ST/WH40K wanky fanboy question.

[Zinegata]

Star Trek torpedoes ARE warp-capable drones. In fact, they shoot them while at warp speed all the time (and don't use phasers at warp speed)

.

First of all, like I said it's theoretically possible to do warp-strafing. SFB (which is a sane implementation of Star Trek fleet combat mechanics) makes this their primary tactic. The issue is that in the show the phasers / torpedoes (which are all light speed weapons) move faster than the ship, hence demonstrating that the ship was actually at sublight speed.

Also, SFB drones are a totally different weapons from Photons, K. Rules-wise firing Photons is in fact almost similar to firing a direct-fire weapon with some extra guidance; because it has too little propellant to chase after ships for a long time.

Drone and only drones can chase after ships over multiple turns at warp speed. They are basically small shuttles with an actual warp engine and guidance systems, plus a massive anti-matter warhead. This is why photons in the TV series simply disappear right after the miss, whereas a drone in an SFB game will actually turn around and keep chasing after you after your first evasion successful attempt.

It's actually kinda sad the writers never picked up stuff from SFB. They had plenty of neat ideas - like fighters, teleporter bombs, tractor beams combat-fu, and an actual warship construction race between the major powers.

Have you watched that movie recently? The point where he tells people to go hand-to-hand is the dramatic moment where people start asking Picard if he's fucking crazy. Anyone who watches the series knows that going hand-to-hand with Borg results in mega-strength Worf getting tossed over a console like a rag-doll like half the time.

Which is my point. Picard was nuts to order his crew to fight hand to hand or to use phasers, because the Borg are strong against them. They can recalibrate their shields against energy weapons. They can zombify you if they touch you.

But the good old fashioned lead bullet? Borg have no defenses against them. That's why Picard is able to gun down two of them in the holodeck with a 1918 Tommy Gun. Their shields don't protect against physical bullets.

If you put the crew of the Walking Dead in a Borg Cube with plenty of solid ammunition, they'd clear the whole damn place in like a day or two. But Star Trek is too obsessed with making their phasers work against the Borg instead of just using a damn .45.

[Username17]

First of all, like I said it's theoretically possible to do warp-strafing. SFB (which is a sane implementation of Star Trek fleet combat mechanics) makes this their primary tactic. The issue is that in the show the phasers / torpedoes (which are all light speed weapons) move faster than the ship, hence demonstrating that the ship was actually at sublight speed.

This is completely wrong. Star Trek warp drive is apparently a real thing, and it works by creating a bubble of bent spacetime that the ship flies through at sublight speeds. A torpedo would always travel faster than the ship while it was still in the warp bubble.

Also, Star Trek torpedoes make their own warp bubbles once they leave the ship's warp bubble (although as I understand physics, that part isn't actually possible without Science Fiction Magic Tech).

-Username17

[Lokathor]

Technically, the ship itself is stationary (for purposes like relativity time dilation and such) and it "moves" by causing the space time holding the ship to move.

See Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

[rasmuswagner]

Bab5 beats BSG.
Movie/TVshow Trek beats Bab5 (by miles).
Star Wars beats Movie/Show Trek.
Star Fleet Battles Trek beats Star Wars.
40K beats TrekWars.
(Culture ships beat them all before the meat-speed commanders can give attack orders)

[Lokathor]

BSG and B5 seem to be roughly on the same tech level with each other in terms of combat powers. Assuming that you don't count any of the B5 old ones.

B5 has energy weapons, but no shields. Missiles would tear them apart. Given this set of size comparison charts http://www.st-minutiae.com/misc/comparison/index.html it seems that the BSG folks are used to fighting things on roughly the same scale as B5 ships are.

[Darth Rabbitt]

I got "Pokemon" and "House MD". So does House run a Teaching Hospital Pokemon Center? Is every single character a Nurse Joy? Aaaah my brain.

I once wrote a cross-over fic of that, set as an alternate ending to the season where Wilson's girlfriend dies (4, I think). Basically, House falls into a coma after crashing his motorbike (he wasn't looking at the road because he was looking for symptoms in pedestrians, hoping for an excuse to not do clinic duty). In his coma, he's in the pokemon land (4Gen), dealing with:
[*]Someone who doesn't realise his pokemon has a Toxic Orb
[*]It's not sleeping sickness, it's Darkrai
[*]It isn't the Dry Skin ability, the Toxicroak has Acute Intermittent Porphyria - and this allows him to diagnose the real-world problem when he snaps out of the coma

Also he bangs Nurse Joy. Because who wouldn't?

A reviewer considers it a better ending to the season than the actual one.

That sounds better than the entire series.

[Fuchs]

I got "Pokemon" and "House MD". So does House run a Teaching Hospital Pokemon Center? Is every single character a Nurse Joy? Aaaah my brain.

I once wrote a cross-over fic of that, set as an alternate ending to the season where Wilson's girlfriend dies (4, I think). Basically, House falls into a coma after crashing his motorbike (he wasn't looking at the road because he was looking for symptoms in pedestrians, hoping for an excuse to not do clinic duty). In his coma, he's in the pokemon land (4Gen), dealing with:
[*]Someone who doesn't realise his pokemon has a Toxic Orb
[*]It's not sleeping sickness, it's Darkrai
[*]It isn't the Dry Skin ability, the Toxicroak has Acute Intermittent Porphyria - and this allows him to diagnose the real-world problem when he snaps out of the coma

Also he bangs Nurse Joy. Because who wouldn't?

A reviewer considers it a better ending to the season than the actual one.

Link?

[Starmaker]

On Eisenhorn (the footnotes unfortunately don't start until the poison plot when I went into rage mode, and I'm not rereading book 1 to show you on the doll where it touched me):

In books 1 and 2, a lolrandom characterless woman is fridged to motivate a male character.

A vast majority of people in power are dudes. I'm fine with spess mehrines, I'm not fine with the high command and merchant houses.

While infiltrating a merchant house, Bequin impersonates a merchant lady. It is super fucking important that she does this as best as possible because they can lose the lead / get killed / whatever, and she goes for the most insipid piece of shit imaginable. Apparently, that's realistic.

The whole "redeeming a prostitute" rubs me the wrong way. Bequin is the only main character who needs to be "redeemed".

Later, she creates, and becomes a leader of, an organization of anti-psykers, most (if not all) named members of it are women. Too chicken to let a former prostitute order dudes around, are you, Abnett?

The woman of the Glaw family is a useless and passive footnote.

Medea is introduced in a completely fucked up, SEE WHAT I DID THERE way. ZOMG LOOK IT'S REALLY A CHICK!!! This is not how a normal person relays events, you don't make a big deal out of someone being a woman if you're not a misogynist.

I'm actually okay with her being obsessed with avenging daddy's death, but this is something the original reviewer, a feminist blogger, should've frothed at the mouth about.

Oh and lest I forget, she goes on an eating binge trip to the (actual, not metaphorical) fridge at night, because WOMAN.

As for my claim of implausibility - there seems to be no in-universe reasons for the evident misogyny, no ideology, no official teaching that women are worthless or sinful or whatever.

The two-component poison plot is fucking retarded. If you're able to poison a guy who you consider super dangerous and who's not a MacGuffin for your sacrificial ritual, just poison him with something that will fucking kill him right away!
^that was the breaking point where I started making annotations

"a few wordless gestures" - excellent writing!

"I saw the dark formations of Battlefleet Scarus, suckling at a starfort as if they were its young" FUCK THAT SHIT! I bet an inquisitor should've seen more starforts with battlefleets than animals with young, he's not a fucking farmer.

"The streets were packed with close on two billion jubilant citizens"
and later "the sound two billion people make when they're panicking..." - so no, that's not planet-wide, those 2 billion are actually packed in or around:
"it was to follow an eighteen kilometre route straight down the kilometre-wide Avenue"
"You cannot imagine it."
NEITHER CAN YOU, DAN ABNETT. You fucking hack have NO FUCKING SENSE OF SCALE.

"teamed together like horses pulling a state landau" - FUCKING FARMBOY

"My name is Prophaniti." NUFF SAID.

"'Gregor Eisenhorn,' he said in precisely enunciated High Formal Gothic" - HOW DO YOU SAY A NAME IN A LANGUAGE YOU HACK? Is he called George Ironhorn in Low Gothic? THIS IS FUCKING STUPID. MY HEAD HURTS.

Doctor Berschilde: same "Surprise! Tits!" introduction as with Medea. If a woman had been a member of the gay space marine chapter, then yes, it'd have warranted a Surprise! And it's actually "surprise! tits!", meaning, the revelation goes like "She was still a very fine figure of a woman." And, hey, an educated professional woman acts like a fucking lovesick teenager for YEARS. Here, I'll let you in on a secret: teenagers grow the fuck up and get over that bullshit.

"I'm an officer of the Medicae Imperialis. It never matters what they've done." Medecins sans frontieres? In my grimderp?

"The two of you never... I mean?"
"No. She's an untouchable. I'm a psyker. That's the way it works."

BLECH.
Here I have to put a major disclaimer. I'm not a fan of 40k. This is the first 40k book I have ever touched. I don't write or read fan porn of anything. I hate romance subplots in general except in comedy. By this point in the plot, I hate those characters and want them to die in a fire.

However: that's not the way it works. They can talk, be around each other, visit each other when they are sick, and embrace. Even if penis-to-vagina contact is somehow magickal, this is still bullshit, because there are probably a fuckton of ways to have sex in a high-tech setting, and former prostitute should know a lot of them. It's this fetishization of vanilla sex that's absolutely disgusting. Any story that makes a big deal out of sex in general, penetrative sex, or modern marriage is super fucking stupid.

Eisenhorn on Glaw: "Even before his fall, he was a cruel man." NO SHIT. What about that "if not for that chaos artifact, we could have been the best of friends" line in Malleus? Best of friends with a depraved nobleman? Fucking great.

"I added another line, suggesting that the situation reminded me of the tight spot we'd been in on Eechan, years before, facing Beldame Sadia."
I. Am. Not. A. 40k. Fan. I couldn't be assed to keep track of proper names of shit. But I immediately saw what Dan Abnett did there. Because it's stupid and transparent. The ploy itself is also stupidly constructed, because you don't reference something false that can be fact-checked by enemies, you reference something completely made up that can't be fact-checked. It's also super fucking stupid that the supergenius they faced couldn't fucking datamine shit, having had weeks of time.

Fantasy fencing is fucking lazy.

Psykery as a catch-all investigative solution is fucking lazy, too.

"Thank you," he said, and died. LOL INSTANT DEATH. If you don't understand why this is stupid, esp. in 40k, you're hopeless.

"Tears were streaming down her cheeks. She let go of the needle pistol and let it clatter onto the deck." - the footnote is "cinematic vs gritty makes for bullshit drama". Medea is super fucking skilled with those pistols, she didn't actually need to kill Fischig to disable him.

"as the shockwave seared past and around us" - shockwave IN SPAAAAACE

"I was going to reply, but his grip had slackened, his breathing had stopped. My oldest friend had gone." - lol instant death again

"Eleena, the only one whose blood-type matched mine" - holy tech level, Batman

"Aspect warriors, Gideon had called them, whatever that meant." Ladies and gentlemen, three cheers for Gregor Eisenhorn, inquisitor of Ordo fucking Xenos! What's a paladin?

"the pits were the size of pearls. Thankfully, no one had made a mistake of asking what a shirnapple was." - pearls, dude? From Holy motherfucking Terra? No one knows what a shirnapple is, but everyone knows what size Terra pearls are. The juxtaposition is an excellent topping on the shit sandwich.

Everyone is going about how bitchy that one female inquisitor is. Eisenhorn says that's what he likes about her. Meanwhile, there's a fuckton of male inquisitors, and a good many of them are this or more bitchy. But it's the woman who's singled out as being excessively strict. IN 40K. FUCK.

"into the thin atmosphere" - atmosphere, but a smooth maze of natural stone? FUCK THIS SHIT

"the angle between the floor and wall is ninety degrees to a margin of accuracy that... well, it is so precise, it goes off my auspex's scale" First, that's not how measurements fucking work. Second, FUCKING BREATHABLE ATMOSPHERE no I won't shut up about it.

"His skin was dyed with clan colours and his eyes were cheap augments." - Ravenor, being the filthy rich supergenius that he is, can't fucking equip his fucking soldiers with something better.

The laughter really did used to get on my nerves. - lol English

"But it had not entirely erased the features of Godwyn Fischig." - most telegraphed revelation runner-up

"The pages caught fire." - psychic swords can cut through armor but a psychic book may as well be written on toilet paper? orly?

Crown fucking jewel: "It was cold, the chill of open space still lingering."

---
I have not read the Gaunt's Ghosts novels, but the likelihood of them being the same fucking vomit is so high I'm only going to touch them at a recommendation of someone who HATED the Eisenhorn books. And given that Abnett is widely considered to be the best 40k writer, I'm not reading anything 40k that doesn't have lesbian battle nuns.

[Koumei]

Sorry Fuchs, it was on my old laptop and I didn't think to upload it anywhere.

Now, Starmaker largely makes accurate points, but I should correct/clarify a few bits.

A vast majority of people in power are dudes. I'm fine with spess mehrines, I'm not fine with the high command and merchant houses.

Welcome to 40k. No really, the setting is still very... well let me put it this way: there are multiple ALL MEN factions, one of which is Chaos, the rest are THE BESTEST and don't get in trouble for not worshipping the Emperor. There is one ALL WOMEN faction, and they have to follow the orders of creepy old paedophiles. I mean, the Ecclesiarchy (I was right the first time!) Who are all men.

Note: in old fluff, the Sisters were actually there to police the Ecclesiarchy, not as their attack dogs, and even the Space Marines reported to the Sisters. I miss the old fluff.

As for my claim of implausibility - there seems to be no in-universe reasons for the evident misogyny, no ideology, no official teaching that women are worthless or sinful or whatever.

See above. I don't recall seeing it explicitly stated in the teachings, but men totally ARE in charge of basically everything, so the simplest explanation is "Yeah, full-on patriarchy".

"'Gregor Eisenhorn,' he said in precisely enunciated High Formal Gothic" - HOW DO YOU SAY A NAME IN A LANGUAGE YOU HACK? Is he called George Ironhorn in Low Gothic? THIS IS FUCKING STUPID. MY HEAD HURTS.

Actually, people totally do have a High Gothic name and a Low Gothic name. If you introduce yourself with your High Gothic name, you're being a bit posh. It's probably the difference between calling yourself Reginald and calling yourself Reg.

"I'm an officer of the Medicae Imperialis. It never matters what they've done." Medecins sans frontieres? In my grimderp?

Oddly enough, the medicae often are portrayed as being like this in 40k.

"The two of you never... I mean?"
"No. She's an untouchable. I'm a psyker. That's the way it works."

To be fair, she would have fucked his brains out. Which sounds awesome until you realise I mean that literally. He'd literally die from it. I mean, in the Ciaphas Cain novels, Jurgen is moderately repulsive to all people (partly because he's an untouchable (someone with the Pariah gene), partly because he is unfamiliar with the verb "to bathe"), but an Inquisitor's psyker freaks out and goes hysterical just by looking at him from several yards away. To put it another way, tjeck the stats for Cullexus Assassins.

Here I have to put a major disclaimer. I'm not a fan of 40k. This is the first 40k book I have ever touched.

If someone really wanted to read 40k fiction for whatever reason, I'd recommend CS "Multilasers" Goto. Then, before they actually took my advice and then punched me in the face, I'd tell them to actually read the Ciaphas Cain stuff. It's very... Rincewind. Back when Terry Pratchett's work was less about a political message (which I love) and more about "crazy things happening to a really unlucky dude who is the only person who doesn't just treat it like a jolly caper" (which I also like).

I don't write or read fan porn of anything.

Oh, the things you're missing out on :3c

They can talk, be around each other, visit each other when they are sick, and embrace.

Again, depending on the intensity of it (which in turn depends on the strength of the psyker (more psykic == more bad), the strength of the pariah (more pariah == more bad) and the author), they might actually not be able to.

Even if penis-to-vagina contact is somehow magickal, this is still bullshit, because there are probably a fuckton of ways to have sex in a high-tech setting,

>40k
>hi-tech

Hahahahaha. I'm pretty sure there are literally six ways to have sex in 40k:
1. How babby is formed
2. Man on man action - ask the Dark Angels about it
3. Hardcore S&M
4. ????? (ask the Eldar about it. It ends with "And then Slaanesh appeared and killed everyone", so must have been pretty kinky)
5. The Dark Eldar way, where you drill new sex-holes into your partner after injecting them with a paralytic drug.
6. "The healthy attitude to sex" where instead of having sex you just commit genocide

No really, the Imperium seems fairly okay about homosexuality (in general - you can totally find planets where its a burnable offence, but the same can be said about chewing too fast), but they are still really uptight about the way people have sex.

Psykery as a catch-all investigative solution is fucking lazy, too.

This is true. It is also not reliable in 40k. I mean, it you just want a guilty verdict then sure, much like waterboarding a confession out of someone or using horoscopes to determine who the killer is. But the thing is, if you're an Inquisitor and you just want a guilty verdict, you can totally do that. But when you actually want to know something, you can't switch your psyker on and find X. Because if psykers were reliable with their powers, it wouldn't be a crime to be one.

"as the shockwave seared past and around us" - shockwave IN SPAAAAACE

Shockwaves and sounds travel better in space, because there's no atmosphere to slow them down :3c

"the pits were the size of pearls. Thankfully, no one had made a mistake of asking what a shirnapple was." - pearls, dude? From Holy motherfucking Terra? No one knows what a shirnapple is, but everyone knows what size Terra pearls are. The juxtaposition is an excellent topping on the shit sandwich.

I would agree with you there, but it's worth noting that the Imperium seriously did export all living Terra stuff to other planets to make them more like home. Which has never worked out badly on Terra, going from one continent to another, so I'm sure there's no harm in it.

So yeah, people actually would know what pearls are.

Crown fucking jewel: "It was cold, the chill of open space still lingering."

Again, everyone makes that mistake.

And given that Abnett is widely considered to be the best 40k writer, I'm not reading anything 40k that doesn't have lesbian battle nuns.

Don't bother reading Faith and Fire or Hammer and Anvil. The first one isn't that great, and you get used to everyone getting killed (the Gellar Field of a warp vessel has a brief hiccup, and a thousand crew are instantly killed, their minds switched off by the Warp). Though it has the most bad-ass way of killing someone: firing the plasma pistol until it's ready to explode, then throwing it at them. He could dodge individual plasma bolts, but explosions are hard to dodge.

The second one is a lot better, but honestly it's an ad for Codex: Necrons which was coming out around then. Seriously, it made a point of showing off the new Necron units and wargear just to excite people about it.

And neither has lesbian activity.

[Starmaker]

"'Gregor Eisenhorn,' he said in precisely enunciated High Formal Gothic" - HOW DO YOU SAY A NAME IN A LANGUAGE YOU HACK? Is he called George Ironhorn in Low Gothic? THIS IS FUCKING STUPID. MY HEAD HURTS.

Actually, people totally do have a High Gothic name and a Low Gothic name. If you introduce yourself with your High Gothic name, you're being a bit posh. It's probably the difference between calling yourself Reginald and calling yourself Reg.

I see how this could have worked. For example, King James, he of the KJV bible fame, is called "Iacobus" in Latin, and he is actually referred to as a variation on Jacob in half the languages on Wikipedia (and the variants of James include Jaume, Séamas, and 제임스). So "King James" can be Low Gothic and "Iacobus Rex" can be High Gothic. But the main character of Eisenhorn is called "Gregor Eisenhorn" throughout the book. He doesn't have an alternative name in the first place.

"I'm an officer of the Medicae Imperialis. It never matters what they've done." Medecins sans frontieres? In my grimderp?

Oddly enough, the medicae often are portrayed as being like this in 40k.

Still stupid then, but okay, I'll split the blame for the stupid between Abnett and the 40k canon in general.

"The two of you never... I mean?"
"No. She's an untouchable. I'm a psyker. That's the way it works."

To be fair, she would have fucked his brains out. Which sounds awesome until you realise I mean that literally. He'd literally die from it. I mean, in the Ciaphas Cain novels, Jurgen is moderately repulsive to all people (partly because he's an untouchable (someone with the Pariah gene), partly because he is unfamiliar with the verb "to bathe"), but an Inquisitor's psyker freaks out and goes hysterical just by looking at him from several yards away. To put it another way, tjeck the stats for Cullexus Assassins.

But Eisenhorn does not freak out and go hysterical just by looking at Bequin from several yards away. Unless sex is somehow magickal, they can totally fuck all they want.

They can talk, be around each other, visit each other when they are sick, and embrace.

Again, depending on the intensity of it (which in turn depends on the strength of the psyker (more psykic == more bad), the strength of the pariah (more pariah == more bad) and the author), they might actually not be able to.

They can! They totally can! It's in the books!

I'd tell them to actually read the Ciaphas Cain stuff. It's very... Rincewind. Back when Terry Pratchett's work was less about a political message (which I love) and more about "crazy things happening to a really unlucky dude who is the only person who doesn't just treat it like a jolly caper" (which I also like).

That actually sounds awesome. 40k is a perfect fit for such stories.

I don't write or read fan porn of anything.

Oh, the things you're missing out on :3c

I can't handle more plot in my porn that can fit into a 500k gif. And written fan porn may as well be a retelling of a cosplayer sex video.

Even if penis-to-vagina contact is somehow magickal, this is still bullshit, because there are probably a fuckton of ways to have sex in a high-tech setting,

>40k
>hi-tech

Hahahahaha. I'm pretty sure there are literally six ways to have sex in 40k...

No really, the Imperium seems fairly okay about homosexuality (in general - you can totally find planets where its a burnable offence, but the same can be said about chewing too fast), but they are still really uptight about the way people have sex.

Bequin used to be a prostitute catering to typical "depraved nobles" who are into luxuries, delicacies, and recreational torture. I highly doubt that her service consisted of playing "hubby, let's make a babby" pretend wife to people suffering from an acute case of forever alone. And Eisenhorn does not have sexual hangups either; he had sex as a teenager, he sees a naked woman, gets a boner, is mildly embarrassed and does not flog himself afterwards.

Psykery as a catch-all investigative solution is fucking lazy, too.

This is true. It is also not reliable in 40k. I mean, it you just want a guilty verdict then sure, much like waterboarding a confession out of someone or using horoscopes to determine who the killer is. But the thing is, if you're an Inquisitor and you just want a guilty verdict, you can totally do that. But when you actually want to know something, you can't switch your psyker on and find X. Because if psykers were reliable with their powers, it wouldn't be a crime to be one.

That's what Eisenhorn does! His ways to investigate a lead are
1. have the savant datamine
2. psyke it up
3. just fucking guess it lolrandomly
4. ransack a location and loot a quest item (these have the [quest] tag on them and can't be sold to a vendor)
It's basically WoW with quest markers and map pointers. Which may as well be the way investigations in 40k "actually" happen. Still lazy, though.

"the pits were the size of pearls. Thankfully, no one had made a mistake of asking what a shirnapple was." - pearls, dude? From Holy motherfucking Terra? No one knows what a shirnapple is, but everyone knows what size Terra pearls are. The juxtaposition is an excellent topping on the shit sandwich.

I would agree with you there, but it's worth noting that the Imperium seriously did export all living Terra stuff to other planets to make them more like home. Which has never worked out badly on Terra, going from one continent to another, so I'm sure there's no harm in it.

So yeah, people actually would know what pearls are.

There can't be a standard size that people understand pearls to be. There's been thousands of years of settlement and conquest. That's a lot of time for evolution, natural selection and CHAOS to make molluscs produce fluffy purple cotton balls instead.
Evolution of corn
Dog breeds

Crown fucking jewel: "It was cold, the chill of open space still lingering."

Again, everyone makes that mistake.

It's the "dark and stormy night" of sci-fi writing mistakes. Anyone who caters to neckbeard interests should be aware of it. Shockwaves and sound in general can be ascribed to rule of cool and imitating movies (however, there's also value in showing that you are hardcore and *know* stuff, unlike those lesser writers, meh), cold space is inexcusable. If anything, it just robs action movies and stories of a setting to have fights in.

[Hicks]

I would totally watch a completely silent 10 second fight between two enemy astronauts fighting for the only undamaged space suit helmit after an explosive decompression; bonus points for suspenseful camera play. Extra bonus points if the edges of the screen darken and the center fuzzes slightly over time to represent both of them fighting for consiousness in zero or low gravity.

And then the winner pushes the unconscious loser out the hole.

[Zinegata]

So, Starmaker is so fucking retarded that in order to continue his "I am the only cool guy in the room who hates Dan Abnett!" crusade, he has to literally take a bunch of quotes from the novel without any context.

This is like claiming that Tome is shit because rather than reading through the damn thing and understanding that it's a collection of useful rules, he'll take a sentence here and there, and then whine about how there's a spelling error, how there's wrong grammatical construction, or how he totally disagrees that there could be Death Knights that were only cursed by dickish evil Gods. Because in his high and mighty (retarded) opinion they can only ever be undead.

Yeah, he had better never take a career in literary review, because he'd get laughed out of the room every fucking time he opens his mouth.

He doesn't have an alternative name in the first place.

'cause Gregor is pretty easy to say. There are other examples in Abnett works where people use nicknames on people with overly long names. Heck, Alizabeth can technically be called "Lizzie", but she hates being called that so nobody dares except Nayl.

So all these whining about Abnett having people realistically use names and nicknames is silly.

But Eisenhorn does not freak out and go hysterical just by looking at Bequin from several yards away. Unless sex is somehow magickal, they can totally fuck all they want.

He actually does in the first novel. He literally wants to go hysterical and shout and scream at her to go away.

It literally takes him centuries before he manages to suppress the instinct. And even then, whenever they have physical contact it literally causes physical agony; so Gregor just tries his best to hold on for as long as possible to seem polite before going into convulsions.

Again, insisting on Crack Pairings like Eisenhorn v Bequin is silly. They can't be together. They're literally filed under "Star Crossed Lovers".

Bequin used to be a prostitute catering to typical "depraved nobles" who are into luxuries, delicacies, and recreational torture. I highly doubt that her service consisted of playing "hubby, let's make a babby" pretend wife to people suffering from an acute case of forever alone.

Oh, misogyny. Except it's not. It's you being silly. See this post by an actual feminist:

http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2011/ ... ss-whedon/

And unlike just about every other 40K writer ever, girls read Abnett. A lot of girls read Abnett. To the point I met one randomly in a bookstore and she was mad because she still hadn't gotten her copy of a Gaunt's Ghost Omnibus yet. To the point I get to giggle and squee with them when discussing Abnett.

This is the guy who rehabilited the Warhammer 40K equivalent of fucking Elminister and made him likable again. Well, okay, he made Gwilly likable again until the next Matt Ward canon rape, but the man's writing skills is simply unquestioned (except for his endings, which are always abrupt); what's questionable is your taste and your blatant and dishonest insistence on "misogyny" where very little actually exists.

TL;DR: Starmaker's busy criticizing Abnett's sentence construction but never actually bothered to read the story, which includes female characters who literally kick tons of ass and yet this is apparently misogyny.

[Zinegata]

First of all, like I said it's theoretically possible to do warp-strafing. SFB (which is a sane implementation of Star Trek fleet combat mechanics) makes this their primary tactic. The issue is that in the show the phasers / torpedoes (which are all light speed weapons) move faster than the ship, hence demonstrating that the ship was actually at sublight speed.

This is completely wrong. Star Trek warp drive is apparently a real thing, and it works by creating a bubble of bent spacetime that the ship flies through at sublight speeds. A torpedo would always travel faster than the ship while it was still in the warp bubble.

Also, Star Trek torpedoes make their own warp bubbles once they leave the ship's warp bubble (although as I understand physics, that part isn't actually possible without Science Fiction Magic Tech).

-Username17

Warp bubble arguments have been made for the TV show, but for that to work, the bubble would have to either extend an enormous distance (unlikely) OR weapons fire has to be very short-ranged.

Which helps explain why most on screen combats are close-ranged affairs more in line with Trafalgar or Tsushima, but it also indicates a crippling disadvantage: ST ships have to fire at point blank range. Which means that ST or 40K can simply kill ST ships by simple barrage fire.

(Also, the close ranged nature of most ST combats is what makes the "torpedoes have warp bubbles" theory highly unlikely, especially since ST had such trouble making highly miniaturized warp drives. SFB is more correct: Torps are light-speed short-ranged weapons. You need a drone to do long-ranged chasing)

Heck, even BSG could theoretically kill ST ships in this paradigm depending on the yield of a Battlestar's massed AA guns, albeit the Twelve Colonies would still lose to ST due to the latter's bigger industrial base.

Personally, I find this explanation less satisfying than SFB's, which also at least has a comprehensive doctrine on the proper employment of starships as opposed to the TV series' "Let's put together 50 ships and then call it a fleet! With no regard for the roles of different ship sizes!".

[K]

Warp bubble arguments have been made for the TV show, but for that to work, the bubble would have to either extend an enormous distance (unlikely) OR weapons fire has to be very short-ranged.

Which helps explain why most on screen combats are close-ranged affairs more in line with Trafalgar or Tsushima, but it also indicates a crippling disadvantage: ST ships have to fire at point blank range. Which means that ST or 40K can simply kill ST ships by simple barrage fire.

(Also, the close ranged nature of most ST combats is what makes the "torpedoes have warp bubbles" theory highly unlikely, especially since ST had such trouble making highly miniaturized warp drives. SFB is more correct: Torps are light-speed short-ranged weapons. You need a drone to do long-ranged chasing)

There are several episodes where ST ships fire torpedoes at warp speed at objects beyond the warp bubble and no episodes where they fire phasers at warp speed and that'd mean that the torps have to be making warp bubbles.

See also the diagram below and note the "warp sustainer" and "space warp control sensors."

The close range of ST fighting has to be because of some electronic countermeasures that bends light as well because otherwise there is no reason to ever miss with a beam weapon.

They do that all too often for there to not be some kind of countermeasure. Maybe the shields bend visible light and baffle sensors or something.

Heck, even BSG could theoretically kill ST ships in this paradigm depending on the yield of a Battlestar's massed AA guns, albeit the Twelve Colonies would still lose to ST due to the latter's bigger industrial base.

Personally, I find this explanation less satisfying than SFB's, which also at least has a comprehensive doctrine on the proper employment of starships as opposed to the TV series' "Let's put together 50 ships and then call it a fleet! With no regard for the roles of different ship sizes!".

Star Trek has run up against lasers (Star Wars) and fusion nukes (BSG) before and laughed at them being unable to pierce their shields.

Trek shields are just really awesome compared to other sci-fi settings, and you can see that in action when they do stuff like go into the coronas of suns.

[Emerald]

Star Trek has run up against lasers (Star Wars)

While SW has weapons that are called "laser cannons" and "turbolasers," blasters are actually either plasma-based or particle beam-based (depending on the era), and so are actually fairly similar to ST phasers. ST shields are thus still be able to protect against blaster bolts, but it's not a case of ST ships being flat-out immune to SW weaponry.

[Fuchs]

Star Trek Federation crews are so braindead, they likely don't even have their shields up so others do not think they might be hostile.

[Starmaker]

He doesn't have an alternative name in the first place.

'cause Gregor is pretty easy to say. There are other examples in Abnett works where people use nicknames on people with overly long names. Heck, Alizabeth can technically be called "Lizzie", but she hates being called that so nobody dares except Nayl.

So all these whining about Abnett having people realistically use names and nicknames is silly.

Did you read my fucking post, idiot? It's not about nicknames, it's about having distinct High Gothic and Low Gothic names. If you have only one name that serves as both Low Gothic and High Gothic, you CANNOT tell the difference, because there isn't one in the first place.

But Eisenhorn does not freak out and go hysterical just by looking at Bequin from several yards away. Unless sex is somehow magickal, they can totally fuck all they want.

He actually does in the first novel. He literally wants to go hysterical and shout and scream at her to go away.

orly?

The girl came out of a side room, a bathroom I imagine, and shrieked when she saw me. She was naked, and dived under the bedclothes for cover.

The girl was still crouched, naked, at the end of the bed, shivering. I was surprised she hadn't bolted out of cover at my command too.

The clearance squads brought out the shivering girl, Bequin. She was wrapped in blankets and her face was pinched blue with cold. Under my seal and instruction, they placed her in custody. She was too cold to voice a complaint. She stood in the crew-bay, frowning in the gloom, cuffed. She had dressed in a tawdry gown and a light cloak, but despite the
cheapness of her garb and the discomfort she was in, her considerable beauty was plain to see. Good bones, a full mouth, fierce eyes
and long dark hair. Yet, again, there was that air about her, that tone I had detected before. Despite her obvious physical attractions,
there was something almost repellent about her. It was curious, but I was convinced I knew what it was.

It's natural, and I haven't tested her limits. It's all I can do to be in the same room as her.

...Bequin asked me as we stood at an observation bay

Returning to the cutter, I found myself walking with Bequin.

At length, we hired one of the grav-skiffs lining up at the jetty. It was a long, speartip-shaped airboat with a glossy violet hull. Opentopped,
it provided seats for six

I strode ashore and turned to offer Bequin my hand.

'What the hell did they do to you?' Bequin asked, dabbing at wounds on my chest with a strip of cloth torn from her gown.

We dragged Bequin with us and moved out of the derelict wash-house.

Strangely, I came to enjoy Bequin's visits most. She would bustle in, tidying around me, tut-tutting at the state of my water jug or
the collapse of my bolsters. Then she would read aloud, usually from books and slates Aemos had left, and often from works that he
had already declaimed for my edification. She read them better, with more colour and phlegm. The voice she put on to do Sebastian
Thor made me laugh so hard my ribs hurt. When she got to reading Kerlof's Narrative of the Horus War, her impersonation of the
Emperor was almost heretical.
I taught her regicide. She lost the first few games, mesmerised by the pieces, the complex board and the still more complex moves and
strategies. It was all too ''tactical'' for her, she announced. There was no ''incentive''. So we started to play for coins. Then she got the
gist and started to win. Every time.

I came round cradled in Bequin's arms. 'Don't move, Eisenhorn. The medics are coming.'

Alizebeth Bequin had been the first untouchable I had ever encountered. Despite her unnerving presence - even non-psykers find untouchables difficult to be around...

She crouched down and put her arms around me. It is difficult for a psyker to be hugged by an untouchable, no matter how long and close their personal history. But her intentions were good, and I tolerated the contact for as long as seemed polite.

'Wass goin' on? Too much light!' said Bequin, emerging from the dirty linen on the bed. Somehow she had removed her dress beneath
the sheets. Clad in brief underwear, she slithered on top of me.
'Wass you doin'? Stoppin' a girl makin' her way? Shame on you!'
The sergeant ran his flashlight beam up and down the length of her body as it clung to me. I smiled the inane smile of the lucky or well-oiled.
He snapped the light off. 'Sorry to interrupt you, miss.' The door closed and the arbites thumped away.
I looked down at Bequin with a wink. 'Good improvisation,' I said.
She leapt off me and grabbed her clothes. 'Don't get any funny ideas, Gregor!'

I'd had funny ideas about her for years, truth be told. She was beautiful and sublimely sexy. But she was also an untouchable. It hurt me to be close to her, physically hurt.
I hate that fact. I feel a lot for Bequin and I long to be with her, but it was never going to happen. Never, ever.
That's one of the truly great sadnesses of my life.

Bequin and Aemos met me under the broken entrance arch. Aemos looked pale and worried, but his face broke into a warm smile as
he saw me. Bequin hugged me.

There's a *lot* of touching, dragging, clinging, being around, sitting next to each other, etc without any mention of discomfort that I didn't quote. In fact, I quoted every single instance of Eisenhorn mentioning any until Bequin is killed (I challenge you to find more). So no; the psykery vs blank incompatibility in the case of Eisenhorn and Bequin is an informed disadvantage that only matters when they want to fuck. To the warp with those whiny idiots. I put up with more discomfort sexing up women with unshaven legs.

Again, insisting on Crack Pairings like Eisenhorn v Bequin is silly. They can't be together. They're literally filed under "Star Crossed Lovers".

"Filed"? Really, your argument is, "fanboys say X, so it must be true"? Fuck no. Fanboys are only suitable as evidence when they're (effectively) bashing their favorite work, that's how (Bayesian) evidence fucking works.

Bequin used to be a prostitute catering to typical "depraved nobles" who are into luxuries, delicacies, and recreational torture. I highly doubt that her service consisted of playing "hubby, let's make a babby" pretend wife to people suffering from an acute case of forever alone.

Oh, misogyny. Except it's not. It's you being silly.

It's funny that you should pick that bit to quote, because it has fuck all to do with misogyny. I was responding to Koumei's assertion that 40k people should have weird sexual hangups. All of this is evidence of misogyny:

In books 1 and 2, a lolrandom characterless woman is fridged to motivate a male character.

A vast majority of people in power are dudes. I'm fine with spess mehrines, I'm not fine with the high command and merchant houses.

While infiltrating a merchant house, Bequin impersonates a merchant lady. It is super fucking important that she does this as best as possible because they can lose the lead / get killed / whatever, and she goes for the most insipid piece of shit imaginable. Apparently, that's realistic.

The whole "redeeming a prostitute" rubs me the wrong way. Bequin is the only main character who needs to be "redeemed".

Later, she creates, and becomes a leader of, an organization of anti-psykers, most (if not all) named members of it are women. Too chicken to let a former prostitute order dudes around, are you, Abnett?

The woman of the Glaw family is a useless and passive footnote.

Medea is introduced in a completely fucked up, SEE WHAT I DID THERE way. ZOMG LOOK IT'S REALLY A CHICK!!! This is not how a normal person relays events, you don't make a big deal out of someone being a woman if you're not a misogynist.

I'm actually okay with her being obsessed with avenging daddy's death, but this is something the original reviewer, a feminist blogger, should've frothed at the mouth about.

Oh and lest I forget, she goes on an eating binge trip to the (actual, not metaphorical) fridge at night, because WOMAN.

As for my claim of implausibility - there seems to be no in-universe reasons for the evident misogyny, no ideology, no official teaching that women are worthless or sinful or whatever.

Doctor Berschilde: same "Surprise! Tits!" introduction as with Medea. If a woman had been a member of the gay space marine chapter, then yes, it'd have warranted a Surprise! And it's actually "surprise! tits!", meaning, the revelation goes like "She was still a very fine figure of a woman." And, hey, an educated professional woman acts like a fucking lovesick teenager for YEARS. Here, I'll let you in on a secret: teenagers grow the fuck up and get over that bullshit.

Everyone is going about how bitchy that one female inquisitor is. Eisenhorn says that's what he likes about her. Meanwhile, there's a fuckton of male inquisitors, and a good many of them are this or more bitchy. But it's the woman who's singled out as being excessively strict. IN 40K. FUCK.

See this post by an actual feminist:

http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2011/ ... ss-whedon/

Again, it's funny that you link to her. Because (1) I read Eisenhorn at her (impersonal) recommendation, and (2) she's very insistent that feminists do not get to speak for other feminists, and "a feminist" approving something does not mean shit.

Oh, and "actual", as in, implying implications that I'm not one? Fuck you.

Lest I forget, stuff like this:

'Scary bitch,' said Bequin as we went outside.

should be normally a huge red flag for her. The low quality of writing, too.

And unlike just about every other 40K writer ever, girls read Abnett.

So what? Girls read Harry fucking Dresden, too. In fact...

You need to read the whole book before you can make judgment! You need to read the whole fucking series or else! Then they’ll turn around and declare Fifty Shades of Gray shit. Sometimes, as in the case of Mr Serial Mansplainer here, without having read it–despite “you haven’t read it/all of it/the whole series” being the axe they’ll grind when they’ve run out of intelligent arguments (and since they are not, on average, intelligent this happens very quickly). To be sure, I don’t believe that just because something is read by a lot of women it is automatically feminist; Jim Butcher, let me remind you, has a significant female fanbase. So does Doctor Who and, I don’t know, shit like Supernatural. Oh, and Joss Whedon of course.

what's questionable is your taste and your blatant and dishonest insistence on "misogyny" where very little actually exists.

TL;DR: Starmaker's busy criticizing Abnett's sentence construction but never actually bothered to read the story, which includes female characters who literally kick tons of ass and yet this is apparently misogyny.

Again, you cannot rationally use Requires Hate as your big gun and be a Feminist Ally who gets to dismiss allegations of sexism because you know better.

"Never actually bothered to read", eh?

And yes, when women supposedly kick ass and yet are subservient to men, dedicate their lives to men, do not get to order men around, overwhelmingly come from characteristically female backgrounds such as prostitute and entertainer OR follow in daddy's footsteps, get accused of "bitchiness" when men are just as, or even more, "bitchy" - that is sexism. And no amount of spess mehrines drinking tea will excuse that.

[talozin]

Back when Terry Pratchett's work was less about a political message (which I love) and more about "crazy things happening to a really unlucky dude who is the only person who doesn't just treat it like a jolly caper" (which I also like).

Terry Pratchett has a political message now? Motherfvcker! Stop fvcking with my childhood, universe!

[Sashi]

Which is my point. Picard was nuts to order his crew to fight hand to hand or to use phasers, because the Borg are strong against them. They can recalibrate their shields against energy weapons. They can zombify you if they touch you.

But the good old fashioned lead bullet? Borg have no defenses against them. That's why Picard is able to gun down two of them in the holodeck with a 1918 Tommy Gun. Their shields don't protect against physical bullets.

If you put the crew of the Walking Dead in a Borg Cube with plenty of solid ammunition, they'd clear the whole damn place in like a day or two. But Star Trek is too obsessed with making their phasers work against the Borg instead of just using a damn .45.

This is exactly why these kinds of arguments are impossible.

[Whatever]

This thread is bad, and people should feel bad.

In other news, this time I got The Wizard of Oz and The Presidential Election of the USA (real life). There's a parody that writes itself.

[Hicks]

Holodecks don't typically replicate actual bullets that you can carry out of the apparatus and shoot someone in the face with. Under normal circumstances the holodeck computer won't crush/roast you to death from a botched orbital skyline simulation, but it totally can. Using forcefields and energy beams to simulate impact and heat is what the holodeck does, and anything you don't actually touch/wear is more likely to that rather than a replicated chemical explosive.

TL:DR, Picard used a fancy set of beams and forcefields to kill a Borg who was not yet adapted to them.

Bonus: martial arts are super effective against Borg drones.

[name_here]

Okay, the laser thing with ST in versus is idiotic. Why? Well, in the Borg's first appearance they cut through the Enterprise's hull with a laser. Also, the quote

Lasers won't penetrate our navigational deflectors

was from an episode where the ships in question were ridiculously tiny.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Okay, the laser thing with ST in versus is idiotic. Why? Well, in the Borg's first appearance they cut through the Enterprise's hull with a laser.

That's actually never described as anything but a 'cutting beam' in-show. And it's used after the Borg tractor beam has drained the shields anyway.

[K]

Holodecks don't typically replicate actual bullets that you can carry out of the apparatus and shoot someone in the face with. Under normal circumstances the holodeck computer won't crush/roast you to death from a botched orbital skyline simulation, but it totally can. Using forcefields and energy beams to simulate impact and heat is what the holodeck does, and anything you don't actually touch/wear is more likely to that rather than a replicated chemical explosive.

TL:DR, Picard used a fancy set of beams and forcefields to kill a Borg who was not yet adapted to them.

Yeh, Holodecks don't make matter, but instead make "photonic matter" out of forcefields and stuff. For all we know, the forcefield "bullets" didn't even become "solid" and harmful until they were already behind the Borg shields.

That being said, the fact that the Federation hasn't used machine guns in all the planned fights that they have with the Borg is pretty good proof that machine guns don't work.

Bonus: martial arts are super effective against Borg drones.

Well, martial arts used by super-strength guys like Data and Worf, and then only some of the time (check out 0.10).

Since both only killed a few at a time when they successfully used them, we don't even know if the Borg don't have a MARTIAL COMBAT (YES/NO) toggle.

[Koumei]

Terry Pratchett has a political message now? Motherfvcker! Stop fvcking with my childhood, universe!

It started with Night Watch - partly covering "stupid police/government responses to angry crowds" and such, partly going over the whole "Revolution! New guy in charge, everything is be- he's worse! Revolution!" thing that some countries know all too well.

Then you have The Truth, which covers monopolies (guilds, in this case) as well as the whole "how much power and freedom should the press have?" thing.

And then there's Going Postal and its sequel Making Money, which very explicitly goes into politics and economics and how it's stupid to actually base your currency off real amounts of real gold actually held.

It's not terribly pervasive, mind, so if you don't want to think about the politics, you can just ignore them basically.