The Open Door (megacrossover)

[Aranfan]

Bolo was nerfed. Wasn't given enough information (in the real world, if your enemy has precognitives the entire chain of command is going to know really damn fast, and Scipio should have been informed about city's battlescreen), was put in a situation that was designed to take maximal advantage of its weaknesses while negating its strengths, and its thinking ability was far below normal.

NewChaos needs a loss. It needs to get schooled to show the audience that you aren't just wanking off to your own story. And you just passed up a perfect chance to show that NewChaos can lose. It's the same reason people hate Draka books, it's no fun if one side can never lose.

[Academia Nut]

Let's see here:

1) The Bolo was intentionally crippled by the rules of engagement
2) It was given insufficient data on its enemy
3) It would have won if it hadn't been for the fact that its enemy breaks the laws of physics

The Bolo ran into a scenario that played total against its strengths and to its enemies strengths and it just kept going. If the engagement had been on an open plain, the Eva would have been vapourized in the first few seconds of the simulation, end of story. That's not a true test of the Bolo's strengths though.

The engineers and scientists wanted to see how the Bolo would respond to a sub-ideal situation. As it gathered more and more data, it progressively altered its operating procedures to fit with the scenario. And I re-iterate, if it weren't for the fact that Evas have the capacity to pick it up, it would have won. In fact, it was completely dominating the fight and only the fact that it had to refrain from firing its guns to avoid blowing up more delicate objects prevented it from obliterating the enemy.

You can also see it as a test of character. The Bolo obeyed its orders to the end, even when glassing the city from range would have been more effective and ensured its survival. The Bolo looked at the orders, recognized them as poor orders, but had no reason to disobey and thus continued. Moreso, when it got nuked, a gigantic ragged hole blown in its body, and set on fire, it never even crossed its mind to disobey and retreat. Its objectives were still incomplete. So it charged, like an apocalyptic tank out of hell, and very nearly won. While in an outside context problem designed to screw it over.

Also, this isn't the same sort of Eva we've seen from previously. This is an Eva with about 40 years of additional development, plus knowledge of Imperial and Eldar technology, in particular Titan technology. We didn't get a full view of its capacities, mostly because it was too delicate against the Bolo's main guns to actually show them off. Both its firepower and shields are orders of magnitude better than previous Eva equipment.

In short, read it again. We have a crippled Bolo, hamstrung with poor orders, and in an outside context scenario, and it blew up a mountain and then did a flying leap on to its enemy with the intent to crush it with its own mass. It was innovative, adaptive, and if it had more information, it would have won.

And it wasn't a bad loser either. It just stated, "You cheated" without any hint of accusation. It knows there are going to be times when the enemy 'cheats', and you just have to roll with it.

Which is why there will be more chapters for the Bolo to show off, when it is not in such a bad situation.

[White Haven]

I'll concede the point, marginally, but it just leaves a tremendously sour taste in my mouth for the 'fluff' parts of TOD to be doing, well, any winning at all. To be honest, I more or less sigh and skim when I see another chapter focusing on the 'lolanime' parts of the multiverse.

[Aranfan]

Meh, I still didn't like the chapter.

[Academia Nut]

Actually, now that I've had a little extra time to think on it, I now realize my own sort of sub-conscious reason for having the Bolo lose.

I didn't want to lead up to future curbstomping. Think about it. Chaos is going to get a Bolo on their side. If it completely dominates all of their gear in a simulation, and Chaos has been carefully selecting their targets to avoid getting their asses kicked, what do you think the implication of a Bolo smashing in their shit would be? Especially in a first run simulation. It would mean that they now have access to even better gear and they can go out and Bolostomp even more people. And then the Bolo fans would be cheering while others roll their eyes.

Also, perhaps there is a reason they sent that particular pilot up against the Bolo?

Plus, I will admit that the original ending was a bit different in that I had the Bolo crush the Eva's legs with its jump, only for the Eva to crawl away and regenerate them. But I liked the idea of an Eva-Bolo Wrestling League better.

[Skyfox120]

Actually, now that I've had a little extra time to think on it, I now realize my own sort of sub-conscious reason for having the Bolo lose.

I didn't want to lead up to future curbstomping. Think about it. Chaos is going to get a Bolo on their side. If it completely dominates all of their gear in a simulation, and Chaos has been carefully selecting their targets to avoid getting their asses kicked, what do you think the implication of a Bolo smashing in their shit would be? Especially in a first run simulation. It would mean that they now have access to even better gear and they can go out and Bolostomp even more people. And then the Bolo fans would be cheering while others roll their eyes.

Also, perhaps there is a reason they sent that particular pilot up against the Bolo?

Plus, I will admit that the original ending was a bit different in that I had the Bolo crush the Eva's legs with its jump, only for the Eva to crawl away and regenerate them. But I liked the idea of an Eva-Bolo Wrestling League better.

Eva-Bolo Wrestling league???

*gets odd mental image of Bolo entering a wrestling ring to hard rock music and then doing a speech "The BOLO DOESN'T CARE WHO YOU ARE! THE BOLO is going to take your SPear of Longinus.... turn it sideways.... and STICK UP YOUR EVA ASS!!! " *

I also recall a Bolo story where the Bolo was facing a weird enemy base that had some odd Time-space varients... such that any weapon they shot into it was sent back about 30 seconds later in multiple forms. The Bolo figured out that the alien was cheating somehow througha Time dilation that gave them time to reverse engineer any weapon entering the portal, and then send there versions of it out 30 seconds later. The bolo's answer? enter the portal with its reactor set to explode in 28 seconds....

[Academia Nut]

Eva-Bolo Wrestling league???

*gets odd mental image of Bolo entering a wrestling ring to hard rock music and then doing a speech "The BOLO DOESN'T CARE WHO YOU ARE! THE BOLO is going to take your SPear of Longinus.... turn it sideways.... and STICK UP YOUR EVA ASS!!! " *

See, now that was the reaction I was seeking. This story has a fair amount of silliness. Although I now have the mental image of a Bolo in a leotard stuck in my head.

[Jim Starluck]

First off, I would like to note I have only second-hand knowledge of Bolos, so I'm not that miffed at it getting beaten by an EVA. That's not what bothered me about this chapter, or about the tendency of this story in general.

To expand my earlier post now that I've slept and woken again, this chapter felt like it was conceived like so: 'I need to demonstrate how awesome my pet toys are. I'll find the nastiest possible thing and have it totally helpless, that'll show everyone how awesome it is!' Hell, we have Lars, who's a glorified radio killing gods one chapter, and then in the next we have a supremely powerful war machine getting taken out by a stick figure with a gun because...why? Is it NewChaos Always Wins? And it wasn't just taken out, it was made to look like a Matchbox car...so what next, a first-year infantry trooper nuts Darth Vader once NewChaos starts to play in SW?

Bolo was nerfed. Wasn't given enough information (in the real world, if your enemy has precognitives the entire chain of command is going to know really damn fast, and Scipio should have been informed about city's battlescreen), was put in a situation that was designed to take maximal advantage of its weaknesses while negating its strengths, and its thinking ability was far below normal.

NewChaos needs a loss. It needs to get schooled to show the audience that you aren't just wanking off to your own story. And you just passed up a perfect chance to show that NewChaos can lose. It's the same reason people hate Draka books, it's no fun if one side can never lose.

This. Most of the time so far it, NewChaos has been facing enemies that are portrayed as incompetent, foolish and totally lacking in common sense, IN ADDITION TO much less advanced technology. Only ONCE so far have they bitten off more than they could chew in getting the Borg to send a major attack force and even then they just stomped all over them, even when they pulled out a weapon that could actually conceivably hurt them. And in the long run, after the Stiletto returned home, they came out ahead, with the whole thing chalked up to Tzintchian scheming.

The only time they ever actually screwed up was when they terrified the Borg into firing randomly and blowing up that nursery dome. That was entirely their fault, and instead of acknowledging this or showing any kind of regret or remorse they've decided to swear a campaign of genocidal vengeance against the Collective.

They just aren't very likable. Your protagonists are the least interesting part of this story. I'm reading it more to see the other universes and characters reacting to and dealing with NewChaos. The only NewChaos character who was worth following was Lars, and that ended when he went from a nice guy at heart trying to get home and dealing with repeatedly being dumped into lousy situations to an eldritch overlord bringing Civilization and Industry to the backwater hicks and tree-hugging pansies of Faerun. You've got another character--Vita--who was captured and imprisoned after they attacked the TSAB group on a whim, and now she's brainwashed and wholly loyal to the people who attacked her, captured her and seperated her from her friends and family. And when they meet again she's probably going to get the rest of the TSAB to join up as well.

Academically, I know that they are not invincible and inhnerently superior. They're intentionally avoiding contact and conflict with anyone who could possibly pose a threat. But this leads to them consistently curbstomping their enemies, and it gets boring. There's no challenge for them to overcome, no real conflict. They're winning all the time, and never being forced to reconsider their course of action or ideals. They just do whatever they want and screw over everyone else, and everyone else has to go along with it because they don't have the tech or firepower to resist. You said it yourself, earlier in the thread: they're bullies. And people want to see a bully get his comeuppance.

Personally, I hope that they get smacked around a bit when they try to retrieve whatever-it-is from the Buffyverse. They intentionally and directly fucked over Buffy and the Scoobies for their own ends, and they shouldn't just let that slide.



Edit: On another note for the Stiletto vs Borg fight: while Silly Accent Syndrome was funny, the part of that battle I liked more was the bit from the Collective's perspective. It showed the Borg as coldly analytical and ruthless, truly adapting as they are supposed to do instead of just becoming randomly invincible. I liked that. That's how they need to be written more often.

[White Haven]

Actually, now that I've had a little extra time to think on it, I now realize my own sort of sub-conscious reason for having the Bolo lose.

I didn't want to lead up to future curbstomping. Think about it. Chaos is going to get a Bolo on their side. If it completely dominates all of their gear in a simulation, and Chaos has been carefully selecting their targets to avoid getting their asses kicked, what do you think the implication of a Bolo smashing in their shit would be? Especially in a first run simulation. It would mean that they now have access to even better gear and they can go out and Bolostomp even more people. And then the Bolo fans would be cheering while others roll their eyes.

Also, perhaps there is a reason they sent that particular pilot up against the Bolo?

Plus, I will admit that the original ending was a bit different in that I had the Bolo crush the Eva's legs with its jump, only for the Eva to crawl away and regenerate them. But I liked the idea of an Eva-Bolo Wrestling League better.

Well, the Bolo is self-aware and isn't going to necessarily recognize NewChaos as a legitimate command authority, so if it decides not to help them for whatever reason, they pretty much only have begging as an option open to them short of destruction of the Bolo.

[Academia Nut]

Now that is a valid point, although I suppose I sort of alluded to the fact that things aren't going to go entirely Chaos' way when I pointed out that the scenario that happened at Nesme is of a similar sort to what Chaos is trying to set up in the Buffy-verse, in that they are attempting to trick others into doing their dirty work for them and that the end result was a lot of other factions getting dragged into things, needlessly complicating the scenario and backfiring on the instigators.

I should admit that this story has grown completely out of control and I honestly have no idea where its going anymore. Oh, there are some plot points I run through, but that's like saying that a river connects two points on a map without going into detail all the meanders, turns, waterfalls, rapids, tributaries, and other such things that might be along the way. I'm going from Bow Lake to Fort Nelson and I don't know what's in between!

[LadyTevar]

What struck me most, is the throw-away line about the chess-match, where a 'draw' was impressive against the Bolo's unnamed opponent, and when the scientist vaguely explained, a 'no limits fallacy' was mentioned.


A god would have a no-limits fallacy inborn. The Bolo did a draw against Tzinchi.

[Academia Nut]

Yup. The Bolo went up against a being who knew every last move the Bolo was going to make from the beginning to end, including what moves the Bolo would make in response to moves made with the knowledge of moves the Bolo would make, etc. Basically the Bolo has sufficient processing power and knowledge of the game that it could calculate the same thing, more or less. Essentially both players, for different reasons, played a perfect game of chess and thus the outcome was a draw from the beginning, its just that only one of the players actually knew that.

It's the reason why the scientist said that if they had been playing go the Bolo would have lost. There are so many more possible moves at any one time that the Bolo would have been unable to compensate for the fact that his opponent could already see the endgame and backtrack to make the optimal move. It is believed that the number of possible legal games of go exceeds the number of atoms in the universe by a wide margin, which means that the Bolo is physically incapable of brute forcing a solution like with chess, unlike a certain entity who cheats by looking at what his opponent is going to do before the opponent knows he's going to do it.

So yes, Scipio forced a draw in a game with a god of scheming, deception, and convoluted strategy.

[JGregory32]

The Bolo did a draw against Tzinchi.

No Tzinchi allowed a draw to happen to introduce the concept of the no limit fallicy to the Bolo.

Or Tzinchi allowed the game to close to preserve the bolo as a chess partner for some greater scheme.

It is also possible that Tzinchi wasn't playing and we just assume he was playing to further some other scheme.

[Rahvin]

The story has been pretty one-sided, but again, that's been explained multiple times in-universe - NeoChaos is specifically avoiding those universes that contain significant threats, the normal 40K-verse being chief among them.

And honestly, you're going to complain about anime-level wank in a fic based almost entirely on 40K and an actual freakin anime?

Wank is determined by inconsistencies in unit strengths, where one side (or individual) has vastly more power than anything else in the setting. Outside of that you can make a setting be as powerful as you want, so long as you're consistent. But this is a crossover fic, and AN is hitting a freaking lot of different settings each with varying levels of power. There are going to be inconsistencies in strength. NeoChaos, when cherry-picking universes for their little expeditions, are specifically engineering such inconsistencies.

Where were the wank-whiners when NeoChaos royally fucked over the Praxis? Nobody complained about the power disparity with NeoBSG. Nobody whined about the casual, even accidental fucking-up of The People.

We expect that such universes will be royally fucked by NeoChaos, a universe where anime has met 40k and resulted in an outright physics-ignoring, deity-backed war machine. I remember reading Thousand Shinji and the precog displayed by pre-deity Shinji, and the bolo fight wasn't really outside of even that capability. It doesn't smack of determinism - the precog didn't need to see more than a few moments into the future. How was lining up that shot any different from a Jedi deflecting a blaster bolt back into the barrel of the gun that fired it?

I think you're all just whining because one of your favorite scifi weapons was beaten. But as AN said, it was set up. It had diminished capacity, inadequate intel, unfavorable terrain, and a mission objective that prevented it from even using the tools it did have available...and an enemy that could casually disregard the laws of physics (which we already knew NeoChaos could do). The only one who didn't know the bolo would lose in such a situation was the bolo, and that only because the bolo had less data than the reader. And the bolo blew up a fucking mountain and demolished a city, and at one point planned on nuking the entire area while protecting its objective with its own mass. In literally any other circumstances you'd all be saying how awesome that battle was and begging AN for more - except that your favorite scifi universe uberweapon was beaten.

I took the simulation as the best way to show the bolo the physics-defying abilities of NeoChaos. Note the emphasis on confusing the bolo with such things as FTL communication between nanobots and thermodynamics-defying repairs, and the chess-standstill that wouldn't be possible without precog. The other characters even gave the bolo hints that the normal limitations of organic brains and physical matter no longer apply - the bolo simply dismissed some of it and marked the rest for later when its computational strength was back up to full. I think it was a ploy to help convince the bolo to join them.

This fit perfectly with the overall story so far. And I like the protagonists - not just Lars, but Rong-Arya and all the rest of NeoChaos. Sure they're acting like bullies - but they're legitimately bringing a better future to the worlds that willingly join them, and they practice what they preach. And their overall goal is to work up to being capable of taking on OldChaos - the practice of gaining weapons and abilities from other areas of the Multiverse by taking them from factions neoChaos knows it can beat makes perfect sense.

[MichaelAwesome]

We expect that such universes will be royally fucked by NeoChaos, a universe where anime has met 40k and resulted in an outright physics-ignoring, deity-backed war machine. I remember reading Thousand Shinji and the precog displayed by pre-deity Shinji, and the bolo fight wasn't really outside of even that capability. It doesn't smack of determinism - the precog didn't need to see more than a few moments into the future. How was lining up that shot any different from a Jedi deflecting a blaster bolt back into the barrel of the gun that fired it?

People seem to be forgetting that pre-neoChaos Eva unit could amplify existing psychic abilities a hundred fold, which almost drove Shinji mad with power the first time he piloted. Add Eldar and Imperial tech into the mix, and you amp up a Class-1 Psyker already capable of "telekinetic matter rearrangement" and "macro-probability prescience" by several order of magnitude, much like Jean Grey of the X-Men bonding with the cosmic Phoenix Force.

[Rahvin]

Exactly.

I would like to see NeoChaos face a real challenge and have the "bad guys" win at least a little, but that's going to require something different than simply exploring realities where NeoChaos already knows they have an overwhelming advantage.

But let's be honest - TOD is more of a large collection of short stories strung together into a coherent plot. In most of the short stories, we do see things go wrong for NeoChaos - the multiple Lars plotlines have almost exclusively consisted of Lars getting fucked hard by Murphy and salvaging what he can out of the shitty hand he's dealt. He may have grown in power because of it, but I'd hardly count being shoved from one reality to another and forming a family only to have his wife disappear into a dimensional vortex beyond which waits an unreal horror of unfathomable chaos always winning. I'd count that as "Lars is a badass, and he's really good at turning lemons into lemonade, but shit never really goes well for him and I don't envy him."

And then there was the Stiletto. Sure they were pwning the Borg in terms of blowing up plenty of cubes, but I wouldn't call an unplanned and uncontrolled 10-year detour through the Multiverse trying to reach home a win. Even though Tzintchi planned for it - he's the freaking god of scheming. He has plans that encompass everything - including failure.

NeoChaos lays the hurt down, and they haven't suffered a real, major defeat like the loss of the Stiletto or being discovered and traced by 40K, but they haven't exactly been winning all teh time, either.

[Mutant Headcrab]

I'll have to agree with previous statements that this can solely be attributed to butt-hurt Bolo fans. I'll admit that I know next to nothing about Bolos other than they're awesome sounding super-tanks. To me it's no different than any other sci-fi series and it faired better here than most other series so far. Furthermore, those of you decrying the mecha wanking are just as guilty with your super-tank wanking. Both are incredibly implausible and rediculous. You are also reading a fic spawned in part from a mecha anime, so I don't know what you expected when it comes to combat involving such.

I will concede that we do need to see more losses on Neo-Chaos' part. While I like good ol' fashioned curb-stomping, it does start to wear thin and I can only hope we'll see something Earth-shatteringly bad soon, "just as planned" or not.

[Morilore]

I'd just like to say that I completely ignored the Bolo chapter because I have no idea what a Bolo is and my apathy towards it is boundless, but I agree that it would be gratifying to see NeoChaos get no-shit fucked up at some point.

I can appreciate that the heroes don't always "win" even though they kick ass, and there's some really good stuff here, but I think that Academia Nut needs to rein in his tendency to have his heroes bring civilization to the savages and pontificate on their philosophies.

[Deadpan29]

In an argument like this there seem to be two main areas of contention.

The first is arguments of who would win based on indicated capabilities. In this case we have one side based on sci-fantasy stuff that deliberately bypasses the laws of physics. The other side inadvertently bypasses those laws because, as consequences pointed out, the numbers in the books are dumb. Like an awful lot of arguments on this board, it degenerates into pointlessness because there is no way to fact-check or myth-bust any of this.

The second area is whether or not the result makes for a pleasing/entertaining story. I have to say, this doesn't work as well in this area as most of the preceding chapters. As noted, Bolo-awesomeness has less to do with hulls in the kilotons and firepower in the megatons than their loyalty, determination, and ability to find a way no matter what. And, despite my previous paragraph on trying to argue capabilities of fictional combatants, it was established, in story, that the Bolo can play the schemer god to a draw in a constrained tactical/strategic situation. I think a more aesthetically pleasing ending would be something closer to a draw, both because of my respect for the fictional Bolos and because of the ongoing Chaos-Curbstomp pointed out by others. Something like: It runs over the eva, parks itself on the objective, fires of the nukes (damaging itself further), and then through barely-functioning remaining sensors, it sees the regenerating eva get up and finish it off.

(For a slightly sillier ending, I have an image in my head of the charging Bolo hitting a sloped AT-field, going Evil Knievel, blowing the eva away as it flips over in mid air, and inadvertently destroying the target when it lands on it and goes boom.)

[Academia Nut]

Okay, I will admit that I am now extremely tempted to rewrite the chapter to have a Bolo Evil Knieval moment, but I'm going to keep it the way it is for now, simply so I can use that trick later

The next chapter should have more character development, and people not having things go all their way.

[Enigma]

Okay, I will admit that I am now extremely tempted to rewrite the chapter to have a Bolo Evil Knieval moment, but I'm going to keep it the way it is for now, simply so I can use that trick later

The next chapter should have more character development, and people not having things go all their way.

At first I was going to go nuts over how you dealt with the Bolo but after reading what was your intent then I just relaxed.

One nitpick I have is that whenever an author writes a Bolo, he\she always has it written in italics.

I am a big Bolo fan and hope to write a fanfic about them.

[nugar]

Hmm. I'd just like to point out that anyone lumping me in with 'Bolowhiners' clearly missed the point of my post, so lets try it again.

I do not care that the Bolo lost. I even supported the Eva picking it up. I didn't go into my wholehearted support of the Eva picking it up because I honstely thought it self evident that an Eva WOULD be able to pick one up. Bolos are battleships with tank treads. An Eva can pick up and chunk a battleship at a tank battalion. The Bolo is fucked coming and going. Honestly, I was expecting the Bolo to lose once it hit the AT field, since when I went into the scene I had assumed even a Hellbore couldn't punch through THAT.

When I give my opinions on something, I tell you what I DON'T like first, not because I don't like it, if I didn't like it I wouldn't be commenting at all, but because unlike so many people, I try to give actual writing criticism from an author's standpoint, not a reader's. I don't mind the Eva winning. I like anime, I like Eva. I wouldn't be here reading this story if it wasn't for Thousand Shinji.

I never said anything about having a problem with NewChaos winning. I especially don't have a problem with Lars, as that was one of the best parts about this story. Lars started out a regular guy, got a shitty deal, and made the best of it. And when his new universe came calling to bust up his new happiness, he kicked ass. That's how it should be. NewChaos deserved to win one for the little goblin in Faerun.

I specifically said that the treatment of the Bolo left a bad taste in my mouth, and not because I'm some sort of huge tank fan. (Tanks are more realistic, but mecha FTW!) It seemed like a lack of respect, not in the actions or reasoning, but in the treatment of said actions. I haven't read them all, but I've read some Bolo books, and the stories trend in the way I outlined in my first post. That's why a hardcore Bolo fan would have certain expectations. Personally, a simple reaction shot from NewChaos as despite their best technology, all of their defenses but the Eva go down to the Bolo would have completely fixed it for me.

And by respect, I'm not saying Academia Nut doesn't like Bolos, or whatever. I mean the implied respect in the way the events are written. Like, you can have two scenes with fundamentally identical events. Character A breaks Character B's neck. A difference in respect like I'm talking about would be that, in one scene, Character B is just some asshole in a bar who mouths off to the wrong person, and in the other scene, it's a no holds barred fight to the death with both characters panting and bleeding and biting and gouging, and Character A is all but crying with effort as he finally gets B into a stranglehold and slowly overcomes his strength. Same basic result, B lost and died, but at least he didn't go out like a bitch.

And I'm not even urging for it to be changed. It was simply a matter of, I looked at that scene, and I could tell beyond a shadow of a doubt that it would rub a number of people the wrong way.

Perhaps my post added to the mess. I don't know. I just felt like commenting on it for Academia Nut. He may or may not encourage dissention in the ranks. Some authors like to have controversial scenes that get their readers and fans arguing with each other. It keeps interest and reader involvment/commenting high. Some avoid those kinds of scenes, 'cause it encourages sloganizing and butthurt.

Either way, I'll keep reading. /my comments about bolos

As far as NewChaos always winning... Well, I'm definitely waiting to see a rematch with the Ori. NewChaos hasn't won all the time, and the Ori need their asses kicked.

[LadyTevar]

Okay, I will admit that I am now extremely tempted to rewrite the chapter to have a Bolo Evil Knieval moment, but I'm going to keep it the way it is for now, simply so I can use that trick later

The next chapter should have more character development, and people not having things go all their way.

The one thing that 'broke' the story for me was the Eva lifting the Bolo. Everything else was perfectly believable, including all the things that the Bolo did not know and had to find ways around. But the Eva bodyslam just went too far over the top for Nitram and I. Now, the idea of the Eva getting half-caught, I could see. I could see the Eva even managing to Dodge, and then finishing off the Bolo. Hell, I even like the suggestion of the Bolo getting to his target, but the Eva killing him before he can finish.

But the BodySlam broke me out of the story.

[Jaeger]

Yeah, it was going pretty well up until the Eva flipped the Bolo over, which was made worse by Scipio's lack of counter-argument in face of a little girl being an Eva pilot.

I should admit that this story has grown completely out of control and I honestly have no idea where its going anymore. Oh, there are some plot points I run through, but that's like saying that a river connects two points on a map without going into detail all the meanders, turns, waterfalls, rapids, tributaries, and other such things that might be along the way. I'm going from Bow Lake to Fort Nelson and I don't know what's in between!

Its possible that Tzintchi is trying to correct the flaws in the artificial evolutionary process that allowed the ascension of the new Chaos gods. Bypassing a thousand generations worth of transhuman development has yielded only four multi-dimensional apex predators trapped in a population bottleneck phenomena known as “the founder effect”, which happens when a small isolated community suffers from limited genetic variation and inbreeding.

Beyond looking out for the long-term survival of humanity (or whatever species that embraces Chaos Undivided), Tzintchi would have foreseen that the descendants of the new Chaos gods would lack suitable breeding partners unless a new compatible race emerges, so he could be arranging for a type of convergent evolution. Spock and B’Elanna are great examples of convergent evolution as explained in ST:TG episode “The Chase”: Klingons, Humans, Cardassians, and Romulans all developed into reproductively compatible races because their ancestors where altered by an ancient humanoid species. Cardassians came from reptiles, Klingons came from bipedal crustacean-like creatures, Humans came from primates, etc.

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/The_Chase_%28episode%29

[Firethorn]

Christ, another bunch of Bolowhiners. I thought they mostly hung out at SB.

Oddly enough, nobody over there are whining about this.

I'll say that the Bolo appears to still be missing quite a few IQ points. Otherwise, he would have dealt with the out of context problems far better than he did. The EVA basically outteched him by quite a margin, and kept surprising him with unpredictable abilities.