Yes a conversation that ended with: Put down your weapons and tell the civilians to line up and head for the camps, or we bomb you from orbit.

It doesn't matter what the reason for the confrontation was. They are an invading army at this point. Also they struck first and have killed sever hundred humans.

And the Points the Turians make is obvious bullshit. "This is our territory" - Bollocks, humans have been living there for ages. "You have commited crimes by opening a mass relay" - bollocks, just an alien species imposing their will on others. "So we engaged your ships in hopes to prevent it" - without talking first? Well that just makes them ruthless barbarians. Bullshit is just dripping from everything that the Turians say and do.

Instead we get a Harry that is incapable of any emotions besides angst over hurting his attackers. Honestly a bunch of aliens come and attack his home-world and he feels no anger? No fury?

Someone said that Harry should not kill them because he is above it due to his foolproof incapacitation magic. That is not the point. Why doesn't he want revenge? Why not retribution for all the people they killed? Harry is quite capable of being vengeful, he went after Bellatrix with crucio after all. So this lack of any emotion over an attack on what he considers his home and the threat to people he considers his is just occ and makes him feel like a robot. Or a pussy.

 

I'll come to regret this, but here goes.

I think you're wrong. Here's why.

Yeah - no.
First, the turians explain the terms of surrender. Then, humans ask "what if we refuse?"

Then, a human asks - "Why not just drop a bomb on the planet and be done with it, general?"

Another relevant line that follows is this:

After humans suggest a more immediate creasefire, the turians respond with

Where do you see threats of bombing the shit out of the planet?
It's what a civilized civilization can offer. They won't bomb everything, nor they actually want to go ahead with it. Yet, the Alliance doesn't accept the terms, and they have to disable the military. And the Turians try their hardest not to harm the civilians.

It's an interesting question about warfare you raise. Just because it's war, where you're not one of the combatants - do you have to shut down a moral compass and start killing the invading force, when you can just as easily subdue them?
It's not his war. It's not his duty.
What is it about people, that they hold not-killing in high regard, but whenever there is a possibility of a war, their outlook changes to "murder everyone on the enemy side"? Shouldn't it be "find a way to stop the war" or at least "find a way to win with as little bloodshed as possible"? What allows you to keep any semblance of moral high ground, if you scream bloody murder for the enemy?

Right.
2148 CE: Humanity Discovers Mass Effect Physics
2157 CE: The First Contact War
Ages. Nine years, between the two events. Remember, it's not until 2149 CE when they make a first relay jump. Meaning it's in fact eight years, at its very best.
Turians have no need for colonising a wrong amino-type planet, but they could easily be keeping a buffer space for protection of the citadel space. Which they do. They obviously run a check on the mass relay every so often, and only after making a contact there they found Shanxi colony.

Yes, it is a crime in citadel space.
Every law is imposing will on others - but somehow you pay taxes, right? Would it be different, if your president would be a Turian, nothing else changing? You'd still pay the taxes? What if the president was a blac- wait a second. Here I'm assuming you're from USA, since the majority of the forum users are.

If I went to USA, I'd have to follow the laws there, even if I didn't know them. To top it off, if my travel agent would tell me I'm still in Lithuania, ending up with a situation where I do not know that I'm in USA while I'm actually there, the USA laws still would apply to me. I couldn't just claim ignorance as an excuse. "I'm sorry, officer, I didn't know I wasn't allowed to carry a weapon openly in this state." I'd get fucking shot, instead.

Which happens to the Alliance scouts.

If you bothered to read, rather than skim the text (sorry this story isn't your favorite genre - crack - you actually have a story you have to follow here) the explanation is simple:

1. There is no direct threat to civilians. We know that. Harry knows that.
2. Revenge for the military personnel, who decided "nah, let's not give up to spare civilian lives, let's fight to the last man against the superior foe?" Why?
Mind you, this wasn't a quote, but an exaggeration, and the decision on human side is internally consistent. They have no way to know the Turians would spare them, and how would the surrender option play out. They also are military, and surrendering there - when there might be other options, including waiting for reinforcements - might carry some outfall afterwards.

Also, on vengeance, there's alway this:

Why would you want to escalate? Even now, Harry's badass boast is heading to dangerous waters. Become more dangerous, more vicious, and peace will not be possible - here, he knows it could have been made - but an all out war between the turian hierarchy - or even citadel space and the Alliance?
I do not see Harry winning this war singlehandedly.
Any action that enables further conflict, is therefore a losing move.




This controversy here - this is why I liked the story. Because I believe in the difficulty of the decisions made. I see the complicated clash of ideologies and laws - and of turian and human stubbornness. Remove Harry, and the story remains believable and interesting to me. Keep Harry - and you have this wild card that might solve a problem, or yet make it worse - and that possibility of failure, this looming threat of an all-out-war is what makes me wait for another chapter. Keep Harry, and I remain interested in where will he find magic - and will magic come into play with the universe at large.


Your views, on the other hand, remind me of people who never look at the story, only ever touching the surface. Thousands of your friends scream about Manipulative Dumbledore, and I weep for you inability to enjoy a good and intricate plot, only satisfying yourself with the shallow depths of the narrative surface.


I hope this whole post wasn't completely pointless and someone will find it informative or useful.

 

What you're arguing isn't a matter of criminal law, it's a matter of international diplomacy. Citadel Law does not apply to humans except where agreed upon or enforced through military action because the UN has not agreed to be beholden to it. It's like how North Korea is perfectly within its rights to build nuclear weapons because it is not a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Note that that doesn't change the fact that diplomatic pressure can be exerted upon them try and force compliance.

That the Turians destroyed the frigate at first could be quite easily overlooked as a matter of accident and ill-judgement, should diplomatic discussions have reached that point. The human response could easily be judged as self defence and defence of human property. Both are fairly minor in the scale of international skirmishes. Wars have started over less, but there are numerous occasions where they haven't over similar.

The decision to invade Shanxi and destroy the human fleet was an act of aggression sparking an unjustifiable war. Diplomacy was still an option and was offered outright, but Arterius and the Hierarchy decided enforcing diplomatic agreements upon a nation that were not signatories would be the better option.

So yes, Harry is perfectly justified in ruining the Turians' day, because he is a human defending humans against alien aggressors. In our law this would fall entirely under self defence and would be perfectly legal in the majority of countries.

 

Beautiful comment. ;D

Yet, who cares on what Human law and Human international diplomacy says on the matter? This is neither. This is interstellar diplomacy, if you will. Interstellar law.

And here, I suspect, the Turians are in the right.

Isn't this just glorious source of fun? How do you even threat interstellar law from our international diplomacy perspective? Who is in the right? It would be the Citadel Council deciding whether the turians overstepped their boundaries, not human courts. For them, this incident would be a lot more alike to a criminal law - in the scale they run things.

I love this quote, for instance:

Precisely. Precisely. Precisely.
The Turians are enforcing Citadel Law through military action. Even then, they offered a peaceful solution, before going on to enforce it.


Mind, I'm not saying that Turians have a true moral high ground, but that they are acting withing the boundaries of their own, Citadel Law.

Which makes debating whether Harry has a right to defend humans slightly ridiculous, as well. He can do whatever he wants. As a single magical Human, he's his own Ministry of Magic. Where does he even fall into the equation of human-turian incident? Question here is - what should he do?

After the dust settles, I foresee Humanity facing zero sanctions for their defence - since it is fully within their rights to defend from aggressive actions - by the same principle that says that trying to escape a prison is legal. Same as I do not see Turian Hierarchy getting punished for enforcing the Law, unless they step over the bounds, say - decimate the civilian population.


Both sides are right, and I love this approach a lot more than a simple, monstrous Turian commander deciding to screw over a first contact scenario for everyone that is so common in these types of stories. It got me debating with myself, and - apparently - others, to analyse and think out the scenarios.


p.s. That said, Arterius could have chosen differently. Could have given more space for negotiations. Still, what can you expect from Arterius family but bad business for humans or galaxy?

 

On this we can agree. It has gotten tiring to see First Contact scenarios where the aforementioned Turian general is not only a dickhead, but grievously incompetent. And then HFY proceeds to stomp them 'because'. :facepalm

I think you meant 'duty'. Harry certainly has the right to defend his fellow humans, he just isn't duty bound to.

 

Yes.

More than just duty, as my line stems from Aekiel 's line about Harry obviously being justified to defend the human population, but yes.

 

Surrendering to an unknown party invading your land is bullshit, no matter how you spin it. You are assuming the humans can trust what the Turian is preaching.

Fact, enemy alien race attacked first, justifiable from the aliens perspective. You retaliate yourself, justifiable from your perspective. Enemy race pursues you to your home territory. They explain some facts, ask for your surrender, sounds reasonable if it is true, sounds like suicide if they are lying.

Let us get away from who is right and wrong here, you can debate all you want and I don't think anyone wants to get too deep into that shit.

Instead, do you trust or not trust this invading race? Given fresh, recent, unsolicited (from the humans point of view) hostile actions, I would lean on the no trust.

It's only (potentially) humanity at stack here, so why not surrender? Just because you have a skirmish with a neighboring country does not mean you let them waltz into your country and you say 'Oh hey, keep New York, that last skirmish was my bad. Don't need that city anyway.'

Right and wrong has zero to do with it. If a proven hostile force comes to my home sprouting pretty words I would protect my family. Maybe you trust them and for you protecting your family is surrendering. For me that's just a guaranteed knife to the throat you won't be able to do anything about once you surrender. Could go both ways, author took it this way, I prefer it this way, and I believe if this shit happens it should go this way.

 

You know what else is worth reading??

Anyway, nice discussion here guys, I wouldn't have gone any further than that but it did made me think on a more deeper level about the mechanics this fic.

 

I'm always in two minds about assumed knowledge in FanFiction. Overall, I end up not minding though even if it seems redundant to me.

As long as the exposition anvil isn't dropped on my head, and it's done well, I consider it good storytelling, but poor fanfictioning. If the author is trying to polish and improve their storytelling, I can allow the slight tedium.

Or I can just skip what I already know.

There are obviously caveats and such, but whatever.

 

The fic updated and the latest chapter... doesn't seem promising, what with Harry somehow fearing a 'taint' to his magic because he kills with it. I'm not expecting him to become a one-man killing machine scouring the galaxy of life, but this kind of bullshit is just plain unacceptable.

 

Also, this last chapter is just mostly talking.

 

Ii skimmed through the entirety of the first two chapters and a good portion of the third chapter, but the rest of it has got me hooked. It got progressively more interesting as the chapters passed.

After the space battle I did get worried for a bit about the possibility of a wimpy Harry, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

That said, I'm not sure how I feel about the magic just yet. I'm not familiar with the Mass Effect universe, so I'm not sure if something has been borrowed from there, but thus far I think it's been a bit strange and confusing.

 

The magic in ME is pretty much telekinesis with a fancy title. Limited TK too (though IIRC, a biotic can create a temp singularity...).

 

Some of it is telekinetic, certainly, like throw, pull, lift, slam, etc.

Of course then you have stuff like warp, which uses shifting mass effect fields to shred an enemy apart at the molecular level. Or the flare, an unstable mass effect field that blows shit up. Or the annihilation field, a rotation sphere of dark energy that burns people. Or barrier.

Basically there's three categories, the aforementioned telekinesis, kinetic fields, where the biotic increases the mass of stuff on the battlefield to immobilize it, and spatial distortion.

 

Isn't TK just manipulating matter? I say just, but that encompasses everything.

It's always my default/ cheese answer for the age old question 'What superpower would you want?'

Anyway, the minutia is kinda irrelevant. For simplicity sake, just think of it as jazzy TK.

 

I guess that explains a lot.

So, does this idea of planets having 'living magic' come from ME?

 

Not that I recall.

Probably comes from Avatar, lol.

 

Ugh. This could easily be half the length and twice as good.

The story has a very slow pacing. We're supposed to like some of the OCs (and I want to!) but I don't care about them much at all. eg. the fatherless family.

I think the main problem is way too much tell and not enough show. It leads to characters I don't care about, boring action scenes, and I probably skimmed past 80% of the text and missed nothing of consequence. The author needs a serious lesson on Chekhov's gun.

Oh, was anyone else reminded of Speaker for the Dead? Lonely male protagonist with a living AI spaceship goes into hiding. He attaches himself to a widow and her children on a backwoods planet and reestablishes human connection again.