Winning Peace - Chapter 10
Added 2023-06-10 09:04:06 +0000 UTCHere is a very special interlude that I've been planning for a while and an insight into one of our main actors behind the scenes.
Next up will be Where Your God Is, which is almost done and should be out either late Sunday or some time Monday.
Thank you for your continued support and patience.
Comments
In response to Number 1, the destruction of major infrastructure, data networks, record-keeping, etc... has made tracking the movement of materials all but impossible. Most regions of the world are back to some level of bartering. Ezekiel is just becoming vaguely aware that the Last Dogs are still an extant issue as of next chapter. So the problem will be locating their agents and removing them. The second point you raise is why the story is being told in the way it is. There's less of a directed plot in Winning Peace and more 'slice of life' content. We'll be moving past the whole Dire vs. Ezekiel in fairly short order as a stepping stone for moving into the future. I think I've got a good handle on ways to avoid these problems, but thank you for calling attention to them and your concerns. I'll try to be on my toes about all this.
Slayer Anderson
2023-06-13 08:20:04 +0000 UTCI do not usually write long feedback of this nature. Please do not take this as an attack or critique of your skills as a writer, but I am not excited for this story. My problem with Inspired Inventor is it very quickly turns into a magical "I can fix that" button, and the MC outscales everything else trivially. Secondary characters exist solely to be humored, or for MC to derive enjoyment as we are already seeing with the AIs. We can see similar examples of this in "perfect wizard society" from D&D 3.5: A group of level 20 casters, using all rules as written, should have retroactively fixed all problems and use precog to fix all future problems. They don't, because that would make D&D very boring. So as a power, it's generally a bad idea for a story. A lot of the interest exists in very depowered/ limited versions of it, OR in seeing "How do secondary characters react to it". As a villain power it would likely be fairly compelling as well. Usually too strong for settings however, which we begin to see here. The problem with "MC has inspired inventor vs opponent with inspired inventor" is two fold: 1) Very pragmatically, given both their technology catapults forward in fairly limited ways, we need to suspend belief very hard to think that they won't quickly find a "Just murder this person" button. For example, I find it very hard to believe MC hasn't set up something to track where materials are going/ what they're being used for, which would identify his opponent far before they were up and running. 2) The entire story is only about MC vs Opponent, and other characters *shouldn't* matter. Which makes for a fairly boring story - To use a slightly infamous example, there's a reason Naruto only became an "I win" button at the very end of the series, instead of at the start :) If I'm wrong, I'll be very happy, and I am interested to see where this goes regardless. I will be totally honest however and say that I expect all Inspired Inventor stories to collapse under their own weight unless they become solely about social interactions, and this story feels on track to do so as well.
john hancock
2023-06-11 20:49:17 +0000 UTCDire really isn't going to hijack the story, trust me. He's at best a stepping stone for Ezekiel, but a *very* important one for where things are going in the future. He's going to last, at best, 15 Chapters.
Slayer Anderson
2023-06-11 05:52:03 +0000 UTCWas not expecting that, well done. I don't know of any other story with dueling inspired inventors.
Raymond Alderman
2023-06-11 05:43:24 +0000 UTCI strongly agree with this statement. I'm much more interested in the changes the MC will make to the Mass Effect timeline rather than have some deranged villain with similar superpowers hijack the story. I was perfectly happy to assume the group guilty of nuking the planet had died along with their victims.
McSwazey
2023-06-11 03:53:23 +0000 UTCHonestly thought the opposition was going to be supernatural maybe vampires and other monsters yearning for the “good old days” and you were going to take it in the science vs magic direction I’m going to be honest this is a lot less interesting still I’ll see how it goes
krilinater
2023-06-11 01:01:07 +0000 UTCDamn, from my favorite of your fics to my least. Really dislike the direction you took with having the antagonist also have inspired inventor while being a nut job. Rather just have earth get fixed and get to actual mass effect.
James (Silencian)
2023-06-10 21:33:03 +0000 UTCI’ve always hated when an author gives the same powers or abilities of an MC to another character, whether they are enemies or not. Also doing it this late in a story with no forewarning or notice just feels bad. I wasn’t as interested in this story as I was some others to begin with, but Im definitely done reading it now. Sorry, I think it’s really well written and engaging and other than this one thing it’s been pretty alright, but this killed it for me.
Cameron Burchett
2023-06-10 19:10:43 +0000 UTCThe QQ thread is gonna lose their damn minds...
MadGreenSon
2023-06-10 17:49:15 +0000 UTCNever a fan of multiple empowered, and hate when they're revealed so far in. Feels like a bait and switch.
Barber
2023-06-10 17:15:05 +0000 UTCHuh, I wonder if that charge for WMD labs is self updating…
Ryune
2023-06-10 14:48:16 +0000 UTCI do agree that he should properly scorch earth soon, just evacuate all the individuals willing to get with the program and execute the rest for their absolute refusal to support him in saving humanity and pushing forward. Humanity here is well represented in their stupidity.
Wolf Man
2023-06-10 12:52:44 +0000 UTCSo the guy wants a world that has never existed and absolutely cannot exist in the post apocalypse. He is also getting weaker and weaker while Lopez gets stronger.
michael
2023-06-10 12:45:55 +0000 UTCSo an invididual alien in this au could also own inspired inventor as well.
Lucaman_P
2023-06-10 10:38:59 +0000 UTCI think Dire doesn't know that he can grab tech from fictional settings. Just what humanity already has if you see his loadout.
Nikola Nikitin
2023-06-10 10:04:32 +0000 UTCThis is certainly different. Reminds me of command and conquer of all things, with a fight between NOD and GDI brewing. At least we finally know who and what is the opposition. Though I am a bit weirded out with Dire's double life. Can't really see him doing the whole double life thing, with a sister of all things, and his points don't really seem well allocated for the long term. I suppose we will see.
Guilherme Bezerra
2023-06-10 09:46:59 +0000 UTCWell... I guess we've meet the person responsible for all this shit now... be interesting to see how else he fucks things up
Alex McGregor
2023-06-10 09:28:07 +0000 UTCOh boy here we go, two people with inspired Inventor and one is a cannibal, Lopez might as well blow up Earth with this guy down there
TheForgottenKing
2023-06-10 09:22:57 +0000 UTCThere can be only one.
Slayer Anderson
2023-06-10 09:22:29 +0000 UTCnot gonna lie, im very much not a fan of another person with the same powers as the SI being present. and im probably not gonna read any more of winning peace, still well written though.
MrTarven
2023-06-10 09:16:28 +0000 UTC
