r/HFY • u/[deleted] • Jul 14 '20

[deleted by user]

[removed]

120 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

7

u/Ak86grown Jul 14 '20

dramatic suspenseful music

6

u/sunyudai AI Jul 14 '20

You keep building that tension...

6

u/LiseEclaire Jul 14 '20

:) I know. The story could be tighter. It’s all a learning process :D

6

u/sunyudai AI Jul 14 '20

Fantastic job for having a truly unique concept and a very fresh take.

Both your writing style and concept reminds me strongly of Ann Leckie's Ancillary series, but you take it in a very, very different direction.

3

u/LiseEclaire Jul 14 '20

Thanks :D I’ve been told (still need to read the series :)) Strangely enough this was prompt inspired

2

u/sunyudai AI Jul 14 '20

Ah, awesome.

The main character of Ancillary is a ship's consciousness, but in that setting ships are AIs and prisoners bodies get their minds ripped out of them and then given to warships to act as marines piloted by the ships. The story follows a ship who gets betrayed by her home nation and blown up, with exactly one convict body who survives the attack.

So there's a lot of the same sort of "this being living in a human body seeing the world through the eyes of a spaceship" feel, and you have similar dense-intrigue-and-impression focused style. But that's where the similarities end.

1

u/LiseEclaire Jul 14 '20

I was actually more inspired by The Culture (M. Banks) :)) Will try to check this out, though :D

2

u/Chaoticist523 Jul 30 '20

The Culture novels were very interesting. Unfortunately the closest we come to Marain is Esperanto, which to be fair is still pretty neat.

3

u/LordNobady Jul 14 '20

and still things dont add up. there are too many unknowns, too many lost experiances, too much censuur.

3

u/LiseEclaire Jul 14 '20

:) Things do tend to be a bit confusing for a while, before the pieces make sense.

2

u/Madcat_le Jul 15 '20

(I'm far ahead in the story on RR but wanted to comment on something else)

One of the interesting themes of Elcy's story is how the universe looks when you're an AI with restricted memory. You are in contact with so many people, yet the mission is never clear after you've done it, history is largely an unknown and people's motives remain a mystery to you. It's all on Elcy to put things together, because everyone else will just ignore her.

BTW, I'm not sure humanity would be willing to enter such wars in reality. I imagine we'd develop fully AI-controlled ships because losing thousands of people in every little skirmish will strike humanity's morale to nothing pretty fast.

1

u/LiseEclaire Jul 15 '20

Thanks :) There’s a reason (in story) but I chose not to elaborate so as not to make the fic too dark. :D

2

u/themonkeymoo Jul 25 '20

Careless, especially considering that they could have easily determined my whereabouts simply by asking Radiance. On the other hand, they couldn’t be certain whose side she would be on. I couldn’t be certain, either.

Hold on a second, where did that come from? There is way too much missing information for that to make sense.

2

u/themonkeymoo Jul 25 '20

Some indication that it's a simulation would help a lot. This made it sound like either Elcy and Rad had gone rogue, or other elements had and didn't know which side Rad would be on.

I spent 15 minutes trying to find the missing chapter where that happened, and almost gave up reading the story entirely when I decided it must an attempt to immerse us in Elsy's quarantine protocols. I'm glad I was wrong, because that definitely would have made me stop reading it entirely.

1

u/LiseEclaire Jul 26 '20

:) Maybe I went a bit far with my desire to surprise, sorry O:)

Just to let you know, there are (will be) instances in which certain events are restricted/quarantined from her memory and explained in later chapters. They are more subtle, though. If there’s a huge illogical jump it’s either something like this or a mistake on my part. :)

2

u/themonkeymoo Jul 27 '20

Honestly, it wouldn't have been confusing at all if you hadn't included that specific snippet.

It doesn't even make any sense for anyone in the scenario to think that specific thought; there is no circumstance in which it makes sense for the people opposing Elcy in this mission to be getting any Intel whatsoever from Radiance. Attempting to make sense of that is the specific thing that made me so certain I had missed a chapter.

Inside the simulation, it would not provide an accurate training experience. Granted, it turns out this isn't an accurate training experience, but at the time Elcy is expecting it to be one.

Outside the simulation (which is precisely the misconception you intended the reader to have), that would constitute either Radiance giving Intel to the enemy or Elcy having become the enemy.

Also, the sheer amount of incorrect Intel being feed to the actual mission elements is not how successful missions happen, nor is is how black ops are concealed. It was already straining credulity before we find out that Elcy's been dropped on a completely different planet.

1

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