Re: Crit: I finished something

In message <1154286065.865502.39810@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Will in New Haven <bill.reich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes

Bob Throllop wrote:
Will in New Haven wrote:
> David Friedman wrote:
> > In article <12co2d83lbajafe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> > "Pat Bowne" <pbowne@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > > But I'm not sure why people think you want to invoke > > >hard-fought battles,
> > > rather than atrocious massacres. Perhaps more people would know > > >names of the
> > > latter, and they might make a more chilling point.
> >
> > Because what matters to the aliens isn't whether we are a species
> > willing to massacre defenseless victims--they aren't defenseless
> > victims. It's whether we are a species willing and able to fight
> > ferociously.
>
> Right. Or what made the Horde-Driver's decision so foolish. Whether the
> aliens will ever know the nature of his error is, of course, never to
> be known.

The story hasn't made it clear that the humans are going to win, only
that they're prepared to fight. They're out of position, suposedly,
and they've given the first move to the aliens. If you're telling us
that the aliens can only beat species who don't fight back, maybe you
could make it a little more clear.

It isn't supposed to be clear who wins, just that the names of the
ships are a bad clue for someone who doesn't know human history. As the
Mongols said when a negotiation was about to fall through, 'If we
fight, only god knows who will win."

And we don't need to know how this turns out either - only that the aliens have completely misread the situation and the humans will give them a good scrap.

It's like all those opening scenes from various episodes of 'Alias Smith and Jones' (yes I am that old) when some drunk/punk in a bar picked on Kid Curry and you, at home in the safe seats, were in on the big joke that however mild mannered the kid appeared to be or how much he was trying to avoid a fight, the bigmouth was in for a very nasty surprise.

Jacey
--
Jacey Bedford
jacey at artisan hyphen harmony dot com
posting via usenet and not googlegroups, ourdebate
or any other forum that reprints usenet posts as
though they were the forum's own

.

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