RE: The Dead Dove Locker -- "I don't know what I expected."
Yesterday, 08:04 AM (This post was last modified: Yesterday, 08:10 AM by classicdrogn.)
Yesterday, 08:04 AM (This post was last modified: Yesterday, 08:10 AM by classicdrogn.)
To be entirely honest, I'm not sure this doesn't belong in the normal recs/updates thread, but given it took until ch20 to reach what I'd call the payoff for sticking with it, the "dead dove" warning seems appropriate.
All That Is Gold Does Not Glitter (AO3 link) is a Youjo Senki/Halo fic, wherein the once-salaryman has found themself (as a her again) in a third life, and this time managed to get into a safe, comfortable, academic career track... only to be blindsided by the discovery that the joke paper she and three housemates wrote in a drunken fantasy of how to waste the absolute greatest amount of research grant money on the stupidest and most impossible goals somehow found its way to the highest levels of the Office of Naval Intelligence, and rather than the improved FTL and AI research her entire actual career has focused on, she, Dr. Catherine Halsey, is now in charge of the blackest of black programs to somehow turn seventy five kidnapped children screened from all of humanity's billions into super-soldiers using a combination of a dozen cybernetic augmentations that don't exist, to connect to a powered armor that doesn't exist, using a mind-to-machine interface that doesn't exist and a power supply that doesn't exist, so they can be paired up with AI partners that, yes, exist, but each cost as much as a small warship and only last an average of seven years before falling into digital insanity and having to be erased, with the initial projected survival rate for the whole process being less than five percent.
It takes a lot of chapters of false fronts and misunderstanding before getting to the point where it's understood that everyone running the program loathes it from the basic concept on up except (possibly) the offscreen bigwigs who greenlit it in the first place and the distant ONI security watchdogs, and even then the requirement that nothing be said openly leads to a heavy helping of doublethink and less-than-accurate conclusions in the typical YS vein.
It bears mentioning that the general quality and positive trending tone after reaching that tipping point did leave me adding to my list of things to check for updates despite all of the above and generally not giving a fig about anything to do with Halo, but like I said it was a slow burn to that point and on another day I might easily have closed the tab long before and moved on.
On screen violence is limited to paintball training, reprimands for off screen incidents, and obliquely described medical procedures, to be clear, but it is a story about an intensive, relatively hard-SF military training program for child soldiers, so be advised.
All That Is Gold Does Not Glitter (AO3 link) is a Youjo Senki/Halo fic, wherein the once-salaryman has found themself (as a her again) in a third life, and this time managed to get into a safe, comfortable, academic career track... only to be blindsided by the discovery that the joke paper she and three housemates wrote in a drunken fantasy of how to waste the absolute greatest amount of research grant money on the stupidest and most impossible goals somehow found its way to the highest levels of the Office of Naval Intelligence, and rather than the improved FTL and AI research her entire actual career has focused on, she, Dr. Catherine Halsey, is now in charge of the blackest of black programs to somehow turn seventy five kidnapped children screened from all of humanity's billions into super-soldiers using a combination of a dozen cybernetic augmentations that don't exist, to connect to a powered armor that doesn't exist, using a mind-to-machine interface that doesn't exist and a power supply that doesn't exist, so they can be paired up with AI partners that, yes, exist, but each cost as much as a small warship and only last an average of seven years before falling into digital insanity and having to be erased, with the initial projected survival rate for the whole process being less than five percent.
It takes a lot of chapters of false fronts and misunderstanding before getting to the point where it's understood that everyone running the program loathes it from the basic concept on up except (possibly) the offscreen bigwigs who greenlit it in the first place and the distant ONI security watchdogs, and even then the requirement that nothing be said openly leads to a heavy helping of doublethink and less-than-accurate conclusions in the typical YS vein.
It bears mentioning that the general quality and positive trending tone after reaching that tipping point did leave me adding to my list of things to check for updates despite all of the above and generally not giving a fig about anything to do with Halo, but like I said it was a slow burn to that point and on another day I might easily have closed the tab long before and moved on.
On screen violence is limited to paintball training, reprimands for off screen incidents, and obliquely described medical procedures, to be clear, but it is a story about an intensive, relatively hard-SF military training program for child soldiers, so be advised.
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‎noli esse culus
‎noli esse culus