Terminal Repository

Finally, finally, Part 3 of Chapter 5 of Unfortunate Meetings is done.

Yeah.  I have no idea how it manages to take so long.

Anyone coming here from FF.N, welcome.  There's anonymous commenting available, so make yourselves welcome.  Just try to behave civilly.


Now, I... *collapses*.

Edit: Ahem.  Probably should link to it.  Note that leads directly to the part in question.

So, I have managed to survive Christmas and all the hazards it brings, ranging from the Land of the Spiky Plants, to That Uncle Who Thinks He's Funny But Isn't, to the Amazing Bouncing RumblePlane.  That's nice, though it's not really what I wanted to talk about - what I wanted to talk about is stories.  And specifically, what the heck I was thinking when I chose the subject of my major story project.  It's a crossover between Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha and Warhammer 40,000.  Yeah.  An at least semi-serious crossover.

The thing is, while MGLN is relatively nice, bright and shiny and 40k is... 40k, they're... actually somewhat in the same area, power-wise (if MGLN isn't a bit higher on the ground scale).  That said, in the story, while the TSAB has... pretty much lost every battle, the viewpoint characters have gotten out of things relatively unscathed...

This has made some people very unhappy.

Anyways, this post is partly an apology for mistakes I did make, and partly a justification for things that I don't think are mistakes.

First of all I'm not sure what inspired to do this story, of all things, as my first attempt... well, actually, yes I do - I was having a conversation with a friend about a battle between MGLN and 40k, and realized that would be awesome.
Still, it was ill concieved... not only to take on a project of such magnitude, but in crossing over with such an... overwhelming tide of darkness, I've kind of screwed myself in the kinds of things I can do... although it does make a nice splitting off point before MGLN's canon starts getting *dumb*.  I also underestimated just how attached some people are to 40k's... unique... atmosphere.

And now for the first of the justifications.  I've gotten a lot of complaints over how I'm 'biased' against 40k, because they're always losing and no main characters have died.

From my perspective, the first part is nonsense - the TSAB forces are currently at something like a 5-1 winrate (counting the power station as a 'tie') and I thought I'd made it clear that even when they weren't actually *losing*, they were suffering.  But, while everything may be in order from my perspective, that's not really an excuse... it seems I have made the battles too much of a foregone conclusion... though I'm not entirely certain how I would fix this, but it might relate to the second major complaint.  Since the battles are generally, well, viewed through the perspective of the viewpoint characters, and they... they're fairly powerful, and tend to at least make a decent showing of themselves.  Although about half the time they spend running away... but in any event, the specific group they're attached to tends to at least survive if not necessarily win.

Which brings me to the second part.  Yeah, no main characters have died.  This probably won't change - frankly, I think it's wasteful to kill off characters for no reason, particularly when you could torment them some more still write interesting story lines.  I don't think I'm unique in this regard - even in the Warhammer 40,000 novels, it's relatively rare to kill off major characters.  There are exceptions, especially in the miniseries/single book titles... but for the most part, it's not something done lightly.  Meanwhile, I could maybe kill off characters I don't know what to do with, but... then I'd just be killing off the spares and something something refrigerators and feh.

As to the third complaint, that I'm biased on against 40k... and that's not entirely wrong.  I like things to be somewhat... 'realistic' (although somewhat flexibly so) and I don't mind a little bit of harshness... though I'm actually not really fond of the super-dark stuff.  Gritty is okay, but GRIMDARK really... isn't.   However, 40k is so over the top, that as a strategy game setting, it's awesome.  But, as an individual story, it just doesn't work.  The Imperium (in full on earnest seriousness) just can't be made credible as the heroes.  They make a great villain, though (and this is what a lot of 40k stories go with, making the main characters as Un-Imperium like as feasible (Cain is an extreme example of this trend...), while using the Imperium itself as a meta-villain.)  40k can only be taken so seriously, since it's so hilariously unrealistic - and I don't mean in the sense of weapons technology.  A nation that corrupt, vicious, narrow-minded, and just utterly incompetent shouldn't last for decades, let alone ten thousand years.  So no, I don't buy the idea that the Imperium is 'superior' because they're ridiculously evil.  I'm with FDR on this - cruelty is not the same thing as toughness.  War is not won through RockHardManChest-edness and nations certainly aren't governed thus.

Aaanyways, I maybe shouldn't have used 40k.  I'm not up to the task of depicting the relentless grimdark that people seem to expect, but anyways, I must carry on.  Hopefully come up with some novel ideas... or maybe I should concentrate on something else for a while...

So.  Let's start the ball rolling with a bit of an overview of Chronicles of the Imperial Wars - a fanfic project I'm currently working (if a bit... slowly) on.  It's a pretty simple concept - a crossover between Warhammer 40,000 and Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.  On one, level, I admit it seems illogical.  These two series are pretty far apart - Warhammer is tabletop wargame setting, as such, riddled with constant war, and its background lore is astonishingly grim - in fact, it originated the term 'GRIMDARK' - the over-the-top, overriding, almost comical miasma of darkness that characterizes it.  There is precious little logic, or even characterization to be found.  Mostly, things happen because they are terrible.  Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, meanwhile, exhibits many of the characteristics a title like that would bring to mind - excessively ornate/pretty costumes, the power of friendship, etc - but at the same time, it is (I am told) somewhat atypical, as it quickly expands to feature an entire society - think of something like Star Trek's Federation, except with magic, and the series takes a more serious turn as Nanoha volunteers to help this Time-Space Administration Bureau in their quest to protect the dimensions from terrorists, dangerous artifacts, and criminals, while also being ridiculously awesome.

I will admit that the idea doesn't have any particularly dramatic origins - I (and some of my friends) thought the Imperium of Man fighting the TSAB would be cool.  Still, it the sheer contrast does offer a lot of potential.  Here we have two series that are basically on opposite sides of any line you care to draw - while there's enough to almost eke out a similarity, the powers are so different in ideology, tactics, technology...  I've 'had' to be a little fast-and-loose with both series' canon (inasmuch as 40k has a canon), but I think the changes I've made are improvements... or at least, interesting.  

It's very interesting to me, anyways... but far too much to even attempt to summarize in one post... except to say that more details on both will be forthcoming.  As will actual CotIW chapters.  Eventually.