Author Topic: Morrigan in Shadow SPOILERS IN THIS THREAD  (Read 14376 times)

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Offline rubixcube

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Re: Morrigan in Shadow SPOILERS IN THIS THREAD
Question for Darius:

I feel like Battuta has steered the story in a different direction from what was originally intended (not that that's a bad thing, Battuta is a fabulous writer)

So I'm curious:

Did you have this story planned out from the get go when you released AOA? Or has it changed substantially since then, particularly after Battuta got involved?
Stuff

 

Offline Darius

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Re: Morrigan in Shadow SPOILERS IN THIS THREAD
The general story arc (initial retreat of third fleet, deployment of the fedayeen, end of the war) is pretty much unchanged from 2007.

 

Offline Rheyah

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Re: Morrigan in Shadow SPOILERS IN THIS THREAD
So that idle throw off I mentioned about the Shivans being a response by the universe to intelligence was actually on the money.

Huh.  Interesting :)

 

Offline The E

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Re: Morrigan in Shadow SPOILERS IN THIS THREAD
Well, it was on the money for the Morrigan stories.....
If I'm just aching this can't go on
I came from chasing dreams to feel alone
There must be changes, miss to feel strong
I really need lifе to touch me
--Evergrey, Where August Mourns

 
Re: Morrigan in Shadow SPOILERS IN THIS THREAD
....wait a minute.

Battuta is Seth Dickinson.

Man, this explains a lot about BPs writing quality. I really enjoyed the short, excellent writing and I like how it brought everything together and made full use of its non-linear structure.

Spoiler:
Chiwetel Steele remains the greatest.

I am curious as to how the end of War in Heaven and BP3 are going to diverge, and if the divergence is keyed into the nature of the Vishnans as Simmses.

 

Offline Doko

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Re: Morrigan in Shadow SPOILERS IN THIS THREAD
I was just thinking how nice it would be if BP ended with such an open ending.

From a modding perspective, morrigan in shadow is almost perfect. The big threat(s) are still there, both superpowers (three if you add vasudans) have just ended hostilities and with no node road blocks in place. These conditions are really good for making campaigns and BP already has a huge amount of assets ready to be put in missions for those people that have a good story to tell but not a lot of time to tweak every single little thing in the freespace engine.

 

Offline Leeko

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Re: Morrigan in Shadow SPOILERS IN THIS THREAD
That gave me all sorts of feels, holy crap. A real glimpse of the place WiH has been going after all these years.

 
Re: Morrigan in Shadow SPOILERS IN THIS THREAD
First of all, this is a damn good bit of writing.

Secondly, it does allay some personal fears I had towards the story direction of WiH. Namely, that an intelligence as vast and ancient as the Shivans would even be willing to overlook the UEF as collaborators. If they are willing to exterminate humanity on a whim, then attempting to use them as pawns, or for the UEF to attempt the wholesale slaughter of the GTVA is equally as short sighed as Bosch's attempts to open a dialogue with them.

Wars are often foolish, but humans haven't wiped ourselves out yet at any rate. I think there's some small hope to be found in that.

That last bit of GTVA security dialogue is what I was looking for. Extinction or not, we stand together against the horrors.

 
Re: Morrigan in Shadow SPOILERS IN THIS THREAD
Well, I got around to reading these short stories. I guess I could say that Blue Planet has had some profound effects on me, stretching ten years back at least. The ants were something I was thinking about back in 2012 already, while in the military service. Sitting on the sand in the middle of the summer, away from home, thinking about BP.

My thoughts on "Morrigan in Shadow":

I'm not much of a reviewer, so it's hard to point out all the good stuff. The writing was superb, the characters as engaging as ever. I liked the chapter/time division. All of this applies to "Sunglare" as well.

So I will go to my subjective point of critique. I don't like the ending :) It's imaginative, fantastically described, moment by moment, yet feels utterly out of place.

The way I see Laporte's story, is as follows. She needs to let go of her emotional attachments, even her humanity, to discover greater truths about existence, the universe and her role in it. Just as Aken did before her. Laporte abandoned Simms to join the Nagari (Fedayeen). She had to commit atrocities in the process, however distasteful and horrible they may be to her, to get "to the other side". To question everything Ubuntu had taught her. All the things her own society valued over all else. Also to let go of the human ego, the pathologic source of all the mindless killing, to find her purpose as part of the whole. Observing that even Ubuntu, for all its promise, was a failure, since it cannot survive war. She needs to let go off Simms, instead of clinging to her. Are the Nemesis, by their design, bound to end all petty warfare?

The plot was somewhat going this way (for me anyway), and all of a sudden, boom, turnaround :wtf: And we get a traditional ending. A Nemesis ship exploding. Our two heroines flying into the proverbial sunset. Oh well. Just like the Death Star. Just like Captain Sheridan nuking the Thirdspace alien ship. Just like quite a lot of other endings. Oh well. A tad disappointing. That's my humble opinion. Technically it was such an awesome read though. But when Simms wakes up on that back seat, well, that's a great metaphor of how her inclusion in the end felt. And the whole ending as well. Simms so mad. "What the **** am I still doing here?".

Battuta's writing is an excellent way to learn new words (if bothered), since English is not my native language. I don't know who made all the tech room entries in BP, but those are really good for expanding one's vocabulary, while keeping the content extremely interesting. Very valuable. Thank you.

I love the ending of Tenebra in WiH, that is quite something.

Back to Morrigan... Thanks for the creative use of ants, this really makes me happy. Much praise. 10/10 just for the ants. Maybe it is Nagari, but the ants have been crawling around in my head ever since WiH came out all those years ago. Life-affecting stories.
« Last Edit: April 29, 2020, 07:15:23 pm by MrTealTwo »

 
Re: Morrigan in Shadow SPOILERS IN THIS THREAD
I liked the ending because at the end of the day, despite all the highbrow philosophizing and hard scifi concepts, Freespace is a setting about space dogfighting. Having it end with some existential navel gazing wouldn't have sat right with me.
Instead, humanity united once more against a nearly limitless enemy. An uncertain future, but facing it fighting. Same as it ever was.