Plausibility of interdimensional Earth-looting?

Hayate the Combat Butler. First thing that shows up when you search for it as a name, and on this site it's likely the best-known version of it. (Hayate X Blade shows up eventually; neither characters use Kanji for the name, because the usual rendering is 疾風 (typically read 'shippuu'), and in fact when it is used as a name it's typically rendered in hiragana or katakana to get around this. The only female '颯' I could find is a Takarazuka actress who specializes in male roles, and even then that kanji isn't usually read as 'Hayate'. (I'm curious where you found it, since it's not all that common.)

Outside of manga, 'Hayate' is considered a masculine name. I'm not saying you should change it or anything, just to keep all this in mind.

Well, I wasn't planning on her wearing pink ribbons in her hair or stuff like that. On the other hand, she's not a tomboy either. In short, she's a girl but she doesn't flaunt it, nor does she hide it. She just... is.

I can respect that you've got this worked out and the alternate worlds are a good concept but I have to tell you I could never take a "teen falls into the cockpit" story seriously... I think it undermines the plausibility you were going for. I'm not a huge anime fan so maybe that's why I tend to think of this storyline as rather unbelievable but as soon as you said "teen falls into the cockpit..." everything else stopped mattering, and it became not a tale of two fascinating parallel universes but essentially the same old "teen falls into the cockpit of a mech" story of every other anime series, and this is just my personal opinion but it seems like you're wasting an awesome premise on tired old anime cliches.

Maybe it's the mechs too. I just don't buy anime tropes. If you want this to appeal to a broader science fiction audience (as seems to be your attempt) than you might have to tone down the obvious anime inspiration. Mechs for one. Wheels and treads work better than machines on legs. Humans bipedalism and then invented the wheel. We didn't reinvent the leg until we needed human-compatible prosthetic replacements, whose engineering requirements are extremely different from a hypothetical battle machine on legs. This is why I don't find giant bipedal fighting robots credible either (thought tripods would be more stable, wheeled and winged vehicles would still have the advantage). And if your mechs transform into jet fighters or something you might as well kiss any attempt at plausibility goodbye. That's my two cents, I'm not trying to start a thread war or anything, just giving my admittedly biased opinion.

That being said, it IS my personal bias. I find older, more seasoned characters much more interesting to write and read about than teens with comparatively little experience, development and maturity. I like stories about problem solvers, not about some kid getting lucky and becoming an Ace Pilot.

My advice: blaze ahead, but stay as far away from Cute Kids/Teen Girls And Robots as possible. Maybe make your mechs more realistically designed than your typical anime giant robot, more like a plausible military machine. Just tone down the obvious anime inspiration and I think this will have broader appeal.

EDIT: Sorry if that sounded like bashing. It was intended as criticism. Basically, Interdimensional Earth Looting = Plausible. Interdimensional Earth Looting with Teen Ace Pilot and Anime Robots = much less plausible, unless you're a really big anime fan, in which case plausibility just isn't a concern and you're going for Rule of Cool only.

edited 23rd Mar '14 6:29:45 AM by fulltimeD

That is precisely why I wanted to deconstruct it, to bring an unusual spin into the formula. That is, until people here started complaining that its pointlessly cruel and unrealistic. No matter how hard I might try, I simply can't please everyone - and believe me, it took me around three years of repeatedly stalling my fanfiction works for rewrites until I recognized and accepted that being a perfectionist sucks.

There's also the fact that I'm not a for-profit writer, meaning I don't absolutely have to attract the maximum number of readers. I'm writing for fun, not for a living.

edited 23rd Mar '14 6:31:20 AM by amitakartok

The solution, then, is to also give the 'teen falling into the cockpit' bit five seconds of screen time or less. Really, that trope is in practice less about coincidence and more about suddenness, and you've gone to lengths to demonstrate how to minimize the trope. I think it's effective, if it helps.

And now, the token complaint. Spin the wheel of loud internet criticism and it lands on... "IT IS POINTLESSLY CRUEL AND UNREALISTIC."

I'd love to see what you've written of it, eventually.

A question about this story. Do you guys think it's okay for a story that takes place forty years from now to reference current real-life events in a news article?

Here's the article in question.

The basis of these is China's de facto monopoly on rare earth metal exports allowing them to indirectly control the global microelectronics market, multiple European countries' announced intentions to wean themselves off of economic dependency on Russian hydrocarbon imports after Ukraine's example showed the Russian government's willingness to use their nation's exports for political leverage, as well as the recent signing of the Eurasian Economic Union treaty and its expected official establishment on January 1st, 2015.

Also, I have a tech idea. I don't really want to introduce wildly improbable tech but I have something that sounds actually plausible to have in the future. As a laptop user, I'm quite familiar with the fact that the biggest power drain of a laptop is the LCD screen; no doubt the same is the case with tablets. So then, wouldn't eliminating the screen cause an increase in battery life?

In this case, the device is the size of a tablet but instead of a virtual keyboard projected onto a touch-sensitive physical screen, it has a touchpad used exclusively as an input device but no screen. Instead of a physical screen, it has a virtual one rendered through an ARV (Augmented Reality Visor; think Google Glass). You can't see the screen with the naked eye but look through the ARV and suddenly there's a flat 3D rectangle with the screen's contents floating above the device. ARVs are usually connected via a USB dongle that wirelessly broadcasts the screen's contents to any listening ARV in range, though it does support encryption for when you just don't want someone next door to see the contents of your screen through the wall^note while ubiquitous as earphones at this point, augmented reality is still not advanced enough to selectively render certain real objects above virtual ones in real time, so the screen is rendered on top of everything in front of the ARV and don't mind the drop in framerate.

Long story short, it's Awesome, Yet Practical for two reasons. One, it noticeably lessens power usage. Two, you can use it at night without disturbing with the screen light someone trying to sleep next to you, for example. This system would also be a godsend for smartphone users due to their screen size/resolution limitations. Ever wanted to watch a 1080p movie on a smartphone in full resolution without downscaling? Now you can.

edited 11th Jun '14 4:33:45 PM by amitakartok

Bumping because I have a political question.

Does it sound realistically Realpolitik-y to have the nuclear superpowers successfully lobby the various treaties that, in real life, ended up banning the use of nuclear weapons?

Instead, we'd have the UN Nuclear Counterforce Treaty, an official and internationally accepted version of Mutually Assured Destruction. Instead of banning nukes, it legalizes nuclear retaliation: if a country gets nuked, it receives an automatic and immediate UN mandate to respond in kind and nuke the offender right back without liability of any kind. That is, no country can be held responsible for the consequences of a retaliation strike, since according to the treaty, first-use of nukes in aggression marks the offender as fair game for nuclear annihilation and unconditionally forfeits their right to invoke this treaty themselves.

To put it in perspective: if Russia nukes the US, the US can invoke the treaty and nuke back with zero consequences. With their first-use, Russia forfeits their right to invoke the treaty and retaliate against the US retaliation - and if the UK joins the fray on the US' side and nukes Russia after Russia nuked the US, Russia cannot invoke the treaty to retaliate against the UK either since Russia's first-use against the US already forfeited Russia's right to invoke the treaty. This works the other way around, too: if the US nukes Russia first, Russia is allowed to nuke back and if China joins the war on Russia's side, they can nuke the US too. Bottom line: if you nuke someone, the other nuclear powers are allowed to dogpile you. Whoever starts a nuclear war takes all the blame for it, no excuses, no exceptions and no loopholes. Nuclear deterrence taken to a whole new level.

Of course, the nuked country doesn't HAVE to respond with nukes; they are merely legally permitted to return the favor if they choose to, in the same way policemen are allowed to use lethal force against a suspect who attempts to do the same to them.

edited 25th Sep '14 7:03:04 AM by amitakartok

What would be the point of changing those treaties in such a way? Targetting civilians would still be a war crime, and more importantly: if you're willing to nuke another country, I doubt the possible legal consequences would be high on your list of priorities anyway.

Nope, there are many factors that made the policy on nuclear weapons what they were, even if an important detail was changed it would always have another reason. Kind of like how it's really hard to make a water heater explode because it has so many failsafes, nukes are kind of Serious Business so the lawmakers made sure those regulations were as shipshape as they could.

It would be more viable to construct some kind of AU in which these reasons were altered but that would take a bunch of divergence culturally and politically.

edited 27th Sep '14 3:07:47 AM by Slysheen

The reason for this change is that instead of what happened in real life, the US and the USSR both went "Are you seriously this naive?! No fucking way we're giving up our strongest weapons just because you asked nicely! Fuck you, UN, we're not playing this game!" and refused to sign any non-proliferation treaties because the other also refused to sign it.

Seeing this, their satellite allies refused as well (because they knew their ally would back them up with this decision) and the treaties suddenly became impossible to implement because no nuclear power would sign them for fear of disadvantaging themselves against the others, kinda like the "purely rational" solution of the Prisoner's Dilemma in game theory. The Counterforce Treaty was proposed as an (imperfect) alternative.

edited 27th Sep '14 1:42:25 PM by amitakartok

So it's basically Pacific Rim but with the invading forces being comprised of small-scale Jaegers or Mobile Suits instead of Kaiju? Could be interesting.

Well, yeah. Except that the invaders don't attack one at a time and actually use tactics.

On the other hand, many of the invaders are inexperienced recruits, since most of the veterans died in the Frozen Fire War.

Okay then. Here are some other factors to consider:

• How often can the portals/rifts/whatever open? Are they, for lack of a better term, regularly scheduled or are they (from the perspective of "Earth Prime") more or less random like the one Pacific Rim?
• Can the portals be opened anywhere, or are they tied to certain locations? Also, does a portal have to open in the same location in both universes? For example, if the Easterns open a portal in their Red Square, does it have to open in "our" Red Square or can it open in , say, the heart of Central Park?

edited 16th Nov '14 7:45:17 AM by HumanTorch2

Also as for inter dimensional resource looting {{Blame!}} has that as part of its backstory, machines are looting alternate dimensions to build the city.

Also this story is reminding me a bit of Aldnoah.Zero which leads me to think, maybe some of the pilots for the mechs, maybe they were purposely trained as child soldiers.

edited 16th Nov '14 7:31:24 PM by EchoingSilence

From the perspective of the protagonist, random.

Anywhere, but there's a limitation regarding how much displacement there can be between the origin and the destination. For example, a facility on one dimension's Earth cannot portal to the other dimension's Moon, which will be a plot point.

It's not set in stone, however. I might make it so that the portal only connects to the exact same spatial location as itself. Since that happens to be in sparsely-populated Siberia, they shut the portal behind them as soon as they're through and their mechas have radar stealth capabilities, they can effectively avoid detection until they strike.

I'm also conflicted over whether it should be possible for specially modulated radio waves to cross through a portal or should the attackers bring a Mission Control crew on a VTOL AWACS with them. In the former case, they would have the advantage of being able to radio home and have the portal opened for them on demand.

edited 17th Nov '14 3:22:53 AM by amitakartok