shock and pain froze his blade. But he never completed that scream, for even as it rose in his throat and he began to fold forward over his opened belly, her wrists turned easily, and she slashed back to her left in a flashing continuation of her original movement, backed by all the whip-crack power of her body, and William Fitzclarence's head leapt from his shoulders in a geyser of blood.

The passage, in its entirety, is pretty much ridiculous, especially as she is supposed to be the only one who recognized his "crease" - which is nothing more than codeword for "reading his body stance and posture/movement". Meanwhile, the trained swordsman is pretty much acting on instinct and hate, two things which should not happen to a trained one. I've got no problem if this was just one freak incident, but pretty much she just outright dominates. Because, you see, she is sooo perfect.

It is entirely unreasonable to expect her to beat a master swordsman with broken ribs (btw, which should make any such maneuver as she did pretty much too painful to do), a bad shoulder and very little sleep.

[Connor MacLeod]

you know what? I think we've come way off what your original complaint actually was. So since I have no fucking clue what you're complaining about (other than grinding the axe of how much you hate Honor as a character, which I realize is your opinion and I grasped LONG ago and I am fine with) you go through the freaking novel and find the exact damn passages that have you so fucking pissed off. I literally give up trying to figure out what your point beyond 'I don't like Honor' is.