Everyone's a WarCriminal: the Mil-SciFi Thread

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mllaneza: Apr 28, 2007; Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952

Anshu posted:

Until morale improves?

Morale will not improve.

# ? Apr 19, 2020 22:02

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# ? Jun 9, 2024 22:33

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

FuturePastNow posted:

Grayson is flying a bunch of old Manticoran ships until they build their own. Same for the other allies we barely see because they don't do much, like Zanzibar.

I meant to add on that indeed Weber does indeed write that, though unlike what the poster above said, as far as I can tell Manticore does not actually make money off of doing that, but instead takes a big loss on them but does it out of honor even though the Grand Alliance's hanger-ons are all completely worthless.

It's at least plausible enough.

General Battuta posted:

In Chapter Ten of Mission of Honor: Retold, we finally get some naval shooting and a look at the Solarian League Navy's upgraded hardware. The missile accounting will continue.

You're putting me out of a job here.

# ? Apr 20, 2020 00:07

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

I like to imagine that most of Manticore's allies use the added security to invest in their own economies and interstellar future, whereas Grayson is the equivalent of a wild-eyed survivalist who's just climbed out of a bunker and gone on a massive gun spending spree (plus some hydroponic grow stations for the kids, I guess). Spending most of your GSP on cutting edge warships has to come crashing down eventually.

# ? Apr 20, 2020 00:41

Gnoman: Feb 12, 2014; Come, all you fair and tender maids
Who flourish in your pri-ime
Beware, take care, keep your garden fair
Let Gnoman steal your thy-y-me
Le-et Gnoman steal your thyme

General Battuta posted:

I like to imagine that most of Manticore's allies use the added security to invest in their own economies and interstellar future, whereas Grayson is the equivalent of a wild-eyed survivalist who's just climbed out of a bunker and gone on a massive gun spending spree (plus some hydroponic grow stations for the kids, I guess). Spending most of your GSP on cutting edge warships has to come crashing down eventually.

This is actually addressed - there's a discussion where it is acknowledged that their military spending is right at the edge of what they can afford, but they're getting away with it because technological upgrades to their manufacturing is still bringing their civilian standard of living enormously, and they've got enough shipbuilding left to be building and selling merchant ships at a profit.. Just before Round 2 starts, there's an estimate that they'll have to stop building warships within a few years.

# ? Apr 20, 2020 01:09

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Yes, that's why the only Grayson scene in Mission Retold (so far) is about their economy collapsing.

# ? Apr 20, 2020 01:23

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Gnoman posted:

This is actually addressed - there's a discussion where it is acknowledged that their military spending is right at the edge of what they can afford, but they're getting away with it because technological upgrades to their manufacturing is still bringing their civilian standard of living enormously, and they've got enough shipbuilding left to be building and selling merchant ships at a profit.. Just before Round 2 starts, there's an estimate that they'll have to stop building warships within a few years.

This doesn't really make sense in the context of what we know about Grayson, in that they have a relatively small population that is allowed to do most work (750m to 1.25b maximum, if we count all children and elderly, depending on what source you use for the population), and they aren't particularly rich to begin with because they've been isolated for 500 years and they've been spending all their money making their world livable. They really shouldn't be able to just instantly jump up 500 years of space infrastructure in less than a decade to be honest.

They shouldn't have a massive economy that can accept a sudden increase of spending trillions nor the amount of people in the space industry to handle the massive surge. Battuta is right that they should be crashing because they spent themselves to death to tech up 500 years in less than a decade.

Like, they're both expanding in every direction constantly while on maximum overdrive war footing, using only a fourth of their population for many of those years (or pretty much all of those years since positions require training) and that's just not a thing that can be sustained by anyone. Weber has really zero understanding of economics because pretty much all the major factions in Honorverse are on maximum war footing that apparently props up their entire economy and civilization for decades on end.

# ? Apr 20, 2020 02:02

Gnoman: Feb 12, 2014; Come, all you fair and tender maids
Who flourish in your pri-ime
Beware, take care, keep your garden fair
Let Gnoman steal your thy-y-me
Le-et Gnoman steal your thyme

Kchama posted:

This doesn't really make sense in the context of what we know about Grayson, in that they have a relatively small population that is allowed to do most work (750m to 1.25b maximum, if we count all children and elderly, depending on what source you use for the population), and they aren't particularly rich to begin with because they've been isolated for 500 years and they've been spending all their money making their world livable. They really shouldn't be able to just instantly jump up 500 years of space infrastructure in less than a decade to be honest.

They shouldn't have a massive economy that can accept a sudden increase of spending trillions nor the amount of people in the space industry to handle the massive surge. Battuta is right that they should be crashing because they spent themselves to death to tech up 500 years in less than a decade.

Like, they're both expanding in every direction constantly while on maximum overdrive war footing, using only a fourth of their population for many of those years (or pretty much all of those years since positions require training) and that's just not a thing that can be sustained by anyone. Weber has really zero understanding of economics because pretty much all the major factions in Honorverse are on maximum war footing that apparently props up their entire economy and civilization for decades on end.

That's a fair criticism - only about 30% of the population are men, which is the working segment of the population, and that number's going to be significantly reduced because they are only just getting modern medical science. They still have to worry about old age, most genetic diseases, and are only just able to regenerate lost/crippled limbs. The mass drive for women in the workplace that is mentioned is only going to help so much - not only are there all the cultural resistance and training factors that you'd expect (some of which he tried to retcon away as a cultural misunderstanding), but the Grayson "government" is 40-odd absolute dictators nominally answerable to one ~~Emperor~~ Protector, but who have spent the last few centuries effectively immune to censure from the Protector. A fair number of those are likely to outright prohibit female employment, or else wrap it in so many restrictions that it won't help the labor force.

Weber was going for a WWII-style "spin up the economy, we've got work to do" narrative, but didn't take into account the fundamental differences that make it impractical.

# ? Apr 20, 2020 02:29

Beefeater1980: Sep 12, 2008; My God, it's full of Horatios!

I mean this is �Weber didn�t take into account the fundamental differences, the thread� so that checks out.

At some point I might summarise the Ark Royal series. It�s occasionally competent space battles interspersed with increasingly alarming hints that the world has gone full fash (and the author thinks this good, naturally). Characters are pure stock and nobody has any individual personality. The expression �ethnically British� (ugh) is used without irony. It�s a well of sludge, basically.

# ? Apr 20, 2020 02:43

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Orthodontically British

# ? Apr 20, 2020 02:56

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Beefeater1980 posted:

I mean this is �Weber didn�t take into account the fundamental differences, the thread� so that checks out.

At some point I might summarise the Ark Royal series. It�s occasionally competent space battles interspersed with increasingly alarming hints that the world has gone full fash (and the author thinks this good, naturally). Characters are pure stock and nobody has any individual personality. The expression �ethnically British� (ugh) is used without irony. It�s a well of sludge, basically.

Please do! This thread doesn't need to be Kchama Argues With Everyone: The Thread! Though I don't think that book has any fans here, so who knows.

Gnoman posted:

That's a fair criticism - only about 30% of the population are men, which is the working segment of the population, and that number's going to be significantly reduced because they are only just getting modern medical science. They still have to worry about old age, most genetic diseases, and are only just able to regenerate lost/crippled limbs. The mass drive for women in the workplace that is mentioned is only going to help so much - not only are there all the cultural resistance and training factors that you'd expect (some of which he tried to retcon away as a cultural misunderstanding), but the Grayson "government" is 40-odd absolute dictators nominally answerable to one ~~Emperor~~ Protector, but who have spent the last few centuries effectively immune to censure from the Protector. A fair number of those are likely to outright prohibit female employment, or else wrap it in so many restrictions that it won't help the labor force.

Weber was going for a WWII-style "spin up the economy, we've got work to do" narrative, but didn't take into account the fundamental differences that make it impractical.

Yeah, pretty much. I was trying to be a little generous to Weber and even left out stuff like they apparently they're all suppose to have stunted growth and short lifespans even compared to pre-prolong, but to be honest there's not much mention of it in the books that I can remember, so I'm not sure if that is actually stuff that should be taken account of.

# ? Apr 20, 2020 04:40

Space Butler: Dec 3, 2010; Lipstick Apathy

Beefeater1980 posted:

I mean this is �Weber didn�t take into account the fundamental differences, the thread� so that checks out.

At some point I might summarise the Ark Royal series. It�s occasionally competent space battles interspersed with increasingly alarming hints that the world has gone full fash (and the author thinks this good, naturally). Characters are pure stock and nobody has any individual personality. The expression �ethnically British� (ugh) is used without irony. It�s a well of sludge, basically.

I made it through the first three of those. You forgot the noble royal prince, casual sexism and even more tired, cliched pop culture references than the iron druid series.

I'm fairly sure it's the series you can tell when the author read honour harrington just from the amount of times he suddenly starts using the phrase 'bomb pumped laser warheads' out of nowhere, but in fairness that could be one of his other terrible series. I thought book one wasn't terrible for a debut kindle release, turned out it was his 20th book or something.

# ? Apr 20, 2020 11:30

PupsOfWar: Dec 6, 2013

Space Butler posted:

I'm fairly sure it's the series you can tell when the author read honour harrington just from the amount of times he suddenly starts using the phrase 'bomb pumped laser warheads' out of nowhere, but in fairness that could be one of his other terrible series.

i dont think bomb-pumped laser warheads appear anywhere else in the weber oeuvre

in Starfire the bomb-pumped x-ray mechanism is used, but in shipboard laser turret format, missiles are either nukes or antimatter

in the Dahak series there are fusion warheads, antimatter, singularity missiles, and hyperspace warping missiles, nary a laser head in sight

i don't remember what space weapons were used in Empire of Man (although i do recall the somewhat novel format wherein all the fighting was done by hyper-capable carriers launching small handfuls of cruiser-type craft rather than fighter wings)

i can't think of any other big mil-SF where the x-ray laser missile is used either, come to think of it

my understanding is that (like many weird things) it was a concept that got kicked around during reagan-era defense planning, and weber was the one writer who heard about it and decided to build a whole universe around the idea

Beefeater1980 posted:

At some point I might summarise the Ark Royal series. It�s occasionally competent space battles interspersed with increasingly alarming hints that the world has gone full fash (and the author thinks this good, naturally). Characters are pure stock and nobody has any individual personality. The expression �ethnically British� (ugh) is used without irony. It�s a well of sludge, basically.

Space Butler posted:

I thought book one wasn't terrible for a debut kindle release, turned out it was his 20th book or something.

the best thing to know about Nuttal is that the first novels he wrote were semi-officially-approved fanfics set in john ringo's posleen war series, passed around awkwardly via docs on the Baen forums rather than posted on any of the regular fanfic sites

i feel this explains whatever you would need to know about him

(though, yes, his ringo fanfics are better than ringo's own work, the world's lowest possible bar)

PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 12:59 on Apr 20, 2020

# ? Apr 20, 2020 12:34

PupsOfWar: Dec 6, 2013

speaking of kindle releases, that reminds me i should at some point get 'round to the latest Spiral Wars

# ? Apr 20, 2020 12:45

Deptfordx: Dec 23, 2013

Yeah, I tried one of those Ark Royal books and it made Weber look like Dostoevsky.

# ? Apr 20, 2020 12:50

90s Cringe Rock: Nov 29, 2006

love to have bomb-pumped laser turrets functioning within my own ship

# ? Apr 20, 2020 13:56

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

PupsOfWar posted:

i dont think bomb-pumped laser warheads appear anywhere else in the weber oeuvre

in Starfire the bomb-pumped x-ray mechanism is used, but in shipboard laser turret format, missiles are either nukes or antimatter

in the Dahak series there are fusion warheads, antimatter, singularity missiles, and hyperspace warping missiles, nary a laser head in sight

You would be INCREDIBLY WRONG, PupsOfWar! The main Honorverse missiles are bomb-pumped lasers! They're the missiles everyone uses, to replace the old nukes. They are even specifically called bomb-pumped lasers.

# ? Apr 20, 2020 17:05

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

"Anywhere else"

As I'm closing in on the end of Mission of Honor Retold I'm wondering where you guys think this story should go in the long run. The canonical ending of Manticore knocking out Earth with a decapitation strike, then calling it a day and going home�but with a little more explanation of the aftermath? League Civil War? Manticore unilaterally ceases military operations to avoid playing into Mesan hands? Manticore goes into catastrophic debt to the Andermani? Haven and the Andermani take the opportunity to force an exploitative treaty with Manticore? So many options!

General Battuta fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Apr 20, 2020

# ? Apr 20, 2020 17:58

FuturePastNow: May 19, 2014

90s Cringe Rock posted:

love to have bomb-pumped laser turrets functioning within my own ship

I'm going to quote the infodump from the novel where this happens because it's relatively short and hardcore:

Crusade posted:

"They must have the occasional accident," he observed now.

"Yes, sir. This gives them a hellacious throughput, but their mag bottle technology's cruder than ours, and it takes an extremely dense field. If it hiccups�blooie!"

"Agreed." The commodore was probably understating, but it certainly explained how the Thebans could produce a bomb-pumped laser without a bomb. They didn't; they simply detonated the bomb inside their ship.

He frowned at the schematic, tracing the lines of light with a finger. Each laser-armed Theban ship contained at least one installation walled with truly awesome shielding, all wrapped around a mag bottle many times as dense as that of a standard fusion plant containment field. When they fired those godawful lasers, they detonated a nuclear warhead inside the mag bottle, which trapped its explosive power but not its radiation. Heavily armored and shielded conduits focused and channeled that dreadful radiation, delivering it to up to four laser projectors. But it all depended on the containment field, for, as Timoshenko said, if that field faltered, the firing ship would die far more spectacularly than its intended victim. And even with it, the detonation chamber�and everything within meters of it�must quickly become so contaminated that total replacement would be required on a fairly frequent basis.

"Do you have any projections on their failure rate?"

"They're rough, but it may be as high as three percent. The system's supposed to shut down when the fail-safes report field instability, but it may fail catastrophically in about ten percent of those cases. Call it point-three percent, maybe a little less, for a serious event."

I think Crusade is one of the better Weber novels. It's from relatively early in his oeuvre, before he burned out, he had a co-writer which couldn't hurt, and it contains weird and different poo poo like this. Also it ends with a really satisfying space and ground battle.

# ? Apr 20, 2020 18:28

Anshu: Jan 9, 2019

General Battuta posted:

"Anywhere else"

As I'm closing in on the end of Mission of Honor Retold I'm wondering where you guys think this story should go in the long run. The canonical ending of Manticore knocking out Earth with a decapitation strike, then calling it a day and going home�but with a little more explanation of the aftermath? League Civil War? Manticore unilaterally ceases military operations to avoid playing into Mesan hands? Manticore goes into catastrophic debt to the Andermani? Haven and the Andermani take the opportunity to force an exploitative treaty with Manticore? So many options!

I would aim for a situation in which Manticore+Friends force the League to balkanize, but then have to vie for influence against the Mesan Alignment in the new polities.

# ? Apr 20, 2020 19:59

akulanization: Dec 21, 2013

General Battuta posted:

"Anywhere else"

As I'm closing in on the end of Mission of Honor Retold I'm wondering where you guys think this story should go in the long run. The canonical ending of Manticore knocking out Earth with a decapitation strike, then calling it a day and going home�but with a little more explanation of the aftermath? League Civil War? Manticore unilaterally ceases military operations to avoid playing into Mesan hands? Manticore goes into catastrophic debt to the Andermani? Haven and the Andermani take the opportunity to force an exploitative treaty with Manticore? So many options!

The League navy you have seems to be able to hold its own versus at least second string Manticore technology. Destroying Sol ends the League but that wouldn�t help Manticore and the rest in this new paradigm, since now everyone who was inclined to commit to war with Manticore will ignore the vetoes that Beowulf has used to block full scale military operations. I don�t think the plan to break up the League will work without total military superiority and strong economic foundations, and post oyster bay Manticore don�t really have that.

The canonical ending mostly lays the groundwork for another war, might as well lean into that with space Versailles.

# ? Apr 20, 2020 20:19

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

General Battuta posted:

"Anywhere else"

As I'm closing in on the end of Mission of Honor Retold I'm wondering where you guys think this story should go in the long run. The canonical ending of Manticore knocking out Earth with a decapitation strike, then calling it a day and going home�but with a little more explanation of the aftermath? League Civil War? Manticore unilaterally ceases military operations to avoid playing into Mesan hands? Manticore goes into catastrophic debt to the Andermani? Haven and the Andermani take the opportunity to force an exploitative treaty with Manticore? So many options!

Oh hey, serves ME right making a post right after waking up!

Mea culpa, PupsOfWar

# ? Apr 20, 2020 22:53

blackmongoose: Mar 31, 2011; DARK INFERNO ROOK!

Anshu posted:

I would aim for a situation in which Manticore+Friends force the League to balkanize, but then have to vie for influence against the Mesan Alignment in the new polities.

I think balkanization makes the most sense because a) the league as written is terrible for storytelling so killing it is better if you decide to do future stories and b) it's probably the only realistic way to have an ending that isn't super depressing. I wouldn't have it be Manticore forcing it though, just that the crisis reveals a lot of the already existing underlying issues and tensions (I wonder what the distribution by planet is of the enlisted folks who are about to all die. I bet it's not equal among planets!). It's kind of silly that only Beowulf would be pissed about the federal government taking "police actions" with hundreds of battleships, so that's another fracture area. Plus the evil guys are probably also encouraging the breakup.

In general, the league seems to be written as only working because none of the members really notice its actions most of the time, so a breakup during a crisis created entirely by the federal government seems pretty plausible. Plus, you get to write some more weird new technologies being tried out by the system defense forces (who are probably doing some private R&D of their own) as they confront federal forces which is always fun. On the war front, this plausibly leads to a negotiated settlement when everyone realizes what is happening - the federal government realizes it has a much bigger problem and the Grand Alliance is insanely relieved that they have a way out. In fact, maybe certain Manticorans want to keep fighting because they have infinite faith in super missiles but the Havenites and other allies go "Holy poo poo, this is our chance to STOP BEING AT WAR FOR A FEW YEARS" and basically force peace talks as a condition of maintaining the alliance - this also fits with Pritchart and Theisman's characters and with your writing of Grayson's economy collapsing. I also like that this path means that the diplomats and politicians get an equal or greater role than the admirals for once.

# ? Apr 20, 2020 23:56

Anshu: Jan 9, 2019

blackmongoose posted:

I think balkanization makes the most sense because a) the league as written is terrible for storytelling so killing it is better if you decide to do future stories and b) it's probably the only realistic way to have an ending that isn't super depressing. I wouldn't have it be Manticore forcing it though, just that the crisis reveals a lot of the already existing underlying issues and tensions.

That's actually what I meant, but I can see how what I wrote wasn't really clear.

# ? Apr 21, 2020 00:19

mllaneza: Apr 28, 2007; Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952

blackmongoose posted:

I also like that this path means that the diplomats and politicians get an equal or greater role than the admirals for once.

That would be a good chance to bring in a diplomat as a main character or even series protagonist as the wars end and peace must be maintained. Anyone else thinking of the Retief series here ?

# ? Apr 21, 2020 00:43

Fell Fire: Jan 30, 2012

General Battuta, other than you killing off a couple of my favorite characters I'm really enjoying it. This is making me want to read more, which I didn't think was possible after so much Weber dross.

# ? Apr 21, 2020 02:34

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

blackmongoose posted:

In fact, maybe certain Manticorans want to keep fighting because they have infinite faith in super missiles but the Havenites and other allies go "Holy poo poo, this is our chance to STOP BEING AT WAR FOR A FEW YEARS" and basically force peace talks as a condition of maintaining the alliance - this also fits with Pritchart and Theisman's characters and with your writing of Grayson's economy collapsing. I also like that this path means that the diplomats and politicians get an equal or greater role than the admirals for once.

By 'certain Manticoreans' you mostly mean 'all but the anti-war strawmen' right? We had merchantmen in Rising Thunder baring their teeth at their Solarian counterpart and talking about how they're probably going to get called home to join the Manticorean navy (it should be spacy though) and perhaps kill their Solarian counterpart and in general be a real dick and gleeful for a chance to kill some Solarians.

You know it's still a shame that Haven didn't backstab Manticore at the last second when Manticore was literally letting them guard their homeworld for them. After all the poo poo Manticore pulled, including all of Honor's handwaved-away war crimes, I'm shocked that didn't cross any of their minds.

# ? Apr 21, 2020 03:19

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Okay, I've put it off long enough!

Honor of the Queen Chapter Seven

quote:

Sergeant Major Babcock smiled as Honor stepped onto the mat.

Babcock was from Gryphon, Manticore-B V. Gryphon's gravity was only five percent above Terran Standard, less than eighty percent that of Honor's native Sphinx, and Babcock was a good twenty centimeters shorter, with a much shorter reach, to boot. She was also just over twice Honor's age, and like Admiral Courvosier, she was first-generation prolong. The original treatment had stopped the aging process at a much later point than current techniques, and there were strands of gray in her red hair and crows-feet around her eyes.

None of which had kept her from throwing Honor around the salle with embarrassing ease.

Honor was taller and stronger, with better reaction speed and hand-eye coordination, but that, as Ms. Midshipman Harrington had learned long ago on Saganami Island, didn't necessarily mean a thing. Babcock was in at least as good a shape as she was, and she'd been doing this forty T-years longer. She knew moves her CO hadn't even thought of yet, and Honor suspected the sergeant major was delighted by the opportunity (one couldn't exactly call it an excuse) to kick the stuffing out of a senior Navy officer.

Just quoting this for two things: One, Honor is super huge considering she's from a high-gravity planet and has been gene-modified (Genied) for the high gravity. There's apparently no negative side-effects from the gene-modding besides Honor having the appetite of a Saiyan.

Also apparently right now, experience and skill beats size and physical ability. Keep this in mind for... like three books from now.

quote:

They circled slowly, hands weaving in deceptively gentle, graceful patterns. Both were black belt in coup de vitesse, the martial art developed to combine Oriental and Western forms on Nouveau Dijon eight centuries before, and a hush enveloped the gym as other exercisers turned to watch them.

Honor felt her audience, but only distantly as her senses focused on Babcock with crystal, cat-like concentration. Coup de vitesse was a primarily offensive "hard" style, a combination of cool self-control and go-for-broke ferocity designed to take advantage of "Westerners'" larger size and longer reach. It wasn't too proud to borrow from any technique�from savate to t'ai chi�but it was less concerned with form and more with concentrated violence. It made far less effort to use an opponent's strength against her than most Oriental forms did and laid proportionately more emphasis on the attack, even at the occasional expense of centering and defense.

Beyond Weber just spouting gibberish for the most part, this is to establish that Honor has a special Protagonist Martial Art for later in the book. This happens a surprising amount of times, where early in a book she'll have a scene introducing a new previously unmentioned skill that she has, and then surprise! It's important in the climax. Chekhov's Gun and all that, but it gets kind of ridiculous with how much it happens.

They fight and fight and the scene cuts to her in the locker room talking to Admiral Courvosier. They talk about how Honor is frustrated about the bigotry she has to deal with.

quote:

"I'm sorry, Sir. I know how important it is that we all hang onto our tempers�Lord knows I've laid it all out for everyone else often enough!�but I hadn't counted on how infuriated I'd be. They're so�so�"

"Pigheaded?" Courvosier suggested. "Bigoted?"

"Both," Honor sighed. "Sir, all I have to do is walk into a room, and they clam up like they've been freeze-dried!"

"Would you say that's quite fair where Admiral Yanakov is concerned?" her old mentor asked gently, and Honor shrugged irritably.

"No, probably not," she admitted, "but he's almost worse than the others. They look at me like some unsavory microbe, but he tries so hard to act naturally that it only makes his discomfort even more evident. And the fact that not even the example of their commander in chief can get through to the others makes me so mad I could strangle them all!"

Her shoulders slumped, and she sighed again, more heavily.

"I think maybe you had a point about the Admiralty's choice of senior officers for this operation, Sir. The fact that I'm a woman seems to get right up their noses and choke them."

"Maybe." Courvosier leaned back and folded his arms. "But whether it does or not, you're a Queen's officer. They're going to have to face senior female officers sometime; it's part of our mission description to teach them that, and they might as well get used to it now and spare us all grief later. That was the FO's opinion, and though I might have gone about things a bit differently, overall I have to agree with their assessment."

"I don't think I do," Honor said slowly. She played with Nimitz's ears and frowned down at her hands. "It might have been better to spare them the shock until after the treaty was a fait accompli, Sir."

"Bushwah!" Courvosier snorted. "You mean it might have been better if Ambassador Langtry had let us go ahead and warn them you were a woman!"

"Would it?" Honor shook her head. "I'm not so sure, Sir. I think maybe it was a no-win situation�and the fact is that the Admiralty was wrong to pick me. To hear Haven tell it, I'm the most bloodthirsty maniac since Vlad the Impaler. I can't imagine anyone we could have sent who would've been more vulnerable to that kind of attack after Basilisk."

She stared down at her hands, caressing Nimitz's fluffy fur, and Courvosier gazed at the crown of her head in silence. Then he shrugged.

"Actually, Basilisk is precisely why the Admiralty chose you, Honor." She looked up in surprise, and he nodded. "You know I had my own reservations, but Their Lordships believed�and the FO agreed�that Grayson would see what happened there as a warning of what could happen here. And just as they tapped me because I've got a reputation for strategy, they picked you because you've got one for tactics and guts . . . and because you're a woman. You were meant to be a living, breathing symbol of just how ruthless Haven can be, on the one hand, and how good our female officers can be, on the other."

I'm not sure I get how Honor is a living, breathing symbol of how ruthless Haven can be, to be honest. It wasn't like they ambushed her and charged her. They fled and she followed and took damage doing so. Also Honor's victory was pretty much the epitome of luck because if the enemy wasn't a complete idiot, they would have easily won and escaped.

quote:

"Well," Honor squirmed at the thought that she might have a "reputation" outside her own service, "I think they made the wrong call, Sir. Or, rather, Haven's turned it around on them. I'm a liability to you. These people can't get past who I am to think logically about what I am."

"I believe that will change," Courvosier said quietly. "It may take time, but no one gave me a time limit when we shipped out."

"I know they didn't." Honor rolled Nimitz onto his back to stroke his belly fur, then sat straight, planted both feet on the floor, and met the admiral's eyes levelly. "Nonetheless, I think I should remove myself from the equation, Sir. At least until you get the ball rolling in the right direction."

"You do?" Courvosier arched his eyebrows, and she nodded.

"I do. In fact, I sort of thought that might be wiser from the moment Yanakov and his people came on board Fearless to greet you. That's why I didn't go ahead and send Alice and Alistair straight on to Casca as I'd originally planned."

"I thought that might be the case." The admiral considered her soberly. "You're thinking about taking the other merchies to Casca yourself?" She nodded. "I'm not sure that's a good idea, Honor. The Graysons may see it as running out, as proof a 'mere woman' can't take the heat."

"Maybe. But I don't see how it could create any more negative reactions than my presence seems to be generating. If I take Apollo to Casca with me, it'll leave Jason Alvarez as SO. He doesn't seem to be having any problems with his opposite numbers�except for the ones who think he must be some kind of sissy for taking orders from a woman. Maybe by the time I come back, you'll have made enough progress with these people that my mere presence won't queer the deal for you."

"I don't know. . . ." Courvosier plucked at his lower lip. "If you take Fearless and Apollo out of here, our 'show of force' will get a lot weaker. Have you considered that?"

"Yes, Sir, but they've already seen both ships, and they'll know we're coming back. That should be sufficient, I'd think. And I'm not the only woman stuck in their craws right now. Alice is my second in command-two women, both senior to any of our male officers." She shook her head. "Better to get both of us out of the way for a while, Sir."

Courvosier was unconvinced, but she met his gaze almost pleadingly, and he saw the desperate unhappiness behind her brown eyes. He knew how deeply the Graysons' treatment hurt, not least because it was so utterly unjust. He'd watched her swallowing her anger, sitting on her temper, forcing herself to be pleasant to people who regarded her�at best�as some sort of freak. And, he knew, she was truly convinced her mere presence was undermining his own position. She might even be right, but what mattered most was that she believed it, and the thought of being responsible, however innocently, for the loss of a treaty her kingdom needed so badly, was tearing her up inside. She was angry, resentful, and even closer to despair than he'd realized, and he closed his eyes, weighing her proposal as carefully as he could.

He still thought it was the wrong move. He was a naval officer, not a trained diplomat, yet he knew how preconceptions shaped perceptions, and what she saw as a reasonable tactical withdrawal might be seen as something entirely different by the Graysons. There were too many implications, too many possibilities for misinterpretation, for him to know who was right.

But then he looked at her again, and he suddenly realized rightness or wrongness didn't matter to him just now. It could be argued either way, yet she thought she was right, and if she stayed and the treaty negotiations failed, she would always blame herself, rightly or wrongly, for that failure.

"Still planning to take Troubadour with you?" he asked at last.

"I don't know. . . ." Honor rubbed her nose. "I was thinking I should at least leave both tin-cans to show the flag if I pull the cruisers out, Sir."

"I don't think a single destroyer would make much difference in that regard. And you were right originally; you are going to need someone to do your scouting if the reports of pirate activity are accurate."

"I could use Apollo for that�" Honor began, but he shook his head.

"You could, but it might be just a bit too pointed to pull both ships with female skippers and leave both ships with men in command, don't you think?"

Honor cocked her head, considering his question, then nodded.

"You may be right." She drew a deep breath, her hands motionless on Nimitz's fur as she met his eyes again. "Do I have your permission, then, Sir?"

"All right, Honor," he sighed, and smiled sadly at her. "Go ahead. Get out of here�but I don't want you dilly-dallying around to delay your return, young lady! You be back in eleven days and not one minute longer. If I can't sort these bigoted barbarians out in that much time, the hell with them!"

"Yes, Sir!" Honor smiled at him, her relief evident, then looked back down at Nimitz. "And . . . thank you, Sir," she said very, very softly.

This is actually a showing of one of Honor's biggest flaws, one that the books tries to downplay a lot. And it's a pretty simple flaw: She is in fact a coward and a terrible leader. Whenever things get tough like this, she flees. In the first book, she refused to build a rapport with her crew and let the bad feelings not only linger but also intensify until she was forced to do the hallmark of bad leaders everywhere: The beatings will continue until morale improves. Of course, because the book is about her being a GOOD captain, this works instead of just burying it deeper and making it fester.

Here after first contact with the Graysons, Honor basically decides to gently caress off elsewhere and leave the Admiral alone with some small-rear end ships. And worse, the Admiral gives in and agrees. He knows it's the wrong move but he decided to give in to her stupid bad leadership because, well, he's not a particularly good leader either.

quote:

"Take a look at this, Sir."

Commander Theisman laid his memo board in his lap and turned his command chair to face his executive officer, and a mobile eyebrow arched as he saw the impeller drive sources glowing in the main tactical display.

"Fascinating, Allen." He climbed out of his chair and crossed to stand beside his executive officer. "Have we got a firm ID on who's who?"

"Not absolutely, but we've been tracking them for about three hours, and they just passed turnover for the belt. That far out from Grayson, and on that heading with that acceleration, Tracking's pretty confident they aren't headed anywhere in this system, so they must be the convoy. And if they are, these�" five light codes glowed green "�are almost certainly the freighters, which means these�" three more dots glowed crimson in a triangle about the first five "�are the escorts. And if there're three of them, they're probably the cruisers and one of the tin-cans."

Wait, hold on.

quote:

they're probably the cruisers and one of the tin-cans."

Freeze... enhance.

quote:

"I don't know. . . ." Honor rubbed her nose. "I was thinking I should at least leave both tin-cans to show the flag if I pull the cruisers out, Sir."

WEBERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!! Why are these two completely different cultures using the exact same slang? No! Bad writer! Bad!

quote:

"Um." Theisman rubbed his chin. "All you've got is drive sources, not any indication of mass. That could be both of the cans and the light cruiser," he pointed out in his best devil's advocate's voice. "Harrington could be holding her own ship on station and sending the others off."

"I don't think that's very likely, Sir. You know how terrible the pirates have been out this way." Their eyes met with a shared flicker of amusement, but Theisman shook his head.

"The Manticorans are good at commerce protection, Al. One of their light cruisers, especially with a couple of destroyers to back her, would make mincemeat out of any of the 'outlaw raiders' out here."

Wait, why are space pirates around? Isn't this basically right between both Haven and Manticore, and hell right in between both of their warpaths where they are gearing up to fight each other? Why the hell are there pirates hanging out? Hell, pirates in the Honorverse never really made much sense anyways, all things considered. Warlords would make a lot more sense, since planets are a lot easier to catch and then you can plunder the merchants on the way to you anyways if you want.

quote:

"I still think this one�" one of the crimson lights flashed "�is Fearless, Sir. They're too far away for decent mass readings, but the impeller signature looks heavier than either of the other warships. I think she's got one tin-can out front and the cruisers closed up to cover the merchies' flanks." The exec paused, tugging at the lobe of one ear. "We could move in closer, take a little peek at the planetary orbital traffic to see who's left, Sir," he suggested slowly.

"Forget that poo poo right now, Al," his skipper said sternly. "We look, we listen, and we don't get any closer to Grayson. Their sensors are crap, but they could get lucky. And there's still at least one Manticoran around."

The exec nodded unhappily. One thing the People's Navy had learned since Basilisk was that Manticore's electronics were better than theirs. How much better was a topic of lively wardroom debate, but given that Captain Honor Harrington's eighty-five-thousand-ton light cruiser had taken out a seven-point-five-million-ton Q-ship, prudence suggested that Haven err on the side of pessimism. At least that way any surprises would be pleasant ones.

I'm not sure how this is proof that Manticore's electronics are better than Haven's. Like, the entire reason why they lost is they got cocky and dumb and decided to get into point-blank range to finish off a fae that they had no reason to.

quote:

"So what do we do, Sir?" he asked finally.

"An excellent question," Theisman murmured. "Well, we know some of them are out of the way. And if they're going on to Casca, they can't be back here for ten or twelve days." He tapped on his teeth for a moment. "That gives us a window, assuming these turkeys know what to do with it. Wake up Engineering, Al."

"Yes, Sir. Will we be heading for Endicott or Blackbird, Sir?"

"Endicott. We need to tell Captain Yu�and Sword Simonds, of course�about this. A Masadan courier would take too long getting home, so I think we'll just take this news ourselves."

"Yes, Sir."

Theisman returned to his command chair and leaned back, watching the outgoing impeller traces crawl across the display under two hundred gravities of acceleration. Readiness reports flowed in, and he acknowledged them, but there was no rush, and he wanted to be certain one of those crimson dots wasn't going to turn around and head back to Grayson. He waited almost three more hours, until the light codes' velocity had reached 44,000 KPS, and they crossed the hyper limit and vanished from his gravitic sensors.

"All right, Al. Take us out of here," he said then, and the seventy-five-thousand-ton Masadan destroyer Principality, whose wardroom crest still proclaimed her to be the PNS Breslau, crept carefully away from the asteroid in whose lee she had lain hidden.

Passive sensors probed before her like sensitive cat's whiskers while Theisman made himself sit relaxed in his command chair, projecting an air of calm, and the truth was that Principality herself was safe enough. There wasn't a ship in the Grayson Navy capable of catching or engaging her, and despite the belt's bustling mining activity, the extraction ships tended to cluster in the areas where the asteroids themselves clustered. Principality avoided those spots like the plague and crept along under a fraction of her maximum power, for if the locals' sensor nets were crude and short-ranged, there was at least one modern warship in Grayson orbit, and Theisman had no intention of being spotted by her. Detection could be catastrophic to Haven's plans . . . not to mention the more immediate problem that Captain Yu would no doubt string his testicles on a necklace if he let that happen.

It took long, wearing hours, but at last his ship was far enough from Grayson to increase power and curve away from the asteroid belt. Principality's gravitics would detect any civilian vessel far out of radar range and long before she was seen herself, with plenty of time to kill her drive, and her velocity climbed steeply as she headed out-system. She needed to be at least thirty light-minutes from the planet before she translated into hyper, far enough for her hyper footprint to be undetectable, and Theisman relaxed with a quiet sigh as he realized he'd gotten cleanly away once more.

Now it only remained to be seen what Captain Yu�and Sword Simonds, of course�would do with his data.

And that's the chapter. It's not a terrible one by Weber's standards, though it still has his favored "One side does something, cut to other side reacting to the other side doing something".

Also this entire bit is pretty good proof that you can easily just sneak into a star system and hang out. Haven's just been loving around for a while, and you can just go really far out and hyper out, or hyper in really far out and sneak in.

# ? Apr 21, 2020 04:00

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Here's a second chapter, since I'm so nice and making up for not doing any earlier. Also it's just one long infodump about why THESE sexists are good, unlike THOSE sexists!

HONOR OF THE QUEEN Chapter Eight!

quote:

"Thank you for coming, Admiral Courvosier."

High Admiral Yanakov stood to greet his guest, and Courvosier's eyebrows twitched as he saw the two women at the table, for the richness of their clothing and jewelry proclaimed that they were two of Yanakov's wives. It was almost unheard of for a Grayson wife to appear at even a private dinner unless the guests were among her husband's closest friends, and Yanakov knew Courvosier knew that . . . which made their presence a message.

"Thank you for inviting me," Courvosier replied, ignoring, as etiquette demanded, the women's presence, for no one had introduced them. But then-

"Allow me to present my wives," Yanakov continued. "Rachel, my first wife." The woman to his right smiled, meeting Courvosier's eyes with a frankness which surprised the Manticoran. "Rachel, Admiral Raoul Courvosier."

"Welcome to our home, Admiral." Rachel's voice was like her smile, soft but self-assured, and she extended a hand. Courvosier hadn't been briefed on how one greeted a high-ranking Grayson wife, but he hadn't spent a lifetime in the service of his Queen for nothing. He bowed over the offered hand and brushed it with his lips.

"Thank you, Madam Yanakov. I'm honored to be here."

Her eyes widened as he kissed her hand, but she neither pulled away nor showed any sign of discomfort. Indeed, she smiled again as he released her, and then laid her hand on the other woman's shoulder.

"May I present Anna, Bernard's third wife." Anna looked up with a smile of her own and held out her hand to be kissed in turn. "My sister Esther asked me to extend her regrets, Admiral," Rachel continued, and Courvosier almost blinked before he remembered that all wives of a Grayson household referred to one another as sisters. "She's come down with a bug, and Dr. Howard ordered her into bed." Rachel's gracious smile turned into something suspiciously like a grin this time. "I assure you, but for that, she would have been here. Like all of us, she's been most eager to meet you."

Courvosier wondered if it would be proper to express a desire to meet Esther some other time. It seemed harmless enough, but Grayson men were jealous of their wives. Better to settle for something with less faux pas potential.

"Please tell her I'm very sorry her illness kept her away."

"I will," Rachel replied, and waved gracefully at the fourth chair.

She rang a small bell as Courvosier sat, and silent, efficient serving women�girls, really, he thought, reminding himself that these people didn't have access to prolong�bustled in with trays of food.

"Please don't be afraid to eat freely, Admiral," Yanakov said as a plate was set before his guest. "All these foods are from the orbital farms. Their metal levels are as low as anything grown on Manticore or Sphinx."

Courvosier nodded, but he knew better than to dig straight in. He waited until the servants had withdrawn, then bowed his head respectfully as Yanakov recited a brief blessing over the food.

Grayson cuisine reminded Courvosier of a cross between Old Earth Oriental and something he might have encountered in New Toscana on Manticore, and this meal was excellent. Yanakov's chef would have rated a full five stars even at Cosmo's, and the table conversation was nothing like what he'd imagined it would be. Yanakov and his officers-all Graysons, in fact�had been so stiff and unnatural�or half-openly contemptuous�in the presence of his own female officers that he'd developed a mental picture of a dour, humorless home life in which women were rarely seen and never heard, but Rachel and Anna Yanakov were lively and eloquent. Their affection for their husband was unmistakable, and Yanakov himself was a totally different man, out from behind the barriers of formality at last, comfortable and confident in his own setting. Courvosier had no doubt the evening was intended, in part at least, to show him the more human side of Grayson, yet he felt himself relaxing in the genuine aura of welcome.

So the long and short of this is that Yanakov is a richy rich rich rich rich rich rich and also a really cool guy, but I Weberishly repeat myself. And it turns out that horrible sexists whose entire life is denying rights to women are actually really nice human beings.

quote:

Soft music played while they ate. It wasn't the sort of music Courvosier was used to�Grayson's classical music was based on something called "Country and Western"�but it was curiously lively, despite an undertone of sadness. The dining room was large, even by Manticoran planetary standards, with a high, arched ceiling and rich, tapestry-like wall hangings and old-style oil paintings. Religious themes predominated, but not exclusively, and the landscapes among them had a haunting, bittersweet beauty. There was a sense of the lost about them, like windows into Elfland, as if the loveliness they showed could never be wholly home to the humans who lived upon this world and yet could never be anything but home, either.

And between two of those yearning landscapes was a huge bay window . . . double-paned and sealed hermetically into its frame, with an air filtration intake under it.

Courvosier shivered somewhere deep inside. The scenery through that window was breathtaking, a sweep of rugged, snow-capped mountains, their shoulders clothed in lush, rich greenery that almost begged him to kick off his boots and run barefoot through the blue-green grass to meet them. Yet the window was sealed forever against it, and the Embassy-issue filtration mask hung in its discreet case at his hip. He wouldn't need it, the ambassador had told him, as long as he limited his stay dirt-side . . . unless the atmospheric dust count rose. And his host's family had lived here for nine centuries, in an environment which, in many ways, was far more dangerous than any space habitat.

He made himself turn from the window and sip his wine, and when he looked up again, Yanakov's eyes were dark and thoughtful as they met his.

The meal ended, Rachel and Anna withdrew with graceful farewells, and another servant�this one a man�poured imported brandy into delicate snifters.

"I trust you enjoyed your supper, Admiral?" Yanakov said, passing his brandy back and forth under his nose.

"It was exquisite, Admiral Yanakov, as was the company." Courvosier smiled. "As, I am sure, the company was intended to be," he added gently.

"Touch�," Yanakov murmured with an answering smile, then set his snifter aside with a sigh. "In fact, Admiral, I invited you here by way of something of an apology," he admitted. "We've treated you poorly, especially your female officers." He got the word "female" out with only the barest hesitation, Courvosier noted. "I wanted you to see that we're not entirely barbarians. And that we don't keep our wives locked in cages."

We're not ENTIRELY barbarians! We let our wives out of their gilded cages when it's time to show them off. Look how many jewels they have! They're just fine in their harems! I might be a little unfair but like, this is our real introduction to Grayson culture and it's filtered through a hyper rich dude showing off his wives to another hyper rich dude. It's gauche as gently caress.

quote:

Courvosier's lips twitched at the other's dry tone, but he sampled his own brandy before he replied, and his voice was level when he did.

"I appreciate that, Admiral Yanakov. But in all frankness, I'm not the one to whom you owe an apology."

Yanakov blushed, but he also nodded.

"I realize that, yet you must understand that we're still feeling our way into the proper modes. Under Grayson custom, it would be the height of impropriety for me to invite any woman into my home without her protector." His blush deepened at Courvosier's quirked eyebrow. "Of course, I realize your women don't have 'protectors' in the sense that our own do. On the other hand, I have to be conscious of how my own people�my subordinates and the Chamber delegates�would react if I violated custom so radically. Not just how they might react to me, but how they might regard your own people for accepting the invitation. And so I invited you, who my people see in some ways as the protector of all your female personnel."

"I see." Courvosier sipped more brandy. "I see, indeed, and I truly appreciate the gesture. I'll also be delighted to convey your apology, discreetly, of course, to my officers."

"Thank you." Yanakov's relief and gratitude were obvious. "There are people on this planet who oppose any thought of an alliance with Manticore. Some fear outside contamination, others fear an alliance will attract Haven's hostility, not guard us against it. Protector Benjamin and I are not among them. We're too well aware of what an alliance could mean to us, and not just militarily. Yet it seems whatever we've done since your arrival has been wrong. It's driven wedges between us, and Ambassador Masterman has been quick to hammer those wedges deep. I regret that deeply, Admiral Courvosier, and so does Protector Benjamin. In fact, he specifically charged me to express his regrets, both personal and as Grayson's head of state, to you."

"I see," Courvosier repeated much more softly, and a tingle went through him. This was the frankest avowal of interest yet, an opening he knew was meant to be taken, but it left a sour, angry taste in his mouth, as well. It was his duty to pursue the treaty, and he wanted to. He liked most of the Graysons he'd met�not all, certainly, but most�despite their reserved natures and prickly social codes. Yet grateful as he was for the overture, he couldn't forget that Honor had been out of the way less than one day when it was issued.

"Admiral Yanakov," he said finally, "please tell Protector Benjamin I deeply appreciate his message and, on behalf of my Queen, look forward to securing the alliance we all hope for. But I must also tell you, Sir, that your subordinates' treatment of Captain Harrington has been inexcusable in Manticore's eyes."

Yanakov's flush returned, darker than ever, yet he sat motionless, clearly inviting his guest to continue, and Courvosier leaned towards him across the table.

"I am in no sense Captain Harrington's 'protector,' Admiral. She doesn't need one, and, frankly she'd be insulted at the suggestion that she did. She is, in fact, one of the most dedicated and courageous officers it has ever been my pleasure to know, and her rank�at what is a very young age for a person from our Kingdom�is an indication of how highly she's thought of by her service. But while she needs no one's protection, she's also my friend. My very dear friend, a student I regard very much as the daughter I never had, and the way in which she's been treated is an insult to our entire Navy. She hasn't responded to it only because of her professionalism and discipline, but I tell you now, Sir, that unless your people�at the very least your military personnel�can treat her as the Queen's officer she is, not some sort of prize exhibit in a freak show, the chances of genuine cooperation between Grayson and Manticore are very, very poor. Captain Harrington happens to be one of the best we have, but she isn't our only female officer."

"I know." Yanakov's reply was almost a whisper, and he held his brandy snifter tightly. "I realized that even before you arrived, and I thought we were ready to deal with it. I thought I was ready. But we weren't, and Captain Harrington's departure shames me deeply. I realize our behavior was responsible for it, whatever the official story may be. That's what . . . galvanized me into inviting you tonight."

He inhaled deeply and met Courvosier's eyes.

"I won't try to refute anything you've just said, Admiral. I accept it, and I give you my personal word that I'll work to resolve it to the very best of my ability. But I also have to tell you it won't be easy."

"I know it won't."

"Yes, but you may not fully understand why." Yanakov gestured out the window at the darkening mountains. The setting sun dyed the snowy peaks the color of blood, and the blue-green trees were black.

"This world isn't kind to its women," he said quietly. "When we arrived here, there were four women for every adult male, because the Church of Humanity has always practiced polygyny . . . and it was as well we did."

He paused and sipped at his brandy, then sighed.

"We've had almost a thousand years to adapt to our environment, and my tolerance for heavy metals like arsenic and cadmium is far higher than your own, but look at us. We're small and wiry, with bad teeth, fragile bones, and a life expectancy of barely seventy years. We monitor the toxicity of our farmland daily, we distill every drop of water we drink, and still we suffer massive levels of neural damage, mental retardation, and birth defects. Even the air we breathe is our enemy; our third most common cause of death is lung cancer-lung cancer, seventeen centuries after Lao Than perfected his vaccine! And we face all of that, Admiral, all those health hazards and consequences, despite nine hundred years�almost a millennium�of adaptation. Can you truly imagine what it was like for the first generation? Or the second?"

He shook his head sadly, staring down into his brandy.

"Our first generation averaged one live birth in three. Of the babies born living, half were too badly damaged to survive infancy, and our survival was so precarious there was no possible way to divert resources to keep them alive. So we practiced euthanasia, instead, and 'sent them home to God.' "

He looked up, his face wrung with pain.

"That haunts us still, and it hasn't been that many generations since the custom of euthanizing defectives, even those with minor, correctable flaws, stopped. I can show you the cemeteries, the rows and rows of children's names, the plaques with no names at all, only dates, but there are no graves. Even today there are none. The traditions of our founding die too hard for that, and the first generations had too desperate a need for soil which would support terrestrial food crops." He smiled, and some of the pain eased. "Our customs are different from yours, of course, but today our dead give life to gardens of remembrance, not potatoes and beans and corn. Someday I'll show you the Yanakov Garden. It's a very . . . peaceful place.

"But it wasn't that way for our founders, and the emotional cost to women who lost baby after baby, who saw child after child sicken and die, yet had no choice but to bear and bear and bear, even at the cost of their own lives, if the colony was to survive�" He shook his head again.

"It might have been different if we hadn't been such a patriarchal society, but our religion told us men were to care for and guide women, that women were weaker and less able to endure, and we couldn't protect them. We couldn't protect ourselves, but the price they paid was so much more terrible than ours, and it was we who had brought them here."

The Grayson leaned back and waved a hand vaguely before him. No lights had been turned on, and Courvosier heard the pain in his voice through the gathering dimness.

"We were religious zealots, Admiral Courvosier, or we wouldn't have been here. Some of us still are, though I suspect the fire has dimmed�or mellowed, perhaps�in most of us. But we were certainly zealots then, and some of the Founding Fathers blamed their women for what was happening, because, I think, it was so much easier to do that than to bleed for them. And, of course, there was their own pain when their sons and daughters died. It wasn't a pain they could admit, or they would simply have given in and died themselves, so they locked it deep inside, and it turned into anger�anger they couldn't direct at God, which left only one other place it could go."

"At their wives," Courvosier murmured.

"Exactly," Yanakov sighed. "Understand me, Admiral. The Founding Fathers weren't monsters, nor am I trying to excuse my people for being what they are. We're no less the product of our past than your own people are. This is the only culture, the only society, we've ever known, and we seldom question it. I pride myself on my knowledge of history, yet truth to tell, I never thought this deeply about it until I was forced up against the differences between us and you, and I suspect few Graysons ever really delve deep enough to understand how and why we became what we are. Is it different for Manticorans?"

"No. No, it's not."

Gosh, we're all the same. An egalitarian society (except when the author(s) is feeling sexist), and a hidebound one that demands that women have no rights. Also starting the rather long info-dump on the Grayson backstory.

quote:

"I thought not. But those early days were terrible ones for us. Even before Reverend Grayson's death, women were already becoming not wives but chattels. The mortality rate was high among men, too, and there'd been fewer of them to begin with, and biology played another trick on us. Our female births outnumber male by three to one; if we were to sustain a viable population, every potential father had to begin begetting children as soon as possible and spread his genes as widely as he could before Grayson killed him, so our households grew. And as they grew, family became everything and the patriarch's authority became absolute. It was a survival trait which tied in only too well with our religious beliefs. After a century, women weren't even people�not really. They were property. Bearers of children. The promise of a man's physical continuation in a world which offered him a life expectancy of less than forty years of backbreaking toil, and our efforts to create a godly society institutionalized that."

Yanakov fell silent again, and Courvosier studied his profile against the fading, bloody sunset. This was a side of Grayson he'd never even imagined, and he was ashamed. He'd condemned their parochialism and congratulated himself on his cosmopolitan tolerance, yet his view of them had been as two-dimensional as their view of him. He didn't need anyone to tell him Bernard Yanakov was an extraordinary representative of his society, that all too many Grayson men would never dream of questioning their God-given ascendancy over the mere females about them. But Yanakov was just as real as those others, and Courvosier suspected it was Yanakov who spoke for Grayson's soul.

GET hosed WEBER. Like, this is why I hate this book so much. "Wow, I am so ashamed because I condemned these awful sexist assholes for being awful sexists, and yet this man is nice to me, a man. It really makes you think who is the real sexist."

quote:

God knew there were enough Manticorans not worth the pressure to blow them out the lock, but they weren't the real Manticore. People like Honor Harrington were the real Manticore. People who made the Kingdom better than it dreamed it could be, made it live up to its ideals whether it wanted to or not, because they believed in those ideals and made others believe with them. And perhaps, he thought, people like Bernard Yanakov were the real Grayson.

No True Scotsman, the paragraph.

quote:

Yanakov straightened finally, then waved a hand over a rheostat. Lights came up, driving back the darkness, and he turned to face his guest.

"After the first three centuries, things had changed. We'd lost an enormous amount of our technology, of course. Reverend Grayson and his First Elders had planned for that to happen�that was the entire point of making the journey�and they'd deliberately left behind the teachers and text books, the essential machinery that might have supported the physical sciences. We were fortunate the Church hadn't regarded the life sciences with the same distrust, but even there we were desperately short of the specialists we needed. Unlike Manticore, no one even knew where we were, or cared, and because they didn't, no Warshawski sail ship called here until barely two hundred years ago. Our colony ship left Old Earth five hundred years before Manticore's founders, so our starting point was five centuries cruder than yours, and no one came to teach us the new technologies that might have saved us. The fact that we survived at all is the clearest possible evidence that there truly is a God, Admiral Courvosier, but we'd been smashed down to bedrock. We had only bits and pieces, and when we began to build upon them we found ourselves face to face with the worst danger of all: schism."

"The Faithful and the Moderates," Courvosier said quietly.

"Precisely. The Faithful, who clung to the original doctrines of the Church and regarded technology as anathema." Yanakov laughed mirthlessly. "It's hard for me to understand how anyone could have felt that way�I don't imagine it's even possible for an outsider! I grew to manhood depending on technology, crude though it may be compared to your own, for my very survival. How in the name of God could people so much closer to extinction believe He expected them to survive without it?

"But they did�at first, at least. The Moderates, on the other hand, believed our situation here had been our own Faith's Deluge, a disaster to make God's true Will clear at last. What He wanted from us was the development of a way of life in which technology was used as He had intended�not as Man's master, but as his servant.

"Even the Faithful accepted that at last, but the hostilities already existed, and the factions grew even further apart. Not over technology, now, but over what constituted godliness, and the Faithful went beyond conservatism. They became reactionary radicals, chopping and pruning at Church doctrine to suit their own prejudices. You think the way we treat our women is backward . . . have you ever heard of the Doctrine of the Second Fall?"

Courvosier shook his head, and Yanakov sighed.

"It came out of the Faithful's search for God's Will, Admiral. You know they regard the entire New Testament as heretical because the rise of technology on Old Earth 'proves' Christ couldn't have been the true Messiah?"

"Did you know that they are the REAL heretics?!" You know it would have been interesting if this was all self-serving claptrap and Masada wasn't the Chaotic Evil zealots they get painted as. But nope, they're exactly evil as depicted, and Graysons are saints.

Also this is part of why I feel like the Masadans are suppose to represent Muslims or somehow Jews. Because they don't believe in Jesus and also are suppose to be wife-beating women-oppressors (unlike the Graysons who would never do such a thing), and live on a very on-the-nose named planet.

quote:

This time Courvosier nodded, and Yanakov's face was grim.

"Well, they went even further than that. According to their theology, the first Fall, that from Eden on Old Earth, had been the fault of Eve's sin, and we'd created a society here that made women property. The Moderates might interpret what had happened to us as our Deluge, might have believed�as we of Grayson believe today�that it was part of God's Test, but the Faithful believe God never intended us to face Grayson's environment. That He would have transformed it into a New Eden, had we not sinned after our arrival. And as the first sin was Eve's, so this sin, the cause of our Second Fall, was committed by Eve's daughters. It justified the way they treated their own wives and daughters, and they demanded that all of us accept that, just as they demanded we accept their dietary laws and stonings.

"The Moderates refused, of course, and the hatred between the factions grew worse and worse until, as you know, it ended in open civil war.

"We, of course, didn't actually think women deserved RIGHTS. We're just saintly sexists."

quote:

"That war was terrible, Admiral Courvosier. The Faithful were the minority, and their hardcore zealots were only a small percentage of their total number, but those zealots were completely ruthless. They knew God was on their side. Anything they did was done in His name, and anyone who opposed them must therefore be vile and evil, with no right to live. We were still far from having rebuilt an advanced tech base, but we could produce guns and tanks and napalm�and, of course, the Faithful built their doomsday weapon as a last resort. We didn't even know of its existence until Barbara Bancroft, the wife of their most fanatical leader, decided the Moderates had to know. She escaped to us�turned against all the Faithful believed�to warn us, but her courage had its cost in fresh tragedy as well."

Yanakov stared down into his brandy glass.

"Barbara Bancroft is�well, I suppose you could call her our 'token heroine.' Our planet owes her its very life. She's our Joan of Arc, our Lady of the Lake, with all the virtues we treasure in our women: love, caring, the willingness to risk her life to save her children's. But she's also an ideal, a figure out of myth whose courage and toughness are too much to expect from 'ordinary' women. We've forced her into the frame of our own prejudices, yet to the Faithful, the woman we call The Mother of Grayson is the very symbol of the Second Fall, the proof of all women's inherent corruption. They may have rejected the New Testament, but they retain their version of the Antichrist, and they call her The Harlot of Satan.

"But because of Barbara Bancroft, we were prepared when the Faithful threatened to destroy us all. We knew the only possible answer was to cast out the madmen, and that, Admiral�that was when the universe played its cruelest trick of all on Grayson, for there was a way we could do that."

He sighed and sank back in his chair.

"My own ancestor, Hugh Yanakov, commanded our colony ship, and he tried to hang onto at least a limited space capability, but the First Elders had smashed the cryo installations immediately after we planeted. It was their equivalent of burning their boats behind them, committing themselves and their descendants to their new home. I doubt they would have done it if they'd been more scientifically educated, but they weren't. And since the ship couldn't take us away, our desperate straits left us no choice but to cannibalize it.

"So we were here to live or die, and somehow, we'd lived. Yet by the time of the Civil War, we'd reached the point where we could once more build crude, chem-fueled sublight ships. They were far less advanced than the one which had brought us here, with no cryo capability, but they could make the round trip to Endicott in twelve or fifteen years. We'd even sent an expedition there and discovered what today is Masada.

"Masada has an axial inclination of over forty degrees, and its weather is incredibly severe compared to Grayson, but humans can eat its plants and animals. They can live without worrying about lead and mercury poisoning from simply breathing its dust. Most of our people would have given all they owned to move there, and they couldn't. We didn't have the capability to move that many people. But when the Civil War ended with a handful of fanatics threatening to blow up the entire planet, we could move them to Masada."

He laughed again, harshly and more mirthlessly even than before.

"Think about it, Admiral. We had to cast them out, and the only place to which we could banish them was infinitely better than where all the rest of us had to remain! There were barely fifty thousand of them, and under the peace settlement's terms, we equipped them as lavishly as we could and sent them off, and then the rest of us turned to making the best we could of Grayson."

"I think you've done quite well, all things considered," Courvosier said quietly.

"Oh, we have. In fact, I love my world. It does its best to kill me every single day, and someday it will succeed, but I love it. It's my home. Yet it also makes us what we are, because we did survive, and we did it without losing our faith. We still believe in God, still believe this is all part of a testing, purifying process. I suppose you think that's irrational?"

The question could have been caustic, but it was almost gentle.

"No," Courvosier said after a moment. "Not irrational. I'm not certain I could share your faith after all your people have been through, but, then, I suppose a Grayson might find my faith incomprehensible. We are what our lives�and God�have made us, Admiral Yanakov, and that's as true of Manticorans as Graysons."

"That's a very tolerant view," Yanakov said quietly. "One I'm quite confident a great many, perhaps most, of my people would find difficult to accept. For myself, I believe you're correct, yet it's still our Faith which dictates how we regard our own women. Oh, we've changed over the centuries�our ancestors didn't call themselves 'Moderates' for nothing!�but we remain what we are. Women are no longer property, and we've evolved elaborate codes of behavior to protect and cherish them, partly, I suspect, in reaction against the Faithful. I know many men abuse their privileges�and their wives and daughters�but the man who publicly insults a Grayson woman will probably be lynched on the spot, if he's lucky, and they're infinitely better treated than Masadan women. Yet they're still legally and religiously inferior. Despite The Mother of Grayson, we tell ourselves it's because they're weaker, because they bear too many other burdens to be forced to vote, to own property . . . to serve in the military." He met Courvosier's eyes with a slight, strained smile. "And that's why your Captain Harrington frightens us so. She terrifies us, because she's a woman and, deep down inside, most of us know Haven's lied about what happened in Basilisk. Can you imagine what a threat that is to us?"

"Not completely, no. I can see some of the implications, of course, but my culture is too different to see them all."

"Then understand this much, Admiral, please. If Captain Harrington is as outstanding an officer as you believe�as I believe�she invalidates all our concepts of womanhood. She means we're wrong, that our religion is wrong. She means we've spent nine centuries being wrong. The idea that we may have been in error isn't quite as devastating to us as you may think�after all, we've spent those same nine centuries accepting that our Founding Fathers were wrong, or at least not completely correct. I think we can admit our error, in time. Not easily, not without dealing with our current equivalent of the Faithful, but I have to believe we can do it.

"Yet if we do, what happens to Grayson? You've met two of my wives. I love all three of them dearly�I would die to protect them�but your Captain Harrington, just by existing, tells me I've made them less than they could have been. And the truth is that they are less than Captain Harrington. Less capable of her independence, her ability to accept responsibility and risk. Just as I, they're products of a civilization and Faith that tells them they're less capable in those respects. So what do I do, Admiral? Do I tell them to stop deferring to my judgment? To enter the work force? To demand their rights and put on the same uniform I wear? How do I know where my doubts over their capability stop being genuine love and concern? When my belief that they must be reeducated before they can become my equal stops being a realistic appreciation of the limitations they've been taught and becomes sophistry to bolster the status quo and protect my own rights and privileges?"

He paused again, and Courvosier frowned.

"I . . . don't know. No one can but you, I suppose. Or them."

"Exactly." Yanakov took a long swallow of brandy, then set the glass very precisely on the table. "No one can know�but Pandora's Box is open now. Just a crack, so far, yet if we sign this treaty, if we bind ourselves to a military and economic ally who treats women as the full equals of men, we'll have to learn to know. All of us, women as well as men, because the one certain thing in life is that no one can make the truth untrue simply because it hurts. Whatever happens to us where Masada or Haven is concerned, our treaty with you will destroy us, Admiral Courvosier. I don't know if even the Protector realizes that fully. Perhaps he does. He was educated off-world, so perhaps he sees this as the opening wedge to forcing us to accept your truth. No, not your truth, the truth."

He laughed again, more easily this time, and toyed with his snifter.

"I thought this conversation would be much more difficult, you know," he said.

"You mean it wasn't difficult?" Courvosier asked wryly, and Yanakov chuckled.

"Oh, it was, Admiral, indeed it was! But I expected it to be even worse." The Grayson inhaled deeply and straightened in his chair, then spoke more briskly. "At any rate, that's why we've reacted the way we have. I promised the Protector I'd try to overcome my prejudices and those of my officers and men, and I take my duty to my Protector as seriously as I'm certain you take yours to your Queen. I swear we'll make the effort, but please bear in mind that I'm better educated and far more experienced than most of my officers. Our lives are shorter than yours�perhaps your people gain wisdom while you're still young enough for it to be of use to you?"

"Not really." Courvosier surprised himself with a chuckle. "Knowledge, yes, but wisdom does seem to come a little harder, doesn't it?"

"Yes, it does. But it does come, even to stiff-necked, conservative people like mine. Be as patient with us as you can, please�and please tell Captain Harrington, when she returns, that I would be honored if she would be my guest for supper."

"With a 'protector'?" Courvosier teased gently, and Yanakov smiled.

"With or without, as she pleases. I owe her a personal apology, and I suppose the best way to teach my officers to treat her as she deserves is to learn how to do it myself."

So yeah this entire chapter is just a "Grayson good, Masada bad" and is just a chapter-long infodump.

Kchama fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Apr 21, 2020

# ? Apr 21, 2020 04:17

Gnoman: Feb 12, 2014; Come, all you fair and tender maids
Who flourish in your pri-ime
Beware, take care, keep your garden fair
Let Gnoman steal your thy-y-me
Le-et Gnoman steal your thyme

Kchama posted:

This is actually a showing of one of Honor's biggest flaws, one that the books tries to downplay a lot. And it's a pretty simple flaw: She is in fact a coward and a terrible leader. Whenever things get tough like this, she flees. In the first book, she refused to build a rapport with her crew and let the bad feelings not only linger but also intensify until she was forced to do the hallmark of bad leaders everywhere: The beatings will continue until morale improves. Of course, because the book is about her being a GOOD captain, this works instead of just burying it deeper and making it fester.

Here after first contact with the Graysons, Honor basically decides to gently caress off elsewhere and leave the Admiral alone with some small-rear end ships. And worse, the Admiral gives in and agrees. He knows it's the wrong move but he decided to give in to her stupid bad leadership because, well, he's not a particularly good leader either.

This is an extremely odd take. Her reasoning might be flawed, but having the main character never make a mistake is bad writing. More importantly, here reasoning here is fairly solid - the biggest obstacle the diplomatic team is facing right now is a massive discomfort with her presence. Leaving on a perfectly legitimate expedition to give some breathing room to the negotiations makes sense. Yes, she's leaving the Admiral with only a little bit of firepower, but they are not at war. They aren't expecting to have to ward off Havenite attacks, so the only possible threat is from Masada. Masada and Grayson have the same tech level, and that level is so far behind Manticore's that even the lightest warship is in no real threat.

quote:

WEBERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!! Why are these two completely different cultures using the exact same slang? No! Bad writer! Bad!

"Tin-can" is a naval slang for destroyers dating back to the US navy in WWII. It is so common that a historian was able to title a book "Last Stand Of The Tin-Can Sailors" with the full expectation that the meaning of the title would be understood by the audience. Haven and Manticore both using it is not much more remarkable than them both using the term "destroyer".

quote:

Wait, why are space pirates around? Isn't this basically right between both Haven and Manticore, and hell right in between both of their warpaths where they are gearing up to fight each other? Why the hell are there pirates hanging out?

Even on 21st Century Earth, there's piracy in bodies of water fairly close major powers. We had a very public incident that was probably a failed act of piracy last month near Venezuela, which isn't that far from the US. Piracy in the English Channel was a problem until 1814 (albeit this was more of "the ransoms we are paying these pirates to leave us alone are really expensive" than actual ship losses for a fair bit of time before then).

quote:

I'm not sure how this is proof that Manticore's electronics are better than Haven's. Like, the entire reason why they lost is they got cocky and dumb and decided to get into point-blank range to finish off a fae that they had no reason to.

They don't know what happened, because the battle took place out of sensor range of their only in-system assets. All they know for sure is that two ships went out, one ship came back, and the ship that was destroyed had a massive firepower advantage. It is obvious that something equalized the odds, but , but they don't know what it iwas.

quote:

And that's the chapter. It's not a terrible one by Weber's standards, though it still has his favored "One side does something, cut to other side reacting to the other side doing something".

Also this entire bit is pretty good proof that you can easily just sneak into a star system and hang out. Haven's just been loving around for a while, and you can just go really far out and hyper out, or hyper in really far out and sneak in.

This is proof that one tiny ship can sneak in, which was never in doubt. There's a bit later on that might support your point better, but that was aided and abetted by treason at the highest levels of power

Kchama posted:

Gosh, we're all the same. An egalitarian society (except when the author(s) is feeling sexist), and a hidebound one that demands that women have no rights. Also starting the rather long info-dump on the Grayson backstory.

The only "all the same" bit in this entire passage is the last line, which is just a "Most people never examine why their culture is the way it is."

The rest of it is a frank admission that Grayson's attitude is sexist and wrong, but with a detailed examination of why those attitudes evolved and why they are so hard to get rid of.

quote:

GET hosed WEBER. Like, this is why I hate this book so much. "Wow, I am so ashamed because I condemned these awful sexist assholes for being awful sexists, and yet this man is nice to me, a man. It really makes you think who is the real sexist."

Courvosier is lambasting himself for treating the Graysons as paper-thin caricatures, condemning them from his ivory tower without making the slightest effort to understand them in any way. He's angry with himself for being a major bigot, because he was being a bigot.

quote:

"Did you know that they are the REAL heretics?!" You know it would have been interesting if this was all self-serving claptrap and Masada wasn't the Chaotic Evil zealots they get painted as. But nope, they're exactly evil as depicted, and Graysons are saints.

Also this is part of why I feel like the Masadans are suppose to represent Muslims or somehow Jews. Because they don't believe in Jesus and also are suppose to be wife-beating women-oppressors (unlike the Graysons who would never do such a thing), and live on a very on-the-nose named planet.

The model for the Graysons is the Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, with Austin Grayson playing the part of Brigham Young, and The Book Of The New Way being a stand in for The Book Of Mormon. The only way this could be more blindingly obvious is for Weber to scream it at you.

The Masadans are an amalgamation of the various splinter groups that refused to accept reforms in the LDS church (primarily the ban on polygamy) and formed churches of their own that claimed to be the True church in accordance with the will of Joseph Smith the prophet. About ten years after Weber wrote this book, the fact that at least some of these splinter groups did treat their women as essentially chattels was put before the entire world via the kidnapping and later escape of Elizabeth Smart (who has spent much of the time since acting as a victims advocate).

There's no real association with ether Judaism or Islam - neither was a break from another faith (Judaism is the original Abrahamic religion, while Islam rejected most Christian theology from the start while painting Christ as a prophet mistaken for the Messiah), and neither used the New Testament before discarding it.

Of greater importance, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia were at extremely low levels in the US of 1992. There was lingering animosity toward Iran, but the most well-known Muslims in America were our Mujaheddin and Kuwaiti allies. Distrust of extreme Islam wouldn't start growing until the later 90s (specifically after 1996 when the Taliban took over Afghanistan), and wasn't a massive thing until September 12, 2001.

quote:

So yeah this entire chapter is just a "Grayson good, Masada bad" and is just a chapter-long infodump.

It is pretty obvious that Weber doesn't intend to present Graysons as saintly, or deny their sexism. This is called out explicitly as part of the conversation.

quote:

"That's a very tolerant view," Yanakov said quietly. "One I'm quite confident a great many, perhaps most, of my people would find difficult to accept. For myself, I believe you're correct, yet it's still our Faith which dictates how we regard our own women. Oh, we've changed over the centuries�our ancestors didn't call themselves 'Moderates' for nothing!�but we remain what we are. Women are no longer property, and we've evolved elaborate codes of behavior to protect and cherish them, partly, I suspect, in reaction against the Faithful. I know many men abuse their privileges�and their wives and daughters�but the man who publicly insults a Grayson woman will probably be lynched on the spot, if he's lucky, and they're infinitely better treated than Masadan women. Yet they're still legally and religiously inferior. Despite The Mother of Grayson, we tell ourselves it's because they're weaker, because they bear too many other burdens to be forced to vote, to own property . . . to serve in the military." He met Courvosier's eyes with a slight, strained smile. "And that's why your Captain Harrington frightens us so. She terrifies us, because she's a woman and, deep down inside, most of us know Haven's lied about what happened in Basilisk. Can you imagine what a threat that is to us?"

"Not completely, no. I can see some of the implications, of course, but my culture is too different to see them all."

"Then understand this much, Admiral, please. If Captain Harrington is as outstanding an officer as you believe�as I believe�she invalidates all our concepts of womanhood. She means we're wrong, that our religion is wrong. She means we've spent nine centuries being wrong. The idea that we may have been in error isn't quite as devastating to us as you may think�after all, we've spent those same nine centuries accepting that our Founding Fathers were wrong, or at least not completely correct. I think we can admit our error, in time. Not easily, not without dealing with our current equivalent of the Faithful, but I have to believe we can do it.

"Yet if we do, what happens to Grayson? You've met two of my wives. I love all three of them dearly�I would die to protect them�but your Captain Harrington, just by existing, tells me I've made them less than they could have been. And the truth is that they are less than Captain Harrington. Less capable of her independence, her ability to accept responsibility and risk. Just as I, they're products of a civilization and Faith that tells them they're less capable in those respects. So what do I do, Admiral? Do I tell them to stop deferring to my judgment? To enter the work force? To demand their rights and put on the same uniform I wear? How do I know where my doubts over their capability stop being genuine love and concern? When my belief that they must be reeducated before they can become my equal stops being a realistic appreciation of the limitations they've been taught and becomes sophistry to bolster the status quo and protect my own rights and privileges?"

That said, this is one of the two places where this book effectively needs retconning. Later works in the series present Grayson sexism as being far closer to that of that in the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with women being hemmed in by social rules and "women don't work outside the home" being an ideal and polite fiction. There is some effort to chalk this up to a misunderstanding based on incomplete cultural data, but he goes too far in this book to justify that.

# ? Apr 21, 2020 05:52

akulanization: Dec 21, 2013

Gnoman posted:

There's no real association with ether Judaism or Islam - neither was a break from another faith (Judaism is the original Abrahamic religion, while Islam rejected most Christian theology from the start while painting Christ as a prophet mistaken for the Messiah), and neither used the New Testament before discarding it.

Er, no that doesn�t track. Denying the divinity of Christ is probably the first and longest lasting antisemitic accusation leveled at Jews in the Christian world. Invoking it deliberately here can�t be reconciled with a purely Mormon frame. Moreover I think you are cutting far to fine a distinction to let Weber of the hook here, it is fair to say that Islam rejects the New Testament and it is fair to say it embraces the Gospel. It is unreasonable to construct a narrow discontinuity to make Weber�s writing not uncomfortably antisemitic.

# ? Apr 21, 2020 06:50

Gnoman: Feb 12, 2014; Come, all you fair and tender maids
Who flourish in your pri-ime
Beware, take care, keep your garden fair
Let Gnoman steal your thy-y-me
Le-et Gnoman steal your thyme

akulanization posted:

Er, no that doesn�t track. Denying the divinity of Christ is probably the first and longest lasting antisemitic accusation leveled at Jews in the Christian world. Invoking it deliberately here can�t be reconciled with a purely Mormon frame. Moreover I think you are cutting far to fine a distinction to let Weber of the hook here, it is fair to say that Islam rejects the New Testament and it is fair to say it embraces the Gospel. It is unreasonable to construct a narrow discontinuity to make Weber�s writing not uncomfortably antisemitic.

It is unreasonable to construct a narrow continuity to make Weber�s writing "uncomfortably antisemitic" in the first place. The Masadans are an offshoot of a Christian offshoot. The original Christian offshoot is the followers of a Prophet from the Midwestern United States who added a Third Testament to the Bible. How blunt does the allegory have to be for it to be obviously a Mormon context? Where is the slightest shred of evidence that they are anything else?

# ? Apr 21, 2020 07:22

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Gnoman posted:

This is an extremely odd take. Her reasoning might be flawed, but having the main character never make a mistake is bad writing. More importantly, here reasoning here is fairly solid - the biggest obstacle the diplomatic team is facing right now is a massive discomfort with her presence. Leaving on a perfectly legitimate expedition to give some breathing room to the negotiations makes sense. Yes, she's leaving the Admiral with only a little bit of firepower, but they are not at war. They aren't expecting to have to ward off Havenite attacks, so the only possible threat is from Masada. Masada and Grayson have the same tech level, and that level is so far behind Manticore's that even the lightest warship is in no real threat.

You're misunderstanding me here. I'm not saying it's bad for her to have a flaw at all. I'm saying that the book does its best to downplay this as a flaw. She has a major habit of just loving off the moment things get tough like this. The Admiral was right to see this as a mistake, to be frank. He let her do it because he basically couldn't say no to her. She's suppose to be here to show the Graysons that MAnticore's female officers can do their job just like Grayson's can, and she runs off at the slightest provocation.

quote:

"Tin-can" is a naval slang for destroyers dating back to the US navy in WWII. It is so common that a historian was able to title a book "Last Stand Of The Tin-Can Sailors" with the full expectation that the meaning of the title would be understood by the audience. Haven and Manticore both using it is not much more remarkable than them both using the term "destroyer".

Even on 21st Century Earth, there's piracy in bodies of water fairly close major powers. We had a very public incident that was probably a failed act of piracy last month near Venezuela, which isn't that far from the US. Piracy in the English Channel was a problem until 1814 (albeit this was more of "the ransoms we are paying these pirates to leave us alone are really expensive" than actual ship losses for a fair bit of time before then).

It's very specific naval slang, but it doesn't really make sense for both sides to have it. Yeah also both sides having all the same naval conventions is a problem, but everyone having the same slang is bad. Hell, destroyers in the Honorverse sense bare zero resemblence to the destroyers that Weber is trying to evoke that it's baffling.

quote:

They don't know what happened, because the battle took place out of sensor range of their only in-system assets. All they know for sure is that two ships went out, one ship came back, and the ship that was destroyed had a massive firepower advantage. It is obvious that something equalized the odds, but , but they don't know what it iwas.

That's exactly why I was asking "How do you know it was an electronics advantage?"

quote:

This is proof that one tiny ship can sneak in, which was never in doubt. There's a bit later on that might support your point better, but that was aided and abetted by treason at the highest levels of power

If a ship can sneak in and out, then a ship can sneak in and out.

quote:

The only "all the same" bit in this entire passage is the last line, which is just a "Most people never examine why their culture is the way it is."

The rest of it is a frank admission that Grayson's attitude is sexist and wrong, but with a detailed examination of why those attitudes evolved and why they are so hard to get rid of.

Courvosier is lambasting himself for treating the Graysons as paper-thin caricatures, condemning them from his ivory tower without making the slightest effort to understand them in any way. He's angry with himself for being a major bigot, because he was being a bigot.

He's not wrong at all that they are sexist fucks and if he's all rending his clothes because this man is nice to him and says that MAYBE things could have once been different then he's, frankly, an idiot. This is literally just to try to puff up the Graysons as good guys, as Yanakov is THE TRUE SOUL OF GRAYSON And those guys who beat their wives and worse are just fakes.

quote:

The model for the Graysons is the Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, with Austin Grayson playing the part of Brigham Young, and The Book Of The New Way being a stand in for The Book Of Mormon. The only way this could be more blindingly obvious is for Weber to scream it at you.

The Masadans are an amalgamation of the various splinter groups that refused to accept reforms in the LDS church (primarily the ban on polygamy) and formed churches of their own that claimed to be the True church in accordance with the will of Joseph Smith the prophet. About ten years after Weber wrote this book, the fact that at least some of these splinter groups did treat their women as essentially chattels was put before the entire world via the kidnapping and later escape of Elizabeth Smart (who has spent much of the time since acting as a victims advocate).

This doesn't really track since the Graysons explicitly have polygamy and lots of it. It's pretty much the cornerstone of their life.

quote:

There's no real association with ether Judaism or Islam - neither was a break from another faith (Judaism is the original Abrahamic religion, while Islam rejected most Christian theology from the start while painting Christ as a prophet mistaken for the Messiah), and neither used the New Testament before discarding it.

Of greater importance, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia were at extremely low levels in the US of 1992. There was lingering animosity toward Iran, but the most well-known Muslims in America were our Mujaheddin and Kuwaiti allies. Distrust of extreme Islam wouldn't start growing until the later 90s (specifically after 1996 when the Taliban took over Afghanistan), and wasn't a massive thing until September 12, 2001.

No real association except for Masadans rejecting Jesus Christ, as Jews are known to do, and name themselves after Jewish rebels. The main Islam association I have is some stuff about them having to wear body-coverings which is very associated with Islam. I showed this stuff to a Jewish friend of mine and he dubbed them Bizarro Jews because while they aren't rabbatical or whatever Jews, they basically are presenting themselves as akin to Jews.

quote:

It is pretty obvious that Weber doesn't intend to present Graysons as saintly, or deny their sexism. This is called out explicitly as part of the conversation.

The real Grayson sainthood comes later. But I was just being frustrated with ACTUALLY THE TRUE GRAYSON SOUL IS GOOD, LOOK AT THIS GUY.

quote:

That said, this is one of the two places where this book effectively needs retconning. Later works in the series present Grayson sexism as being far closer to that of that in the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with women being hemmed in by social rules and "women don't work outside the home" being an ideal and polite fiction. There is some effort to chalk this up to a misunderstanding based on incomplete cultural data, but he goes too far in this book to justify that.

# ? Apr 21, 2020 07:26

Gnoman: Feb 12, 2014; Come, all you fair and tender maids
Who flourish in your pri-ime
Beware, take care, keep your garden fair
Let Gnoman steal your thy-y-me
Le-et Gnoman steal your thyme

Kchama posted:

You're misunderstanding me here. I'm not saying it's bad for her to have a flaw at all. I'm saying that the book does its best to downplay this as a flaw. She has a major habit of just loving off the moment things get tough like this. The Admiral was right to see this as a mistake, to be frank. He let her do it because he basically couldn't say no to her. She's suppose to be here to show the Graysons that MAnticore's female officers can do their job just like Grayson's can, and she runs off at the slightest provocation.

There's at least half a dozen times in this book where this action is criticized. It forms a not-so-small part in another officer distrusting her in the next book. She is making a mistake, and the book never portrays it as anything but a mistake.

quote:

Hell, destroyers in the Honorverse sense bare zero resemblence to the destroyers that Weber is trying to evoke that it's baffling.

"Tin can" was always a reference to the lack of armor that both concepts share. It still fits, and you'd be amazed at how many terms and slangs make the jump between militaries without a historical justification.

There's much less difference than you might think. The destroyer class of ships was originally developed to counter torpedo boats (hence the original "torpedo-boat-destroyer" designation), but by the time of WWII the main purpose of a destroyer was fleet scouting, additional AA fire, torpedo attack, protection against torpedo attack, anti-submarine warfare and escorting merchant convoys. Honorverse destroyers are used for fleet scouting, additional anti-missile fire, and escort of merchant convoys. There's no submarine-equivalent at this time, and nothing mounted on a destroyer is going to threaten a capital ship, but the other roles are identical.

Kchama posted:

That's exactly why I was asking "How do you know it was an electronics advantage?"

Reread the text very carefully. The passage doesn't say "we know they have an advantage because this happened". It says "We have learned they have an advantage since this happened, we aren't clear how much of advantage we have, but the fact that this happened means we have to assume that the difference is very large."

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He's not wrong at all that they are sexist fucks and if he's all rending his clothes because this man is nice to him and says that MAYBE things could have once been different then he's, frankly, an idiot. This is literally just to try to puff up the Graysons as good guys, as Yanakov is THE TRUE SOUL OF GRAYSON And those guys who beat their wives and worse are just fakes.

He dismissed the Graysons as pure barbarians without ever meeting one, based entirely on secondhand reports. Upon meeting them, he realized that he was wrong to do so - that their culture was much more complex than his simpleminded "they're barbarians" reaction could compass. Nowhere does he claim that Graysons are not sexist - he does moderate his views a bit because the reality clashes with his preassumptions, but never once denies that the reality is not adequate." The soul of Grayson" comment was clearly Weber aspiring to poetry and falling short, but note that it was in the context of Yanakov explicitly stating that his entire way of life was wrong and would have to change.

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This doesn't really track since the Graysons explicitly have polygamy and lots of it. It's pretty much the cornerstone of their life.

No real association except for Masadans rejecting Jesus Christ, as Jews are known to do, and name themselves after Jewish rebels. The main Islam association I have is some stuff about them having to wear body-coverings which is very associated with Islam. I showed this stuff to a Jewish friend of mine and he dubbed them Bizarro Jews because while they aren't rabbatical or whatever Jews, they basically are presenting themselves as akin to Jews.
The real Grayson sainthood comes later. But I was just being frustrated with ACTUALLY THE TRUE GRAYSON SOUL IS GOOD, LOOK AT THIS GUY.

The Graysons didn't abandon polygamy, but they DID reject the anti-technology teachings of their Prophet. Same song, different key.

As for "The Masadans are Jews because they reject Christ", a lot of organized religions reject Jesus. Most of them, in fact. That doesn't make them Jews. Masada does have a strong Jewish connection, but that alone isn't much of a connection.

# ? Apr 21, 2020 08:11

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Gnoman posted:

There's at least half a dozen times in this book where this action is criticized. It forms a not-so-small part in another officer distrusting her in the next book. She is making a mistake, and the book never portrays it as anything but a mistake.

The reason why it's downplayed is that despite how much of a huge mistake it is, she's never ever remembered for all the times she hosed off and hid like a baby. And this isn't even the second time she did it. She does it at least three more times in the series. She doesn't get known as a coward who flees personal responsibility the moment she's faced with adversity despite it being a major failing of her.

quote:

"Tin can" was always a reference to the lack of armor that both concepts share. It still fits, and you'd be amazed at how many terms and slangs make the jump between militaries without a historical justification.

There's much less difference than you might think. The destroyer class of ships was originally developed to counter torpedo boats (hence the original "torpedo-boat-destroyer" designation), but by the time of WWII the main purpose of a destroyer was fleet scouting, additional AA fire, torpedo attack, protection against torpedo attack, anti-submarine warfare and escorting merchant convoys. Honorverse destroyers are used for fleet scouting, additional anti-missile fire, and escort of merchant convoys. There's no submarine-equivalent at this time, and nothing mounted on a destroyer is going to threaten a capital ship, but the other roles are identical.

Or he just forced it in hard because he wanted to just reuse naval ship names. The only difference between ship classes are their size. Which is why there's so many 'over-sized X'.

quote:

Reread the text very carefully. The passage doesn't say "we know they have an advantage because this happened". It says "We have learned they have an advantage since this happened, we aren't clear how much of advantage we have, but the fact that this happened means we have to assume that the difference is very large."

No, I disagree. How it's written actually implies that the better electronics is a lesson from Basilisk, since it specifies the thing that convinced them of this was Honor's victory.

quote:

He dismissed the Graysons as pure barbarians without ever meeting one, based entirely on secondhand reports. Upon meeting them, he realized that he was wrong to do so - that their culture was much more complex than his simpleminded "they're barbarians" reaction could compass. Nowhere does he claim that Graysons are not sexist - he does moderate his views a bit because the reality clashes with his preassumptions, but never once denies that the reality is not adequate." The soul of Grayson" comment was clearly Weber aspiring to poetry and falling short, but note that it was in the context of Yanakov explicitly stating that his entire way of life was wrong and would have to change.

The Graysons didn't abandon polygamy, but they DID reject the anti-technology teachings of their Prophet. Same song, different key.

Also where the gently caress did Yanakov say that his entire way of life was wrong and would have to change? At most I saw was a "Maybe if things were different then, we wouldn't be so sexist now" which is kind of a 'duh'. The whole thing with Yanakov was as mild as ever. And the Soul Of Grayson thing was more or less "this guy who I declare the best of Grayson shall represent them, and none of the actual shithead wifebeaters who mistreat women as a matter of course matter". Like, Yanakov doesn't really say a drat thing about changing things. He just tepidly acknowledges that maybe things could be different.

And I mean, the polygamy is kind of an important thing since it's part of the basis of their whole sexism and is the one connection with Mormonism they really have.

As for "The Masadans are Jews because they reject Christ", a lot of organized religions reject Jesus. Most of them, in fact. That doesn't make them Jews. Masada does have a strong Jewish connection, but that alone isn't much of a connection.
[/quote]

Most of those that reject Jesus aren't Abrahamic faiths, though. not believing in Christ is one of the big differences between Christianity and Judaism and Islam. And that's a very big thing called out and specify. So they clothe themselves in Jewish terms and wording, and explicitly reject Christ, which is one of the big differences between Christianity and the other Abrahamic faiths... Sounds like Bizarro Jews to me.

# ? Apr 21, 2020 08:39

Gnoman: Feb 12, 2014; Come, all you fair and tender maids
Who flourish in your pri-ime
Beware, take care, keep your garden fair
Let Gnoman steal your thy-y-me
Le-et Gnoman steal your thyme

Kchama posted:

No, I disagree. How it's written actually implies that the better electronics is a lesson from Basilisk, since it specifies the thing that convinced them of this was Honor's victory.

The exact text

quote:

One thing the People's Navy had learned since Basilisk was that Manticore's electronics were better than theirs. How much better was a topic of lively wardroom debate, but given that Captain Honor Harrington's eighty-five-thousand-ton light cruiser had taken out a seven-point-five-million-ton Q-ship, prudence suggested that Haven err on the side of pessimism. At least that way any surprises would be pleasant ones.

"Since", not "From". That, to me, suggests that they've turned up more intelligence after that (probably as part of a deep dig to figure out how such a thing could happen), not "this was obviously an electronics thing".

quote:

Also where the gently caress did Yanakov say that his entire way of life was wrong and would have to change? At most I saw was a "Maybe if things were different then, we wouldn't be so sexist now" which is kind of a 'duh'. The whole thing with Yanakov was as mild as ever. And the Soul Of Grayson thing was more or less "this guy who I declare the best of Grayson shall represent them, and none of the actual shithead wifebeaters who mistreat women as a matter of course matter". Like, Yanakov doesn't really say a drat thing about changing things. He just tepidly acknowledges that maybe things could be different.

quote:

"That's a very tolerant view," Yanakov said quietly. "One I'm quite confident a great many, perhaps most, of my people would find difficult to accept. For myself, I believe you're correct, yet it's still our Faith which dictates how we regard our own women. Oh, we've changed over the centuries�our ancestors didn't call themselves 'Moderates' for nothing!�but we remain what we are. Women are no longer property, and we've evolved elaborate codes of behavior to protect and cherish them, partly, I suspect, in reaction against the Faithful. I know many men abuse their privileges�and their wives and daughters�but the man who publicly insults a Grayson woman will probably be lynched on the spot, if he's lucky, and they're infinitely better treated than Masadan women. Yet they're still legally and religiously inferior. Despite The Mother of Grayson, we tell ourselves it's because they're weaker, because they bear too many other burdens to be forced to vote, to own property . . . to serve in the military." He met Courvosier's eyes with a slight, strained smile. "And that's why your Captain Harrington frightens us so. She terrifies us, because she's a woman and, deep down inside, most of us know Haven's lied about what happened in Basilisk. Can you imagine what a threat that is to us?"

"Not completely, no. I can see some of the implications, of course, but my culture is too different to see them all."

"Then understand this much, Admiral, please. If Captain Harrington is as outstanding an officer as you believe�as I believe�she invalidates all our concepts of womanhood. She means we're wrong, that our religion is wrong. She means we've spent nine centuries being wrong. The idea that we may have been in error isn't quite as devastating to us as you may think�after all, we've spent those same nine centuries accepting that our Founding Fathers were wrong, or at least not completely correct. I think we can admit our error, in time. Not easily, not without dealing with our current equivalent of the Faithful, but I have to believe we can do it.

"Yet if we do, what happens to Grayson? You've met two of my wives. I love all three of them dearly�I would die to protect them�but your Captain Harrington, just by existing, tells me I've made them less than they could have been. And the truth is that they are less than Captain Harrington. Less capable of her independence, her ability to accept responsibility and risk. Just as I, they're products of a civilization and Faith that tells them they're less capable in those respects. So what do I do, Admiral? Do I tell them to stop deferring to my judgment? To enter the work force? To demand their rights and put on the same uniform I wear? How do I know where my doubts over their capability stop being genuine love and concern? When my belief that they must be reeducated before they can become my equal stops being a realistic appreciation of the limitations they've been taught and becomes sophistry to bolster the status quo and protect my own rights and privileges?"

Sure looks like "Our way of life is wrong and will have to change" to me.

quote:

And I mean, the polygamy is kind of an important thing since it's part of the basis of their whole sexism and is the one connection with Mormonism they really have.

The one connection, besides their origin literally being "the origin of the Mormon church with the names changed". Even their exodus from Earth to the harsh planet of Grayson is a direct parallel to the Mormon exodus from Illinois to the harsh desert of Utah.

# ? Apr 21, 2020 08:54

Khizan: Jul 30, 2013

Kchama posted:

You're misunderstanding me here. I'm not saying it's bad for her to have a flaw at all. I'm saying that the book does its best to downplay this as a flaw. She has a major habit of just loving off the moment things get tough like this. The Admiral was right to see this as a mistake, to be frank. He let her do it because he basically couldn't say no to her. She's suppose to be here to show the Graysons that MAnticore's female officers can do their job just like Grayson's can, and she runs off at the slightest provocation.

The biggest problem with this is that nobody ever calls her out on this bullshit. She might have a fellow officer have a friendly "you know you shouldn't have done that" talk, but her decision to run away from this problem literally causes the entire clusterfuck scenario at the end of the book. She's directly responsible for getting almost all of the Grayson navy whacked alongside the Madrigal, and nobody ever brings this up to her in any serious capacity and it never hinders her career at all.

Now, I could absolutely believe that a patron would advance her career despite this, but there's never a hint that this is all being overlooked because of favoritism or whatnot. It just gets memory-holed.

# ? Apr 21, 2020 09:13

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Gnoman posted:

The exact text

"Since", not "From". That, to me, suggests that they've turned up more intelligence after that (probably as part of a deep dig to figure out how such a thing could happen), not "this was obviously an electronics thing".

Sure looks like "Our way of life is wrong and will have to change" to me.

The one connection, besides their origin literally being "the origin of the Mormon church with the names changed". Even their exodus from Earth to the harsh planet of Grayson is a direct parallel to the Mormon exodus from Illinois to the harsh desert of Utah.

I might agree except there's been nothing between OBS and HOQ to give them any reason to say that it's 'better electronics' (the answer is 'better everything'), and he specifies that the fight between the Fearless and Sirius is what started the debate. I think the 'since' is just clumsy Weber writing, the rest of the sentence says that it all flows from the OBS battle.

As for the rest of that, honestly it's loving hogwash if we take into account other writing. Wherein it's revealed that apparently people have been trading with Grayson for over a hundred years, and you can't tell me that no one who stumbled on Grayson didn't have a female captain. I say this because Honor has done precisely nothing here. She showed up, and then she cowardly fled the moment she met a Grayson. She didn't show them anything. Like that goes against the quoted "She showed us the truth that women could do it!" We both know for a fact that she didn't leave just because wanted to give negotiations time to breath. She fled fled FLED. If she had stuck around and showed the strength of her convictions then yeah. Or if Yanakov's worshipful illusion of Honor was dispelled by her retreat. And Honor had to fight to actually prove herself to people who have every reason to doubt her in their minds.

Like, talk is talk and this dude is a richie rich so he can say poo poo like that and not be bothered because he has no real stake in the matter. Hell, spoiler alert, he dies in this book because otherwise he might have to actually do something.

Khizan posted:

The biggest problem with this is that nobody ever calls her out on this bullshit. She might have a fellow officer have a friendly "you know you shouldn't have done that" talk, but her decision to run away from this problem literally causes the entire clusterfuck scenario at the end of the book. She's directly responsible for getting almost all of the Grayson navy whacked alongside the Madrigal, and nobody ever brings this up to her in any serious capacity and it never hinders her career at all.

Now, I could absolutely believe that a patron would advance her career despite this, but there's never a hint that this is all being overlooked because of favoritism or whatnot. It just gets memory-holed.

Yeah, it's why I'm so harsh about it. She literally fucks up everything immensely and gets everyone killed because she's a cowardly idiot and I don't think it ever gets brought up again after this book ends. Abandoning her duty like that is literally Pavel Young stuff and she doesn't have the pull to keep it from killing her career and yet Solarian Newsies aren't calling her the Coward.

Kchama fucked around with this message at 09:20 on Apr 21, 2020

# ? Apr 21, 2020 09:15

Deptfordx: Dec 23, 2013

I find his thing of Battleships>Dreadnoughts>Superdreadnoughts an interesting quirk in his writing as well.

I'm guessing that's a holdover from his wargamer StarFire days that he's never shaken off.

# ? Apr 21, 2020 11:31

feedmegin: Jul 30, 2008

Deptfordx posted:

I find his thing of Battleships>Dreadnoughts>Superdreadnoughts an interesting quirk in his writing as well.

I'm guessing that's a holdover from his wargamer StarFire days that he's never shaken off.

I mean if by 'battleship' we assume 'predreadnought battleship' that's real life too.

# ? Apr 21, 2020 11:43

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# ? Jun 9, 2024 22:33

Deptfordx: Dec 23, 2013

I don't think that's a thing in the Honorverse though.

There wasn't some revolutionary sea change when new tech obsoleted an old style of ship design overnight.

Battleships are just smaller dreadnoughts and dreadnoughts bigger battleships. Battleships came first and then as they swelled in size apparently everbody started calling them dreadnoughts and again for SD's.

Without that revolutionary change, what would actually happen is that battleships just got bigger over time (as real world battleships), but they would almost certainly still just be called battleships.

After all battleship is just a shorthand for 'Class of biggest, toughest, heavily armed capital ships in our fleet' and would apply equally to whatever new ships you were currently fielding.

Edit: Unrelated. Did anybody actually ever try Saganami Island Tactical Simulator. I was always mildly curious how that played.

Deptfordx fucked around with this message at 12:25 on Apr 21, 2020

# ? Apr 21, 2020 12:22

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Everyone's a WarCriminal: the Mil-SciFi Thread

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