Salvation War Criticism Thread

[Junghalli]

If the humans remain the protagonists, it would be preferable to cut back a bit on angelic contemplation of their superiority, and talk a bit more about the hapless humans in Heaven. One of the nice things about the first story was the focus on humans inside Hell, and the question of whether they would survive. Even if you have a situation where you're pretty sure the humans will eventually triumph, you can create tension by focusing on a group of humans who have suffered much, and with whom you identify, and whose survival is not at all assured. To a certain extent, one could say that about all the victims of Uriel, but I was thinking more of a recurring set of characters, like Jade Kim's group in the first story.

Personally if I was going to write Armageddon while being constrained to making the Demons as pathetic as Stuart does and to making it a classic military SF style full length novel I'd do it like this:

The beginning would be similar to Armageddon as it actually is and there we'd have the situation set up and we'd get to meet our protagonists. Our protagonists all get killed and go to Hell in the beginning of the book. The rest of the book will be about them trying to escape, survive, and start a rebellion in Hell. I'd change the parameters of the setting a little to make it harder for humans to get from Earth to Hell; the rebels in Hell can get occassional shipments of high-tech weaponry but otherwise they're on their own. So you've got a group of people with limited modern weaponry fighting Bronze Age Demons with superstrength who vastly outnumber them while trying to survive in a hostile environment (maybe get rid of the idea that humans in Hell are perpetual motion machines so finding food and water in Hell outside the prison areas actually becomes a major issue, and they'd have to raid Demon outposts just to not starve). Meanwhile show the Demons trying to come to grips with the Outside Context Problem they've just encountered. It'd be modern brains and weaponry vs premodernity with a chance that the heroes might actually lose and even if they win horrible things might happen to them as individuals. You could explore the "ancient mythical beings are actually pathetic compared to what we can do with technology" theme without it poisoning the tension and drama by making the conflict little more than an exercise in butchery for the good guys. What's going on in Hell is where most of the potential dramatic meat of such a scenario is, so I'd focus on that and leave what's going on on Earth as a side-show largely taking place off-screen. We could examine the social impacts of the scenario on human society a bit in the beginning of the book, show modern weapons annihilating the legions of Hell utterly in the end (I'm thinking the end of the book is when humans find a way to open portals to Hell on a massive scale and actually bring their full strength to bear on it), but otherwise keep the focus on where the really juicy stuff is happening.

Pantheocide's main focus might be divided between the Angels and humans in Heaven dealing with the Outside Context Problem that they've been confronted with and how that would totally shake the foundations of their society and everything they believed in and what's going on in Hell in the aftermath of it being taken over by humans (or maybe leave the second part of that for Lords Of War), again with Earth being a narrative side-show because in this scenario it's not where all the really interesting stuff would be happening*.

*Well, actually there are plenty of potentially interesting things happening on Earth to do with the fact that the religious beliefs of much of the human race just got discredited and the social fallout from that, but TSW has so far not really touched on this much and the story has more interesting angles than can be satisfactorily covered in one book anyway.

I think the problem TSW suffers from is it's trying to do two things that are fundamentally not very compatible:

(1) Examine what would happen if the Apocalypse happens and it turns out the Demons and Angels are things that might have been impressive to primitives but are easily defeated by modern technology.
(2) Have a massive military SF epic about a war between modern humanity and the forces of Satan and God Himself.

The thing is, if you want to do #2 well you have to make the Angels and Demons a real serious threat to Earth because to work dramatically the conventions of a military SF epic (which is what Stuart is writing in) demand an actual conflict and not just a series of one-sided victories by the good guys. And that means you have to either ditch or tone down #1. Whereas if you want to do #1 well you have to deviate a bit from the conventions of a standard military SF epic like Stuart is writing, because the themes involved are ones that are for the most part best explored by things other than variations on "and Lieutenant Ironballs blew up a bunch of Demons/Angels as they futilely tried to stab him with their swords" repeated over and over.

At least that's my $.02 as an aspiring writer.

[Battlehymn Republic]

I never knew so many high-profile SD.net members had criticisms about the Salvation War series.

Why wouldn't you think so?

Seriously, look at the number of people who post in the back-slapping thread. It's not 'lots'.

I thought the story has made its way into a cherished part of SD.net, given how many prominent posters guest-star within it. The criticism in this thread, not to mention some of the negative comments, I'd never seen before on the forum.

[Darth Wong]

It is possible to love a story and still criticize it. You're acting as if the two are mutually exclusive. The thing is that the criticism should be constructive, ie- offering suggestions as to how it could be improved. A criticism like "you suck" or "so lame" is utterly useless, as is a purportedly constructive criticism that actually amounts to completely rewriting the entire premise of the story (that's pointedly directed at the imbeciles who think that it's "wanking" to finally make one story where humans are not helpless against supernatural forces, in contrast to the countless stories which take the opposite position).

[Junghalli]

The thing is that the criticism should be constructive, ie- offering suggestions as to how it could be improved. A criticism like "you suck" or "so lame" is utterly useless, as is a purportedly constructive criticism that actually amounts to completely rewriting the entire premise of the story (that's pointedly directed at the imbeciles who think that it's "wanking" to finally make one story where humans are not helpless against supernatural forces, in contrast to the countless stories which take the opposite position).

I don't know whether that's directed at the people who've been making the kind of arguments I've been making or not. If it is, I'll say a few words in our defense.

1) As I understand what we are seeing on this forum is only a first draft. I don't see how "there may be fundamental problems with the first draft" is not constructive criticism (that said, looking at your phrasing - i.e. rewrite the premise - you may not have implied it was).

2) I don't remember anyone here suggesting that it's wanking that the humans aren't "helpless against supernatural forces". Some people (me included) have suggested the story as it exists now would work better if the conflict was more even, so that the Demons and Angels were actually something approaching an existential threat to humanity, but that hardly implies that we should be "helpless" against them. You could power up our opposition massively compared to what we've faced in TSW so far and still keep the key themes that what our ancestors were helpless against we are not helpless against and in fact can defeat with modern science and technology, and that the modern mindset defeats the premodern mindset. Most of the accusations of "wank" here seem to stem from the perception that the story is mostly a series of one-sided victories for the good guys where the good guys' superiority is constantly being rubbed in our faces, and frankly I don't find this totally unfounded.

3) You say "rewrite the premise", but I'm honestly skeptical as to whether the Demons and Angels being as pathetic as they are actually is fundamental to the premise. The basic premise of TSW as it stands seems to be "God condemns everyone to Hell, it turns out Angels and Demons are a lot more killable to people with modern technology than they were to primitives, we kick Satan's ass, free everyone in Hell, then kick God's ass too." You don't need the opposition to be Bronze Age throwbacks for that to work. You could make them much more impressive than they are in the story and that basic premise would still work just fine. That leaves two avenues for claiming the opposition has to be that pathetic which seem to be used: "hard science demands it" and "hey, I'm just giving them the abilities they get in the Bible, don't blame me if they suck". The latter argument doesn't stand up very well because the Bible gives them a bunch of abilities that are way beyond what we see in TSW and the former argument doesn't stand up terribly well to scrutiny either because a lot of these more impressive abilities can still be rationalized in non-magical ways; see my treatment of how many of the disasters in Revelation can be explained as things that are quite physically plausible.

4) If you do define Demons and Angels being as pathetic as they are as fundamental to the premise then we have been bringing up ways to make that kind of story work better. RedImperator suggested telling it from their point of view (which granted would be hard), and I suggested an easier route for Armageddon (make the main focus of the story the human rebellion in Hell).

To expand a little, me and RedImperator talk a bit about how the premise of TSW is problematic, and you'll notice neither of us said any of the themes involved are bad. We said that the combination they're being applied in is problematic, specifically I talked about the combination of the Demons/Angels being easily defeated by modern weapons with the approach of a classic military SF style epic where the emotional center of gravity is heavily on the armed struggle of the good guys against the bad guys (and as I pointed out that combination can even work too, e.g. by focusing on rebellion in Hell - IMO it just doesn't work very well when you also do a "big picture" epic that focuses on the shape of the entire war, in which the occassional front or battle where things other than easy one-sided curbstomping take place fade into relative insignificance).

In short, I think what we have been saying is constructive, because I don't see how you have to totally destroy the premise of the story to eliminate a lot of the problems with tension and percieved wankiness. Yes, revisions on the order of something significantly bigger than just changing the odd chapter would be in order, but I don't see how pointing out that you think the first draft may require serious revision is not constructive criticism.

[JBG]

It is possible to love a story and still criticize it. You're acting as if the two are mutually exclusive. The thing is that the criticism should be constructive, ie- offering suggestions as to how it could be improved. A criticism like "you suck" or "so lame" is utterly useless, as is a purportedly constructive criticism that actually amounts to completely rewriting the entire premise of the story (that's pointedly directed at the imbeciles who think that it's "wanking" to finally make one story where humans are not helpless against supernatural forces, in contrast to the countless stories which take the opposite position).

Well phrased. Stuart in my experience has always been receptive to constructive criticism though there is of course a limit to what can be accommodated within what are usually well planned and researched passages. And Stuart, like all mortal writers, has his own style. Having said that, Armageddon was just a little off the cuff compared to TBO and the Salvation War. Understandable given the circumstances!

Apropos of nothing Darth Wong, given that the outgoing DataRatPac thread is closed, I would thoroughly recommend the Lakes District. My mother took me back to visit her home country at the end of High School and we went to Lake Windemere (sic) in Autumn, or Fall as you call it in NA. Outstanding lake and tree vistas. I still have some great visual memories after all these years.

[Duckie]

Personally, I don't see how one could say the story from a demonic perspective would be difficult to write moreso than from a human perspective. I think a story told from the perspective of the outmatched demons could have worked great. I mean, a desperate struggle against overwhelming odds by Lucifer worked perfectly for John Milton. You could easily have demons be evil but not completely "irredeemably" so, in that it's difficult to root for a baby raping monster but it's actually very easy to root for the Miltonian tragic hero of Lucifer and his somewhat less moral generals. You could even keep in demons being rather evil- certainly, in a war against heaven, bad things happen, and in a universe where demons and angels exist it would not be too unrealistic to have the war have inflicted a moral toll upon the fallen angels, regardless of their original intent in rebellion. So you could even fit school shooting demons and the like in- certainly every army has its 'ends justify the means' segments and footsoldiers who go overboard in their efforts to win.

However, that would require some different decisions about the nature of demons and humanity (for instance, such a story would imply that humans are considered by the demons to be on the side of heaven) and heaven for the story to produce such a tale than were taken. It would also probably need Armageddon to happen as written in popular interpretations of Revelations (and thus have angels and demons at the same time, and thus make it not "Kill Demons, then Angels" in order) in order to make it make more sense, but it could just be me being uncreative. One possibility for instance could be telling the first half from the perspective of the demons, then moving into humanity's perspective for the second half once humanity finds out their angel allies actually are jerks and heaven sucks, if you really must write a "Now Kill Heaven" sequel.

[Shroom Man 777]

The way Stuart wrote Hell's struggle, with Abrigor and such, and the other honchos of Hell like Dagon, Euryale and so on and their realization of their impending defeat, and the steps they enacted near the end to avoid getting screwed over by humanity and to save their civilization - albeit like those Nazzies and Germanians who tried to blow Hitler up when the war went south - was pretty interesting.

Perhaps Armageddon??? ended up having more direction and 'inertia' and stuff happening, whereas at the moment Pantheocide seems to be a bit meandering because, well, the developments are slower with the problems in finding Heaven and all that?

[Tomb Crawler]

“I, Satan Mekratrig, Lord of Hell, Commander of the Legions of the Damned do hereby declare my dominion over the earth and all that it contains. Crawl to me, humans, knowing the eternity of torment that awaits you.”

“Balls.” Said Lieutenant Michael Wong.

“I, Satan Mekratrig, Lord of Hell, Commander of the Legions of the Damned do hereby declare my dominion over the earth and all that it contains. Crawl to me, humans, knowing the eternity of torment that awaits you.”

“Balls,” said Lieutenant Michael Wong.

I realise that proofreading this story is likely an utter bitch. That said, having a glaring grammatical error at the start of the second paragraph is not an encouraging sign.

Carry on.

[CaptainChewbacca]

You think 'Said' vs. 'said' is an incredibly horrible and distressing grammatical error? Sack up and get over it, there's FAR worse things in internet fan-fiction, and the version you're reading hasn't been proofread.

[Tomb Crawler]

You think 'Said' vs. 'said' is an incredibly horrible and distressing grammatical error? Sack up and get over it, there's FAR worse things in internet fan-fiction, and the version you're reading hasn't been proofread.

Horrible and distressing? No. Embarassingly obvious? Yes.

Trust me, I've proofread fanfic. I know horrible and distressing. This one time I got roped into going through a Twilight fic (still not entirely sure why - if it comes up in court, I'm attributing it to temporary insanity)... ye gods. I know I'm a bit picky, but that one was the grammatical equivalent of the more bizarre end of the hentai market. I stared blankly at the screen, thinking to myself 'Commas do not go there', watching with fascinated incomprehension as the writer violated basic sentence structure with a fetishistic glee that transcended mere incompetence and became a sort of twisted art form. Imagine a Harlequin romance as written by a disturbingly precocious five-year-old and narrated by a drunken Yoda, and you'll have some idea of what I'm talking about. Compared to that, this is minor enough to be scarcely visible, but it's still not the best way to kick off a work you plan on eventually publishing.

Wasn't the whole point of the completed one that it was proofread (or going through the process of proofreading), though?

[ray245]

You think 'Said' vs. 'said' is an incredibly horrible and distressing grammatical error? Sack up and get over it, there's FAR worse things in internet fan-fiction, and the version you're reading hasn't been proofread.

Horrible and distressing? No. Embarassingly obvious? Yes.

Trust me, I've proofread fanfic. I know horrible and distressing. This one time I got roped into going through a Twilight fic (still not entirely sure why - if it comes up in court, I'm attributing it to temporary insanity)... ye gods. I know I'm a bit picky, but that one was the grammatical equivalent of the more bizarre end of the hentai market. I stared blankly at the screen, thinking to myself 'Commas do not go there', watching with fascinated incomprehension as the writer violated basic sentence structure with a fetishistic glee that transcended mere incompetence and became a sort of twisted art form. Imagine a Harlequin romance as written by a disturbingly precocious five-year-old and narrated by a drunken Yoda, and you'll have some idea of what I'm talking about. Compared to that, this is minor enough to be scarcely visible, but it's still not the best way to kick off a work you plan on eventually publishing.

Wasn't the whole point of the completed one that it was proofread (or going through the process of proofreading), though?

I don't think so. The one in the completed and clean-up section is just a thread without any commentary. Stuart is still trying to edit tons of stuff before it is going to be published.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Indeed, the 'cleaned up' means 'devoid of reader commentary'. It will eventually be published in dead tree form after it is edited.

[Tomb Crawler]

Indeed, the 'cleaned up' means 'devoid of reader commentary'. It will eventually be published in dead tree form after it is edited.

Ah, I see. I was unaware of the local definition of 'cleaned-up'.

[Blayne]

He does indeed to publish this? Awesome.

2) I don't remember anyone here suggesting that it's wanking that the humans aren't "helpless against supernatural forces". Some people (me included) have suggested the story as it exists now would work better if the conflict was more even, so that the Demons and Angels were actually something approaching an existential threat to humanity, but that hardly implies that we should be "helpless" against them. You could power up our opposition massively compared to what we've faced in TSW so far and still keep the key themes that what our ancestors were helpless against we are not helpless against and in fact can defeat with modern science and technology, and that the modern mindset defeats the premodern mindset. Most of the accusations of "wank" here seem to stem from the perception that the story is mostly a series of one-sided victories for the good guys where the good guys' superiority is constantly being rubbed in our faces, and frankly I don't find this totally unfounded.

To me it seems Heaven is getting some traction in trying to hurt Humanity and it IS difficult for Humans to strike back, so while the war against Hell was a Curb Stomp War that MAY have gone bad had they run out of ammo the war against Heaven is getting some setbacks buuuuut there's no doubt that inevitably Humans will find access to Heaven and crush them.

I have no criticisms for the story, although if Stuart does intend to publish does he intend to leave the various shoutouts and homages in the story? Like the Brigadier from Doctor Who and the reference to Apeture Sciences?

[CaptainChewbacca]

Those sorts of geek-isms generally get trimmed out by Stuart.

[JBG]

Indeed, the 'cleaned up' means 'devoid of reader commentary'. It will eventually be published in dead tree form after it is edited.

Stuart recently commented on HPCA that TBOverse stories go through a number of revisions/checks before dead tree form. Apparently with TBO the publisher used an older version that had not been subject to the full extent of the checking/revision process.

As posted there are often typos. I just assume that Stuart is keen to get the material down soonest, to satisfy keen readers!

[Ryan Thunder]

How the hell did he get himself published anyway? It's not that I think he shouldn't be, its just... I've always been told to expect to send in many, many writeups before expecting anything to get done the first few times, and here he is getting his series published.

[D.Turtle]

IIRC, Stuart self-publishes using www.lulu.com

[hongi]

But right now I frankly prefer writing my pastiches of Camus Absurdist short stories and neo-noir pulp Absurdist short stories.

Even in translation, Camus gives me readingasms. I love that man.

As for TSW: I echo what everyone else has said. I found it boring. The characterisation has already been mentioned, the characters fell flat. I'm sorry to say that I've identified more with characters in kid's book. My biggest complaint is with the tone of the story. I imagined a war between mankind and the heavens to be something different. Something more horrific. Not necessarily Cthulu horror aka 'OMG everyone rips out their eyes in a 100 mile radius!'. But just...a nightmare come true.

But instead we're kicking their asses with style. Nothing wrong with humans ending up the winners, but is it impossible for us to still be totally terrified and shocked while we're doing that? The fabric of existence, swept from underneath our feet...and yet why are people in the story still so brave? Why do they keep going? Who in our world would keep on doing that if they learned tomorrow that God has it in for us (and I'm not talking about just the religious, although that angle hasn't been covered well at all)?

The world you have doesn't feel real. And I know that's a ridiculous thing to say when you're talking about demons and angels, but let me try to explain with an example: 28 Days Later. The best zombie movie of our time imo. It took a fantastic element, zombies and put it in our reality, and made it shit scary. The zombies, the whole setting, the characters, the reactions, everything felt like something that belonged in our universe. We're not human enough in TSW.

[open_sketchbook]

But, 28 Days Later was also complete bullshit. There is nothing that runs at us without guns that can beat us. The whole point of the Salvation War is that humanity has made war worse than Hell itself. We have advanced so far beyond the primitive imaginings of the ages where this mythology stems from that we don't have anything to fear when they turn out to be real and come to collect.

[Ryan Thunder]

But, 28 Days Later was also complete bullshit. There is nothing that runs at us without guns that can beat us. The whole point of the Salvation War is that humanity has made war worse than Hell itself. We have advanced so far beyond the primitive imaginings of the ages where this mythology stems from that we don't have anything to fear when they turn out to be real and come to collect.

Yes, this has been explained many times. I have to admit, though, its a pretty neat way to deflect a valid criticism.

[Blayne]

Well to me I found TSW to be very enjoyable and fascinating because its a style very similar to Harry Turtledove with the multiple view point characters and a war as the primary plot mover, except well BETTER as Harry Turtledove has his own problems that made reading his works a little frustrating balanced out just by how interesting the story content is.

As for tone this is a matter of Your Mileage May Vary, I enjoyed it. Humans Ass Kicking Cthullu! The point is when the going gets tough the tough gets going. Yes many humans would lie down, and many others would go crazy, but Humanity as a whole would grit its teeth and keep going, remember in Ender's Game Graff's speech to Ender at the beginning 'A species is utterly incapable of committing suicide, individuals can be trained to sacrifice themselves, a species cannot' this is simply that concepts logical conclusion even when religion would plausible ask for the sacrifice of Humanity, Humanity would flip the bird and fight back even if parts of it, the parts trained to sacrifice themselves would the rest would keep going.


The Humans seemed real enough to me as characters, quite a few did sorta blend together but all the major characters of importance did get fleshed out and seemed to be themselves y'know? Seriously, its a sign of the success of the author when you get a character like Micheal-lan.

[Shroom Man 777]

But, 28 Days Later was also complete bullshit. There is nothing that runs at us without guns that can beat us. The whole point of the Salvation War is that humanity has made war worse than Hell itself. We have advanced so far beyond the primitive imaginings of the ages where this mythology stems from that we don't have anything to fear when they turn out to be real and come to collect.

Yes, this has been explained many times. I have to admit, though, its a pretty neat way to deflect a valid criticism.

How was 28 Days Later bullshit? Fact of the matter is that as an epidemic, the Rage Virus infects and turns people in seconds.

Yes, your badass military mofos can killfuck all the unarmed hordes of zombies because guns are so awesome and the military is totally cool and they've got planes and tanks and bombs and planes.

But unlike traditional zombies, the whole point of the 28DL thing was that the infection was very fast - and despite the use of weapons, the infection's still going to spread at such a virulent rate that it'll infect significant numbers of people and decimate a population.

Yes, manly military awesomeness kills zombies. But, no, infection spreads too fast in population centers and there's no cure or answer. That's why in the movie, the government just ended up evacuating the un-infected and the military and quarantined the infected area (the UK). Yes, the military could've gone in and killed the zombies. But, eh, the zombies ended up dying in 28 days anyway! And that's kinda why they just decided to enact the quarantine.

In a way, 28 Days Later really wasn't about dumb zombies eating people with guns, or people with guns shooting zombies. It was about a disease. It was less "being turned into a flesh-eating monster turning bitten people into zombies" and more "being turned into a contagious very sick person who infects others with fatal incurable disease that takes effect in seconds", and against the latter firepower might not be an effective solution.

Really, there's no question that military might is going to kill the crap out of zombies or really sick super-contagious people. But nobody's asking that question, anyway.

[hongi]

But, 28 Days Later was also complete bullshit. There is nothing that runs at us without guns that can beat us. The whole point of the Salvation War is that humanity has made war worse than Hell itself. We have advanced so far beyond the primitive imaginings of the ages where this mythology stems from that we don't have anything to fear when they turn out to be real and come to collect.

I agree that 28 Days Later is unrealistic, but I used it as an example of the tone. And I think you've hit the nail on the head quite nicely. We, nor the characters, are really afraid in TSW. I think that's a damn shame, because even if we're not afraid of Heaven and Hell's punishments, we can still fear for our loved ones and the outcome of the war.

The part of the film Constantine that interested me the most was when Constantine was in Hell, walking through the windswept dessicated husk of an infernal city, and we see the screaming damned being torn apart by demons. For my part, I'd rather not see Hell reduced to natural laws and actually be supernatural, but I understand that Stuart's vision for his story is quite different. Still. I'd love to see us fighting against the Hell that's hinted at in Event Horizon.

[Blayne]

Except thats the Eldritch Abomination side of the scale which you sorta can't fight without going insane.