TSiaSoS Spork: Part 2, Chapter 7: "Icons & Indications"

[ultimate_cheetah]

Kira the mighty hunter retracts her spikes from the broken bleeding body of her first confirmed kill of a sentient creature. Now read that first line and tell me if you don’t expect the protagonist to be a villain. A bunch of refugees stare at Kira in “shock and horror” which is a realistic reaction. At least they’re not staring at her in admiration, like they probably would in the Cycle. Kira regrets that her trigger happy alien isn’t a secret anymore.

 

Normally at this point in a book, I might feel something, like relief or dread. However, I don’t know what the consequences would be besides the UMC putting her in a containment cell, and since I really don’t care about any of this, that’s of no consequence.

 

By the way, the breach is mostly sealed by the Marmalade’s body. I doubt there will be anything important happen because of this, so it’s not worth mentioning.

Kira goes to where Captain Macaroni, (kid that’s really) Annoying, and Hwa-InaccurateKoreanNameAndSeriouslyCouldn’tPaoliniHaveSpentFiveMinutesOnGoogle, are gathered around Cheap Angst, I mean, Sparrow. Cheap Angst might die. Oh No! We really care about her so much! (Seriously, can’t she just die already? That’s one less stereotype I’d have to keep track of.) Hwa-yInaccurate is very worried. Someone should tell that poor woman that Cheap Angst has Plot Armor. I mean, really. Macaroni tells the refugees to get back before they run out of air. Let’s see if that will be a problem for the rest of the chapter. Oh, we have twelve minutes until the air runs out. That should keep this chapter from being long and padded. And if you believe that, I have real diamonds from King Tut’s tomb. All I need is your social security number, credit card number, and for you to not check your purchases for two weeks. Seriously, don’t.

Kira notices that the adrenaline is draining out of her system. Most of us say we’re fatigued, or tired. Dr. Bollywood comes carrying a bag with “silver cross sewn on the front.” Why is the symbol of healing still a cross? Why is it silver instead of red? Who knows. Dr. Bollywood, MD, and Annoying cut Cheap Angst out of the strut that has impaled her. Triggered misses his laser and cuts Cheap Angst in half. No, that didn’t actually happen, since this world is cold and cruel. What really happens is that they remove the strut from Cheap Angst. That is the one thing you do not want to do.

Whenever someone gets stabbed, any doctor worth their salt, and any nurse, knows that you do not pull out the object. Dr. Bollywood just ensured that Cheap Angst will bleed to death quicker than usual. You know what, I’m taking away his medical degree. He’s just Bollywood now. Bollywood locks Cheap Angst’s armor, though I’m not sure how that will stop the bleeding. Even if he plugged up the wound, there would still be internal bleeding. Hwa-Inaccurate brings Cheap Angst to sickbay, her voice “as hard and rough as broken stone”, thereby showing more emotion than Kira has over the whole book.

They seal the damaged hold, destroying the ticking clock and any tension in this chapter. Macaroni is pretty cheesed off about Kira keeping the Spiked Terror a secret from him. Kira says “I didn’t want to scare you”, which is a bullshit excuse if I ever heard one. Macaroni starts asking her what else she’s hiding, but before she has to explain her body count being larger than she let on, Deus Ex Refugees walk in. Understandably, they want to get to Ruslan and away from Kira the Mighty Hunter. Macaroni says that they can try to fly out with an angry Greg, and am I supposed to like this character. I want to kick him out of an open airlock. One of the refugees drops an ableist insult by calling Greg “crazy ass”, and then, their plot function fulfilled, they walk back to the hold.

Macaroni asks if there are more Preserves on the ship, and Kira says she doesn’t think so, but that she and Annoying found their birthing chamber. Macaroni orders Annoying to burn them up, therefore making a kid complicit in his war crimes. Kira is worried that Annoying might get attacked while he’s in the ship. I am also worried about him getting attacked. Namely, that he won’t. First Mate Nielsen (whom I dub Nelson), along with Hwa-yTooStereotyped gives us the news that Cheap Angst will live. The precedent of using character injury for cheap tension starts here. Don’t worry, everyone, no one will die. (Although you’ll wish they would).

Macaroni tells Hwa-yTooStereotyped to fix the hole in the ship that threatens to kill a bunch of people. Stereotype says “LOL Not until my girl’s out of surgery.” Macaroni’s like “WTF. What the hell am I paying you for? We can’t leave enemy territory until that hole’s fixed.” Hwa whines “Waaa. I don’t wanna! I need to be there with my one-dimensional love interest.”

By this point, both Macaroni and I are out of patience. I mean, do your fucking job lady! Lives are on the line! Is every character here a selfish brat? To his credit, Macaroni doesn’t shoot Hwa-yTooStereotyped in the foot right then and there and says:

“I’m giving you a direct order, Song. As your captain. You understand that, don’t you?”

Whoa, hold up. Why is he addressing her as Song? I’m guessing that would be her family name, so her full name would be Song Hwa-jung, which is not a name I’ve ever heard of. Also, it’s bad writing precedent to have a character refer to another character using a name that’s never referenced in the text.

Hwa-yTooStereotyped still refuses. Macaroni puts his foot down (which he really should’ve done before if he was as tough of a captain as this book says), and tells her to get her ass there, or he’ll relieve her, and put Annoying in charge of engineering.

Hwa-jung clenched her hands, and for a moment Kira thought she would strike Falconi. Jesus Christ, Macaroni does not run a tight ship. If someone is undisciplined like this, they’re a danger to everyone. One may argue that this is because they’re ragtag rogues, but if that’s the case, then it seems like they’re not friends at all and barely tolerate each other.

“If anything happens to Sparrow while I’m gone, you’ll have to answer to me, Captain.”

 

Macaroni and Nelson discuss ship things, and Kira says she’s going to go check on Annoying. Macaroni gives it the A-okay, and says that he’ll send the Entropists in if the ship is clear. Kira goes through the ship and sees Annoying in the process of violating the Geneva Convention by...I’ll just let you see it.

When she arrived at the chamber with the birthing pods, she found Trig going around to each cloudy pod and incinerating it with a flamethrower mounted on his forearm. As he played the jet of fire across one of the larger pods, something thrashed within: an unsettling collection of arms, legs, claws, and tentacles.

If they’re gonna be that blase about it, why don’t they just roast marshmallows in the heat of the flames of burnt Jellies? Kira cheerfully leaves Annoying to his killing spree and explores the rest of the ship. Some of the rooms have water in them, which I find interesting, and there’s this cool little detail where spots with scent act as signs. Of course, they’re still denoted using Paolini’s irritating double bracket method [[like this]], and they also have weird names like “Co-form Restriction Sfar”. Is that supposed to be star, or is that a fakey made-up word? That’s the trouble when you have weird jargon, it confuses the hell out of readers. Really, what’s “Aspect of the Void” supposed to be. It’s explained in the glossary in the back, but you shouldn’t have to read the extra material to understand the story.

There’s also writing. A species that uses writing is currently getting burnt in the other room.

 

Kira reaches a half-circle room with a “twisting, branching structure” that looks like red coral. She tries to touch it and her hand is repelled. Gasp! Apparently this is big news, and it’s explained in a tedious paragraph even though I couldn’t care less. I’ll put it here for the scientifically minded people in the comments.

When she tried to touch one of the branches, an invisible force repelled her hand. She frowned. Naturally occurring gravity fields were attractive (or at least gave the appearance of such). But this … The Jellies had to be using their inertial tech to increase the flow and density of spacetime around the branches to create an area of positive pressure. That would mean their artificial gravity was a push not a pull. As in, it would push her against the floor. Still, she could be wrong. That sort of thing was way outside her area of expertise.

Honestly, it sounds like normal pressure to me. Kira feels up the coral-thing, and thinks that it feels like calcium carbonate, which is what real coral is made of. I didn’t know it had a specific feel, though. Why would Kira know about this anyway? I thought her expertise was xenobiology, unless there’s alien coral I don’t know about. Kira feels sad for some reason, though it’s not indicated through her emotions, rather it’s “a tug of obscure sorrow” never mentioned before. I actually went back to see if I missed something, but nope, never mentioned before. Sloppy, really sloppy. One again, was this thing even edited? Kira follows the tug to “a wall of glass panes and starry lights”, and touches it. Um, Kira, touching things got you into this mess in the beginning. Maybe refrain from getting handsy?

Kira figures out that she needs to produce nearscent, and tries different phrases. But the computer won’t open, so Paolini uses Author Authority to move the plot forward. He doesn’t even try to hide it. Kira says “Two-form … Manyform … Idealis…” Maybe a Jelly mentioned these words before, I can’t be bothered to check. Even so, how did Kira know that those would work, and why would she even think of this? It’s never explained.

The computer starts, and both nearscent and written words show up. Why would there be both of those? That would be like a human computer randomly alternating between typed and spoken words. A word, the “Sundering” is scented, and the Spiked Terror uses its expertise in exposition from its creative writing class in college. A vision happens, described in very purple terms. I don’t get this. Why would Kira describe something she’s seeing in another manner? I suspect this is because Paolini doesn’t filter the writing through the perspective of his characters. Maybe this is the Spiked Terror’s perspective, but if so, it’s badly told.

The vision is about a war between the Jellies. The Spiked Terror and six others like it fought. Sometime they were on the same side, and sometimes they fought each other. And that too was a perversion of the pattern. Never had it been intended, not in all the fractures they served. I don’t know what a fracture is. I assume it’s a side in a battle. There’s a typo: expectedsummons, though I suppose that could just be my online copy. Also, if you think that’s purple, it gets worse:

The conflict had roused a Seeker from its crystalline cocoon. It looked upon the torment of the war and moved to eradicate all such wrongness, as was its wont. And the Sundering had consumed flesh old and new.

What’s the purpose of this? This is foreshadowing that a Seeker will appear later, but it’s easy to miss in a sea of purple. That leaves readers feeling like everything comes out of nowhere. Anyway, three of the Spiked Terrors were killed, one fell into a neutron star, one got lost in superluminal space (a potentially interesting thing that will never be touched on again), and one…”went mad and killed itself”. Fucking wow. First, using the ableist term “mad”, and second, calling people who kill themselves crazy. This is generally used to dismiss people who are struggling. Fuck you and your ableism, Paolini. Fuck it straight to hell.

Better continue before I burst something. The Seeker dies, and the vision ends. Kira hunches over and cries out, then looks back at the computer. The words “now the Arms”, capitalization and all, appear, and Kira cries out again. Jesus, she’s getting pretty emotional here. Oh, never mind, it’s another vision.

This giant Jelly named Ctein, and the suit’s past user, Nmarhl are chatting about the spinward shoal being “destroyed by the indulgence of the Tfeir.” Huh? I’m guessing this is when the war is happening. Ctein blows her (I’m tired of these creatures being called it, and I’m going to assign either a male, female, or nonbinary gender at random) top, and calls the attacker blasphemers and heretics. Why? Is Ctein (these names) trying to set herself up as a god? This is just as weird as when Galby burned Heslant the Mook for blasphemy. I have a different theory about that, however.

Galby: Wow, this book sucks, both in a terrible sense and in the elves’ hairless genitalia sense. I hereby declare it blasphemous against good literature!

But I digress. The whole vision should’ve been cut, by the way. Kira goes back on the computer and finds out the meaning of different words. Farscent and lowsound are FTL communications, and forms are different Jelly shapes. A dictionary lesson. Yay. Do you know what would be better? If Kira intercepted Jelly communications, and learned these words that way. Kira finds out that Wranaui is the Jelly name for themselves. I don’t even know how to pronounce that word (Ran-oi?). This news is so shocking that it causes Kira to feel like she crashed into a wall. Wow. Kira really should stay away from Jelly computers. They aren’t good for her health.

Kira explores the Jelly computer some more, and lucky for her, the Jelly’s language is “relatively unchanged”. Really. I’ve read ahead, and the Spiked Terror’s been isolated for about 400 years. 400 years is the difference between us and Shakespeare. Here’s an excerpt from Othello. See how easy it is to read:

But he; as loving his own pride and purposes,

Evades them, with a bombast circumstance

Horribly stuff'd with epithets of war;

And, in conclusion,

Nonsuits my mediators; for, 'Certes,' says he,

'I have already chose my officer.'

Relatively unchanged, huh. The computer throws a bunch of sensory input at Kira, which is “far too much” for her to keep track of. I wouldn’t have known this unless Kira said it. There’s no hint in her own POV.

Kira can’t find any useful information, so she resorts to a time-honored technique: button pushing. On an alien computer. She even says herself that she could accidentally trigger a self-destruct. Yeah. This predictably doesn’t work, so Kira uses another time-honored technique: hitting things. The computer, sensing an aggressor, goes into a defensive sequence and blasts out a high pitched sound that wouldn’t bother Jellies but would be highly damaging to anything else. No, no, just kidding. That would require Kira to suffer consequences for her actions.

Kira tells the computer to open “shell records”, feeling that shell was the correct word for ship, even though before, she had to discover the Jelly word first. Protagonist Powers, go! Kira finds and reads the message logs, discovering that Jelly society is divided based on which form you had, and which Arm you belonged to. Arms are some kind of organization. Kira sees the word two-form and discovers it means humans. She then thinks something I find interesting: Do they mean men and women? Or something else? Why is someone 200 years in the future thinking about gender as a binary? Are there no nonbinary or gender fluid people in this world? Maybe she means in terms of physical differences, but why would she assume that Jellies knew the difference, and why would her mind jump to that. There are intersex people. I’d assume gender wouldn’t be associated with the number two anymore either. Also, I immediately thought that the Jellies meant legs, because humans have two legs, and jellies have more. The culture in this world seems suspiciously close to America in the 2000’s.

Kira reads that Jellies have bases hundreds of light years away. Our hero is reading from a computer, everyone. This is what I expect when I pick up a book about first contact. Kira reads about attacks from humans on Jellies, including one on a Jelly Space station. This is actually interesting. However, how come there are no records? This could be the start of an interesting mystery. [Reads to end of book.] Never mind. I forgot how this is resolved at all, but it’s so boring or nonexistent that I don’t remember.

Kira thinks about how the summons, the think that caused her to go to the Jellies, was a “maddening distraction” First, who speaks like that, and second, why wasn’t this indicated befo—

Forget it. I’m not going to bother pointing this out anymore. Kira google searches some more and finds that the Jellies are searching for a Very Important Thing. The Jellies also mention that something called the Vanished made the Spiked Terror. An ancient, long-gone alien species that has superior, almost magical tech. Never seen that before.

Back to the Very Important Thing. It’s called, wait for it, the Staff of Blue. Yes, feel the terror and power of the fearsome Staff of Blue. Seriously, see if you can say it out loud without laughing. Then, Kira has a vision of the Staff of Blue. It’s a superweapon and can make ships explode. And basically everything else. Kira also sees the Highmost, one of the Vanished, and it has four arms. There’s no other description. I’m going to assume it has a giant butt for a head now. That makes this book more enjoyable. The summons is mentioned a lot more in Kira’s perspective now, but Kira made it seem like it was in her head for the whole chapter. This gives me the suspicion that Paolini forgot about it at the beginning, then remembered it again, but didn’t go back and edit. Again, I expect more from a published book.

Kira thinks that humans have to get the staff first, and it’s clear that this is the next Macguffin. It’s obviously going to be the main objective of the next part. But this is how she finds out? Through an alien computer? This would be like if Luke found out that Darth Vader was his father through genealogy records! (Oh no, Darth Vader and I are an 80% DNA match. We’re related!) Imagine if Kira snuck onto the ship and found out about the hunt through spying instead. That would require there actually be something interesting in this slag heap of a book, though, and we can’t have that.

The Spiked Terror, as bored as I am, decides to make the plot more forward.

The Soft Blade rippled, and she felt it respond to the summons, answering it with an echo of her angry denial, an inaudible, invisible echo of radiated energy that raced outward, spreading, spreading … spreading across the system.

Kira has accidentally told every Jelly where this ship was, in other words. Kira goes full beast mode on the computer, smashing everything and destroying the transmitter. I actually like this part. Kira has made a mistake, and it was careless, but it’s a character flaw, and is acknowledged as that instead of excused by the narration.

Kira hears a Jelly (still written in that annoying notation) speak. It calls her a defiler, probably because she just wrecked shit, a corrupter, probably for the previous reason, and a blasphemer. Why? Is it against the Jellies’ religious beliefs to smash computers? Kira realizes the Jelly’s right behind her. Oh no, she’ll get eaten! Then Macaroni shoots it, and Kira stabs it. Poor thing didn’t stand a chance. We get some hard to visualize description:

Behind her, an alien flopped in the air. It was brown and shiny and had a segmented body the size of man’s torso. A cluster of yellow-rimmed eyes surmounted its flat, neckless head. Pincers and feelers dangled from what could have been its chitinous mouth, and two rows of double-joined legs (each the size and length of her forearms) kicked and thrashed along its armored abdomen. From its lobster-tail rear trailed a pair of antenna-like appendages at least a meter long.

So it’s a medium-sized brown centipede with an antenna’d lobster tail. That could’ve been said with a lot less words. Macaroni shoots two more times and kills it. He then asks Kira what the hell she’s doing. Kira retracts the spikes covering her, and Macaroni tells her the Jelly was about to kill her. He asks if it’s sentient or not, and Kira says yes. On learning he’s killed a sentient creature, he’s like ‘meh’, and again, am I really supposed to like this jackass? Macaroni again asks Kira what she’s doing. Kira wonders if the Spiked Terror actually sent a message to all the Jellies. She’s just about to answer when Greg interrupts, speaking in the way that no one else speaks. He laughs “with more than a hint of madness.” I will repeat this as many times as it calls for. Fuck you and your ableism straight to hell, Paolini!

All the Jelly ships in the system are heading for the Wallfish. What if someone dies, said no one if they’ve read Paolini’s books before. Greg quite sensibly advises them to get the hell out of there, and the chapter ends.

This chapter should’ve been either trimmed down, or replaced. I’d go with the second option, because otherwise these discoveries fall flat. I’d have Kira sneak onto a Jelly ship to buy time while Hwa-jung repairs the Wallfish, discover all this while spying, destroy some stuff as a diversion, and have the chapter end with the Jellies finding her. But that might cause the reader to have a heart attack from all the action that’s already here. 😤

Next up is With Rainfall with Nowhere to Hide, which should be another action-packed chapter, I’m sure.

Comments

[epistler]

Huh, I guess I was wrong that this is the chapter where Kiragon rescues a poor helpless convenient Cute Little Kid with her super powers and it's not the least bit horribly cliched. It is coming up, though.

Kira can’t find any useful information, so she resorts to a time-honored technique: button pushing. On an alien computer.

"What happens if I press this button?"
"I wouldn't-,"
"Oh."
"What?"
"A sign lit up saying 'Please Do Not Press This Button Again'."

[ultimate_cheetah]

Don't worry, this chapter is full of cliches. Sparrow basically becomes cheap angst at this point.

"What happens if I press this button?" "I wouldn't-," "Oh." "What?" "A sign lit up saying 'Please Do Not Press This Button Again'."

Or.

"Ooh, shiny!" Lasers blast Kira into oblivion.

[epistler]

Sparrow basically becomes cheap angst at this point.

Just like Trig before and after her. I don't even know who the hell she is other than "crew member on the Edible Snail" and "in a lesbian relationship with Asian Stereotype".

Ooh, shiny!" Lasers blast Kira into oblivion.

If only.

[ultimate_cheetah]

Just like Trig before and after her. I don't even know who the hell she is other than "crew member on the Edible Snail" and "in a lesbian relationship with Asian Stereotype".

Yeah I remember that part. I mean, we know you're not going to kill him, Paolini, so just stop milking it and get on with the story already. And the crew members have no personality traits. I was describing them to Mom (I gave her the spork to test-read), and this is what I said:

Falconi: Tough Captain. Has softer side with pets.

Hwa-jung: Stoic asian. Lesbian. Speaks in rougher english sometimes.

Sparrow: Tough military gal. Lesbian.

Vishal: Quiet Indian. Nice. Speaks in formal english.

Trig: Plucky, young, and annoying.

Nielsen: ... ... ..... I literally don't know what to say.

Also, do you notice that only the people who aren't white speak english differently? Like Hwa-jung sometimes speaks rougher english, and Vishal speaks a little too formally, with lots of yeses, as if he's not totally familiar.

[ultimate_cheetah]

If only.

Yeah. Maybe the Space Ra'zac should eat her next?

[cmdrnemo]

Modern world gender politics aside, I will never refer to any of the social studies as real sciences. Especially not Archeology, if you can't test it it isn't a theory. Get a time machine you graverobbers. Humanity in the far future, even in this setting is not going to make sense as a two form being. First, which two forms is rather vague at the best of times. Humans do not have a great deal of sexual dimorphism. I mean, take a quick look at a male deep sea anglerfish at some point. There's a two form species. An alien species would be more likely to be unable to tell our sexes apart. Especially when you consider that, in this setting, there are genetically engineered people adapted to alien biomes. Then they're sitting there going "wow, men and women are really different" while there are some biomechanically augmented robot spider people with liquid cooling lines pumping exotic colours through their brains and exoskeletal armoured crab people from some planet with way to much chlorine in the atmosphere. But, those guys all look the same. Those forms are clearly just variations on the baseline human.

Trouble is, this isn't a sci fi book. It's a comic book with a sci fi plot. Going around asking Spider Gwen's evil counterpart from the Pakled universe to save them from deadly nudists.

Although I am going to argue that hand held weapons are just not going to be powerful enough to punch a hole in the hull of a military star ship. Those things are going to have to be built to resist gigaton to teraton yield anti-ship weapons. Because a laser in that power range is going to come off the front end when it hits the decelerator. So clearly the actual guns have to be a little more deadly than slowing down in your general direction. So, that's a solid meh from me on the grenade launcher.

Then he goes and makes yet another stupid mistake. Not just the Kira finds the alien's secret diary and OMG it thinks Tim is cute! Tim! Really! But, also to learn that humanity is already attacking Jellyspace. That changes things. Humanity is no longer being assaulted by the horrors out of the darkness. Oh no, because of the awkwardness of the timing involved here. Humanity is now the horror out of the darkness attacking the big stupid jellyfish. That's the opposite of what heroes do. I mean look at them. They're just pathetic squishy things. Can't even keep their poor starships clean, or wear clothes, or figure out how down works. It's just so sad.

[ultimate_cheetah]

An alien species would be more likely to be unable to tell our sexes apart. Especially when you consider that, in this setting, there are genetically engineered people adapted to alien biomes. Then they're sitting there going "wow, men and women are really different" while there are some biomechanically augmented robot spider people with liquid cooling lines pumping exotic colours through their brains and exoskeletal armoured crab people from some planet with way to much chlorine in the atmosphere. But, those guys all look the same. Those forms are clearly just variations on the baseline human.

Exactly. Hell, it's hard to tell apart a male and female skeleton when you're an untrained human. Also, men differ a lot from man to man, and woman to woman. Get a 30 year old man from Bangladesh, and compare him to an 80 year old man from Scandinavia. About the robot-people, those are cool ideas, but I'm not sure Paolini thought that far ahead.

Trouble is, this isn't a sci fi book. It's a comic book with a sci fi plot. Going around asking Spider Gwen's evil counterpart from the Pakled universe to save them from deadly nudists.

I'd actually like to read that more than this. But yeah, the whole Soft Blade thing is magic, basically. I mean, how does a sentient being have no DNA? Machines aren't sentient in this setting.

Humanity is now the horror out of the darkness attacking the big stupid jellyfish. That's the opposite of what heroes do. I mean look at them. They're just pathetic squishy things. Can't even keep their poor starships clean, or wear clothes, or figure out how down works. It's just so sad.

That's the whole point of first contact gone wrong. Us using SETI and space exploration to basically shout in a mysterious jungle, and it going wrong in the worst way possible. Aliens who have no intention of being friend, and who see us as parasites, or food. Scary things beyond our comprehension.

When humans attack the aliens however, we become the jerks. Also, with the humans literally burning the aliens to death in the next room it just becomes really uncomfortable, like why are we rooting for this character when she's assisting in war crimes? Also, they're called Jellies. How cute is that? Makes me picture a smiling jellyfish cartoon. And then Kira and co attack them again and again, their guts and blood spilling out in zero g is just, ugh.

Not just the Kira finds the alien's secret diary and OMG it thinks Tim is cute! Tim! Really!

Hehehe.

[epistler]

When humans attack the aliens however, we become the jerks. Also, with the humans literally burning the aliens to death in the next room it just becomes really uncomfortable, like why are we rooting for this character when she's assisting in war crimes?

Yet again Paolini is unable to make his protagonists not come off as way bigger assholes than the "baddies". I've heard that beyond this point the "plot" mostly consists of Kiragon slaughtering lots of guys then hanging around angsting for a while, and then doing it all over again for hundreds of pages.

[cmdrnemo]

I can just see that one playing out.

In the deepest of space far beyond the outer rim two of the ugliest starships ever dreamt up by the most coke addled of minds and assembled with out any trace of skill or pride face off against each other.

Aboard the monkey puke green vaguely triangular one an unhealthily obese woman enveloped by the plaidest of alien parasites stares into what is obviously the wrong monitor. "Mrgrlgrlglr!" Shouts the jellyfish hopelessly on a different screen. His view clearly dominated by her left ear because the camera is at a the wrong zoom setting. "Hello." She says looking for the source of the voice. As though speakers must be aligned with displays or something. "Mrgrlgrlglr, Mrgrlgrlglr." The jellyfish was flashing through a series of annoyed scents to emphasis its point. Obviously a meaningless effort, the other ship simply smelled of some food that had fallen between the cracks between the chairs at some point, no effort had ever been made to clean that, nor would it ever be. Finally the woman turned to the right screen. "Hello, I am Kira." She said.

"Mrgrlgrlglr?" The jellyfish replied.
"Uh huh. We want your ship pieces to add to our ship pieces. Uh huh?" She sounded unsure of that. As though she didn't quite understand the words as she said them.
"Mrgrl, grl glr mrgrl grlglr" It accused.
"Uh huh, we will have power. Uh huh, then we will be strong." She paused after that, staring at the jelly in utter mindless confusion.
"Mr. grl grl glr!" It countered?
"I do not know, uh huh, what you mean."
"Mrgrlgrlglr."
This last exchange repeated for a while. The jelly in its lovecraftian monstrocity of what might very well be a space octopus eating an asteroid or two space whales building a lego set was clearly trying to stall or escape. This nearly worked until the other ship just randomly started shooting everything with deadly lasers. The jelly fought back with it's most powerful thoughts and prayers. Neither side was very effective.

But, Kira had a plan. It was as daring, bold, and complicated as plans get. The greatest example of pakled genius. She climbed out through the airlock, and threw a barrel of pepper at the alien ship. This brilliant strategy obviously worked perfectly because the jellies happened to be allergic to pepper and had rolled the windows down to toilet paper the other ship.

Well, it is at least shorter than TSIASOS so it's got that going for it.

[ultimate_cheetah]

That is so beautifully insane I don't know what to make of it.

[cmdrnemo]

Yeah, I don't know why. But, whenever I picture the Soft Blade it is always Venom but plaid for some reason.

[ultimate_cheetah]

Plaid is fun. I picture it as a purplish-black flowing gooey thing.

[epistler]

Trouble is, this isn't a sci fi book. It's a comic book with a sci fi plot

'zactly. It's full of comic book logic and comic book devices, not to mention concepts lifted straight out of the funny pages. Horribly outdated ones.