Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => CCP Public Library => Topic started by: Casiella on 11 May 2010, 19:42
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Started reading it tonight. Um... is there a lot of PF value in there that should motivate me to keep reading? Because right now, I sort of want to just throw it in the "bad fanfic" pile.
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:Tony G: :s
I will restrain myself from further comment.
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Reading Theodicy spoiled a lot of the EVE background setting for me. I truly wish I had never done that.
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The sad part is that it is PF, although nobody can know what happened in it, it does bring a little bit of data into the fore about how the world of New Eden supposedly works.
[spoiler]
Slaver hounds are awesome killing machines.
Jovians are emo.
The Amarrians believe in redemption for the slaves.
Anyone can change their lifelong worldview after seeing something that is considered an atrocity by some other culture than theirs.
Mallers are shield tanked.
Enheduanni are behind everything.
Elders are important.
And most important of all, all Amarrians, especially Emperors are fucking stupid.
[/spoiler]
Basically what the ye olde Amarr bloc did, was grab the direct PF out of the whole thing, like the Scripture quotations and work with them and discard what they clearly could not know IC.
Which is pretty much everything in Theodicy.
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So I guess I'm one of the few who enjoyed it. If you ignore the Gallente parts it's nice (cept towards the end it includes some important info).
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It's not so much the plot line as it is the writing, to be honest. I'd not realized at first that Gonzales wrote it, but I rechecked once I saw how many breathless, over-the-top superlatives he used, particularly in lieu of showing us something that would have communicated the same idea.
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The problem I see in Theodicy is that it takes an interesting bit of the PF, and processes it into a story that can be distilled down into one or two simplistic, moralistic elements. The most striking of these in my opinion is "Loyal, religious amarrians are stupid, weak-willed, and do lots of evil things. Once they switch sides, though, they're good, honorable men who do great things for the good of humanity."
While I was reading Theodicy, I was struck by how I saw this tenet presented again and again. By the mid-end of it, (roughly where the Amarrian Admiral returns to the Empire) I felt as if I could predict the remainder of the storyline, simply by applying this tenet and crossing it with what I knew of the Amarr-Jove war. While to some degree I suspect this is something of an inevitability, especially in a story where the end was a given, I feel that being able to completely, totally, without fail predict every little detail of the remaining plotline, the story has become to one-sided and simplistic for my tastes.
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Anyone can change their lifelong worldview after seeing something that is considered an atrocity by some other culture than theirs.
Capsuleers use this to switch factions all the time >_>
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Dunno about "anyone", but people do change worldviews / religions / philosophies / whatever you want to call it.
The novella still makes me cry, though, and not in the way an author wants. As I wrote about Empyrean Age, Gonzales never met a breathless superlative he didn't like.
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Well, the Amarrian fellow does the real life equivalent of finding out that to make flour you have to grind grain therefore you can't eat any plant products anymore and you turn into a 100% carnivore.
A bit demented.