Grade-a-"The Reason You Suck" Speech.

So, I'm working on a superhero setting with a couple of guys I met online. In it, an accident with the Large Hadron Collider released something called the Nexus particle into the Earth, an atom with the ability to draw on the differing laws of physics in other universes, granting superpowers to more than a few individuals. Unfortunately, this also drew the attention of the Aions (actually Sufficiently Advanced Aliens with Magitech, some of which were humans who managed to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence) and a couple Multiversal Conqueror empires, one of which is the One-Above-All, a Hive Mind (technically-in the case where the Subversion process was done correctly or those born in the culture, they retain individual goals and personalities, but are completely loyal to the One, the Deus est Machina that runs their civilization) created for the express purpose of survival at any cost (for instance, the One is actually a gestalt mind born from mental copies of all their Agents, hence even a Sole Survivor can rebuild the culture with a few well-placed Subversions). We'll be getting to them in a second.

Anyway, in the first climax of the story, our heroes have failed, via Diabolus ex Machina, to prevent the awakening of a Titan, an amoral and inhuman Aion which turns the world around it into a Cosmic Horror Story because it likes horror stories (literally, they exude a field that forces the world to play by Horror Tropes-think the Ancient Ones from The Cabin In The Woods). All seems lost to a Bolivian Army Ending, as its monstrous minions surround them...

And then collapse, screaming in pain as the cybernetics of the One-Above-All burst from their bodies.

Turns out that the Mission Control, Abraham Howard, was actually the Analyst, the first human to be infected by the OAA's nanites...as well as the first willing host, viewing the OAA as a form of utopia. A very Dangerously Genre-Savvy man, he was fully aware of the Titan's powers, and deliberately hinted at his real allegiance while leading the heroes into helping him build a Titan Subversion Nanite. Since a traitor in the ranks, when in hindsight it becomes obvious, is a much better twist than Diabolus ex Machina, the Titan's horror field actually helps him on the basis of being a better author than it is. Overcome by its own abilities and inability to instantly reprogram it, the Titan is subdued and injected with the Nanite, transforming its body into a vessel of the One, and adding its arcane knowledge and technology to the One's memory banks-therefore making it so other Aions are no longer a threat to the OAA. As the program reaches its mind and prepares to lobotomize it, here's the speech the Analyst gives, untroped:

"You know, Titan, you're right. You're an elemental force of nature, not comprehensible to us puny mortals. Like lighting or fire. I work with lightning and fire all the time, and I don't claim to know their thoughts, if they have any. They're so incomprehensible to me that I can't even tell if they're sentient.

"I also work in binding them and using them to fuel and drive things that are useful to us puny mortals. That's what an engineer does.

"Personal opinion here? HP Lovecraft was an easily-frightened hack. A talented hack, but were it not for his atmosphere and another writer who missed his messages, he would be forgotten along with every other hack. Whoever wrote Call of Cthulhu was worse. I must say he didn't even understand the books very well, let alone the principle of science. Knowledge may be depressing, but it doesn't drive you mad. Nor do you, unless you're actually attacking our minds deliberately to live up to your annoying cliches, but I digress.

"Thing is, I'm sure-I know-that in previous eras, all known sapients thought the same of lightning and fire. To them, it was the domain of the gods, nothing less. And yet, we tamed fire, and used it to learn how to cook and fuel our evolution. Later, we tamed lightning and used it to build electronics and fuel our technology. On a long-lost world, I'm sure the many thought the same of psionics and the Nexus particle, but they tamed it and used it to create the One and fuel their cultural immortality. So no, elemental forces incomprehensible to mortals don't really scare me. We've won against them three-for-three.

"Unlike those forces, though, you're arrogant. I do not know whether you obtained this power or were born with it, but somewhere along the line you got it into your head that, being supposedly almighty, you were a force apart from the world. You succumbed to hubris, believing the world existed to entertain you, rather than as interconnected with you. And so you started this jaded game of yours, not seeing anyone lesser than you as worthy of anything more than an object to vent your frustrations and boredom at. And so, you forgot something key-that the universe obeys its own laws, not anyone else's. Such as the ability for a culture to grow outside your area of influence, and eventually join themselves into a vast and perfect neural network. You forgot how to survive, only live.

"See, lightning was a bit more difficult to tame than fire. With fire, all you need to do to master it is a few sticks and basic safety. Lightning, you need metals, infrastructure. For the longest time, my race nor the Many had that. And yet, we built it, with the use of what came before-fire, heat, metallurgy. Soon, we found a way for lightning to tame itself, with electronic manufacture. With that, the many were able to transform themselves into the One-Above-All, and from that, tame the Nexus and increase our wisdom and power even further-all in the name of survival. You lost that ambition a long time ago, so you remained as you were. Almighty, immortal...stagnant.

"And so you did not notice when I and my friends built a machine, based on fire, lightning, and the Nexus to do to you as we have done to all the elemental forces-to tame you, and use your strength to aide the mission of survival.

Just before the nanites erase everything in that rotten organ you call a brain and transforms it into a node for the One, know that you were the easiest force to be tamed. Fire, lightning, and Nexus resist taming by their very natures. You, on the other hand? You could have resisted, but you didn't."

So, like it?

edited 6th Nov '12 5:19:56 PM by Leliel

What rises must fall, what falls may rise again.

What sort of critique do you want? I didn't see anything that stuck out badly but I did notice a lot of spots where you should go back and re-read to make sure you've got the grammar and pacing down properly.

I think the paragraph on Lovecraft felt awkward, and probably can be cut down to 'Lovecraft thought knowledge would drive us crazy but he was wrong', or some paraphrased equivalent.

All the other advice I could give would be reiterating that you should polish up the grammar and make sure that the sentences flow well.

Quick example:

Jaded means something more like cynical, not arrogant. The clause that starts after 'yours' transitions a bit awkwardly and doesn't give the sentence a strong end. There's a bit of parallelism between 'anyone lesser' and 'anything more' that made me have to reread the sentence because they're not parallel ideas.*

(anyone lesser meaning 'any weaker person' while anything more than means 'anything but')

To clean it up, I would shift the words around, try to end the sentence on a strong note, and make sure that it follows the reader's mental progression.

But then again, I don't know the character, really, or the tone of the world that you're writing this in. That's just how I would write that line if I was writing it on its own, in a vacuum.

For content itself it looks good enough, but I think the narrative arc (we tamed fire and electricity and we'll tame you) would also benefit in terms of clarity from some revising. Even given the conversational tone I think it wanders a little more than it should. I'd meant to make this shorter but I kind of get into critiques, so my apologies. Again, looks good overall, but would be improved with a few read-throughs.

edited 6th Nov '12 7:12:08 PM by Kotep

Whether or not it's a good villain speech to show that yes, the Analyst is Eviler than Thou and making it official.

The overly-purple tone is sort of the point. Man's kinda proud, and one of his villainous traits is that he enjoys rubbing his victories in your face. He's Dangerously Genre-Savvy, not immune to ego.

Also, the snipe against Lovecraft was about the fact the Titan was the antagonist of a Cosmic Horror Story, enforced by its own powers...and it lost despite that. What's more, a thing about the Aions is that they're a lot like the Greek Gods, and view the world as their personal play set-and in the case of the Titans, view it as rife with Videogame Cruelty Potential.

The term "jaded" was, in fact, a reference to the game's motive: The Titans are a lot like horror fans who are so bitter and cynical that they can't really enjoy anything other than torture porn and grimdark (we're talking the kind of guys who say True Art Is Angsty and follow it with "and if it is angsty, it is true art", without a hint of irony). It just so happens that the Titans are so removed from mortal existence that we are little more then paper-thin stereotypes to be slaughtered for their amusement.

Also, another definition of jaded means "made callous and conceited by age"-the Titans are the elder Aions. Do the math.

What rises must fall, what falls may rise again.