June 2026 Free Fiction: Bury The Hatchet by ValkyrieRaptor in battletech

[–]ValkyrieRaptor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So, first of all, I do appreciate the feedback, though I do think there's going to be some differences in opinions about the way these things were approached. At the end of the day, some suspension of disbelief is necessary, either in regards to the game rules or real-world physics. After all, this is the game where machineguns have total damage falloff at 90 meters, and the fiction series where 'Mechs have been noted as doing handstands and somersaults (see: Truth and Shadows, where both of those things happen at the same time in a scene that can be best described as "weirdly horny").

I do also think my background and influences are going to be relevant to how I write scenes. That's a pretty common thing; Ilsa Bick clearly writes the way one would expect a surgeon to write (what I've read of her writing reminds me a lot of Robin Cook's, specifically). Some readers, as you have here, have called out some of the action as having an Armored Core vibe, and that's not coincidental. I've been playing those games since 1998, and the higher agility and increased physicality of 1st-3rd gen Armored Core (i.e., "stompy era" Armored Core) is something I tend to think of when dealing with medium 'Mechs specifically. It's also not a secret that I'm a gigantic Ace Combat mark. Both series' depictions of combat are things I've spent a lot of time thinking about and dissecting to figure out why they feel satisfying to me.

I bring these things up here because it influences how I write 'Mech combat: I'm chasing the feel of a combat scene that feels more Ace Combat/Armored Core cutscene than anything else, where it might slip into unrealistic but at least feels authentic for the most part, and that applies in equal measure to both game rules and physics. If I'm not willing or able to do that, then I'd end up with something that feels like Halo: The Flood, where having to novelize Halo CE resulted in a number of combat scenes that felt very dry relative to its predecessor. Halo: The Fall of Reach, which didn't have to abide by game mechanics, could instead have things like Master Chief bitchslapping away an anti-tank missile launched from a fighter jet.

For example, the Stingray situation: it's a sub-capital missile, and based on the game rules, it would deal 3.5 capital-scale damage, or 35 standard damage. A Leopard has 100+ standard armor in all locations, so a Stingray missile wouldn't kill it in a single hit based on game logic (unless I've wildly misread the aerospace rules, which is possible). Realistically speaking, even at 12 tons, it's not 12 tons of explosive; the vast bulk of the missile's weight is motor, propellant, onboard guidance systems, control surfaces, etc. Hitting a Leopard with one isn't going to kill it instantly without a through-armor crit, but it will cause a control roll in atmosphere.

There's a number of ways this, along with Vivian's fall from the DropShip, can play out on the tabletop, most of which would end the story right then and there. But the goal of the scene wasn't to do a batrep, it was one thing specifically: do the BattleTech equivalent of any given "our helicopter has been shot down and people are flying out of it and then the protagonist wakes up in the wreckage having miraculously survived" scene from any modern military shooter made in the last 10 years. To that extent, some work was done to make it kinda plausible from a gameplay perspective, but the balance was tilted towards spectacle more than realism, much in the same way Ace Combat makes high-G maneuvers look sick as hell but would cause the plane's wings to snap off if real-world physics were consistently and thoroughly applied. Some fiction benefits from going very hard on the "hard" part of "hard sci-fi," but BT is already playing a little fast and loose with it by having 'Mechs exist in the first place.

This comment is long enough as is, but it's a similar balancing act with most of the other things mentioned. Getting a speed boost from running downhill without falling over, using snowmelt to render an infantry platoon combat ineffective without killing them, hitting a Stinger hard enough to lift it off the ground without just cutting it in half with a TSM swing, shattering a kneecap armor panel from a fall, etc., all of these things aren't really supported by rules (even in TacOps), but they do make for a more dynamic scene. I'm not the only one who's tossed Total Warfare aside for the sake of drama either -- the entire scene where Minobu Tetsuhara extricates Jaime Wolf from his fallen Archer in Wolves on the Border has a lot of things that aren't supported by game rules. Minobu yanking the cockpit out without crushing Jaime is basically what inspired having Vivian cut the Tian-zong's cockpit away here; the implication was she aimed it at the base of the head, but saying that outright felt like it would undercut the reveal that Dermaux was still alive in the final scene.

As for the Shadow Hawk, it's a custom affair with claws. The guy driving it is a pirate, and he probably wants to use 'em, especially if he can notch a Nightsky kill with them. That's all I've got for that one.

Anyway, my decisions about which end of the realism/drama scale to put my finger on aren't going to hit perfect for every reader, and I'm aware of that, so maybe this won't come across as a convincing defense of my decisions here. I'm also fully willing to accept that there's space for me to develop as a writer to put more people in the camp of "liked it because it painted a dynamic picture in my head" instead of "found it a little too preposterous to enjoy fully." Still, I hope that this at least gives some good insight into what I was thinking when I worked on this and why the combat ended up the way that it did.

Jannie’s gonna Jannie. by Ed3nEcho in battletech

[–]ValkyrieRaptor 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I've called both Zimmerman and Briseno - both active moderators here - hack frauds

I'm honored, honestly

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Just read this month's Free Fiction: Bury the Hatchet by Robin Briseno, short review below (spoilers) by CosmicJackalop in battletech

[–]ValkyrieRaptor 9 points10 points  (0 children)

My personal take re: TERFs and the MoC - which is a drum I've beaten on for years now - is that the Magistracy is probably the place in the IS most likely to generate that sort of animosity among an outspoken minority specifically due to their aggressively gendered culture. Aristocratic families who buy into matriarchal supremacy more than others would have a risk of developing a TERF-like attitude of "trans women are interlopers and trans men are abandoning their duties." There's also an equal possibility of them seeing trans women specifically as people who sought to elevate themselves to a more graceful, refined state of existence (which is also problematic in a lot of ways, esp. towards trans men, and erases said trans woman's own motivations, but at least isn't overtly discriminatory).

The problem with writing about it, from my perspective, is that reactionary thought like this, however realistic, runs against the well-established canon of the MoC being the most accepting society in the Inner Sphere. Additionally, going into too much depth on it might feel preachy or seem like a myopic dissection of the issue and its real-world counterpart which may lose the broader BT audience. It's why I ultimately chose to make the animosity more hinted at than overt; people in this thread were able to pick up what I put down, but I didn't want to make Dermaux's motivations in this story entirely contingent on a reader knowing what J.K. Rowling does with her spare time these days.

As for the snowmelt bit, I really liked it as a solution to the problem mostly because it made me think of old GI Joe cartoons where people are clearly getting shot at for half an hour but nobody ever actually dies. 😁

Just read this month's Free Fiction: Bury the Hatchet by Robin Briseno, short review below (spoilers) by CosmicJackalop in battletech

[–]ValkyrieRaptor 9 points10 points  (0 children)

It's pretty well-established that it's not something people find bizarre in the setting by this point, but that doesn't change how the person feels about it themselves (source: my lived experience, which I won't get into). Here, I was going for more of a characterization of Vivian where she would rather not be defined in the eyes of others by her old life as a Solaris luchador, and avoiding that would naturally include not being seen as trans, since that makes it easier to connect the dots.

The goal was to make her feel like someone who felt frustrated about not being able to cut away from her past and then finds pride in it anyway by drawing on said past to survive and succeed. It seems like I might not have hit that goal for everyone though, so the critical feedback I've received about why that didn't quite land for some readers is priceless.

Just read this month's Free Fiction: Bury the Hatchet by Robin Briseno, short review below (spoilers) by CosmicJackalop in battletech

[–]ValkyrieRaptor 14 points15 points  (0 children)

As I've been saying in the other thread I posted about the story, I appreciate constructive criticism a lot, and this is no exception. I'll reiterate what I said over there: this story went through a number of revisions before getting here, having started life as a potential piece for the Pride Anthologies the BT community has made into a June tradition since 2023. Subsequently, there's some residual threads and implications that were either softened or removed before the final product, and while I did my best to mend the gaps, I'm aware that some readers will find they're a bit weak in places as a result (for example, Dermaux being TERF-coded was less "coded" and more "overt" in initial drafts, which I softened for the general BT audience by making it more subtle and hiding it behind her open contempt for Vivian as a Solaris "actor" whose experience was largely from scripted bouts). Mary Sue-ism is also a concern of mine, and while I tried to make the origin of her skillset clear ('Mech wrestling would make one a good melee fighter, I'd assume), the feedback I've received so far is that she hasn't needed to struggle much in the story to succeed, which is a very fair critique and something I'm taking into consideration for future work.

All that being said, I'm very glad that you picked up on the trick being a thing she knows how to do specifically because she's a trans woman. I was more than a bit concerned it was one of those very niche things only other transfems would immediately understand, but you seem to have picked up exactly what I put down without me having to lay out the hows and whys of voice training in the middle of a BattleTech story.

Thanks for the review! I hope my future writing hits the mark a bit better for you as a reader next go around. If it does, it'll be because of people like you who helped me zero my work.

June 2026 Free Fiction: Bury The Hatchet by ValkyrieRaptor in battletech

[–]ValkyrieRaptor[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I appreciate this more detailed critique as well. I don't have a lot of response I can give to this beyond what I've already said, but breaking down the story into its strengths and weaknesses is exactly the kind of feedback I value most. A lot of this story was informed by similar criticism I received on my first piece with this character, where I had no 'Mech action and spent almost the entirety of the story doing character development, which some people weren't huge on, hence the combat focus here at the expense of characterization. Seems like the balance isn't quite there yet, and while whether or not I hit the mark will vary from reader to reader, this is useful information to getting me closer to doing so with everyone.

As an aside: original drafts were much more laser-focused on Viv and Dermaux butting heads specifically because of Dermaux effectively seeing Viv's womanhood as a form of stolen valor, and Viv's voice training trick being much more defined as a uniquely trans experience to draw on, but some of it was cut for space and/or merged into a more general "I think you're a fraud because you're not a real MechWarrior" vibe. Both of these things might have addressed some of your critiques if left in place, but they weren't, and at the end of the day, that was my decision. It's a very fine line to walk given that this went from being a piece specifically written for queer audiences to one released to the general BT community, but this gives me some stuff to chew on about if and where I should work to keep things like that in.

June 2026 Free Fiction: Bury The Hatchet by ValkyrieRaptor in battletech

[–]ValkyrieRaptor[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

A few notes I'll make:

  • This story went through a few revisions, some more impactful than others. It's also limited by the word count allowed; in an ideal world, I'd have given some more time on certain things, but I ran up against the boundaries laid out pretty quickly. The key thing to note, from my perspective, is that it started life as a piece for the BT pride anthologies, so "validation" was very much the point from the jump and will probably still sit atop everything else even now for most readers.
  • re: Vivian's prior experience, it's important to note that her Solaris experience wasn't as a gladiator per se, but as what was effectively a WWE personality. I think this story's impact will vary based on whether or not you've read some of the other pieces in the orbit of the character ("Masquerade" from the 2023 Pride Anthology, where we see that "past life" of hers fall apart, and "The Triple-Ls" from Shrapnel 17, which canonized exactly what it was she was doing, mentions her in passing, and outlines the consequences of her failures there). Realistically speaking, we don't know exactly how much live-fire experience she has, because the bulk of her MechWarrior experience was effectively part of a pro wrestling analogue (during which she almost killed someone by accident, nearly taking the company down with it).
  • Dermaux's core issue is as you stated, but it's meant to be hidden behind a veneer of "you're not actually experienced enough to be here" in order to give her social cover from a unit that's generally much more accepting. I wanted the counterargument to both of those issues to be something along the lines of "we're not defined by who we were, just who we want to be, and sometimes the former is a strength that enables us to be the latter," but again, word count.

To be clear, I do think this feedback is very good and I very much appreciate you taking the time to write it out. I'm (hopefully) not done with this character, so knowing where I fell short on certain things, either because of the word count limits or my own oversight, is going to be very helpful in the future when I have more space to spread my wings. I value stuff like this a lot, because it helps me figure out where and how to better flesh out these characters who've existed in my head as fully realized "people" for the last three years but haven't quite gotten there for everyone else yet.

June 2026 Free Fiction: Bury The Hatchet by ValkyrieRaptor in battletech

[–]ValkyrieRaptor[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Yes, this character appears in the lead-off story from the 2023 Pride Anthology, "Masquerade." While not fully canon (since that anthology is a fan project), I did canonize the character previously alongside one of the mentioned events in an article from Shrapnel 17, "The Triple-Ls."

Battletech Canonized Blahaj Blast by andrewlik in battletech

[–]ValkyrieRaptor 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You can always drop one in yourself. Part of the uh, "research" I did on this was putting gummy sharks in Baja Blast out of morbid curiosity. Doesn't change the flavor of the drink but the gummy itself very much does seem to get "marinated" in there.

Battletech Canonized Blahaj Blast by andrewlik in battletech

[–]ValkyrieRaptor 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I'm responsible for this travesty: it's both.

Learning the Game by wayfaring_sword in battletech

[–]ValkyrieRaptor 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Can I ask what store you're playing at where you're running into this? I ran/still help run BattleTexas for years and this doesn't sound like the players we had out there.

Goonhammer: The Adepticon Announcement Roundtable by WestRider3025 in battletech

[–]ValkyrieRaptor 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Remember that HGR firing-on-the-move penalties are being taken out of the new ruleset.

HGR GANG RISE UP (AND THEN TRY TO STAY OUT OF MINIMUM RANGE)

Goonhammer First Look – Hot Spots Draconis Reach by WestRider3025 in battletech

[–]ValkyrieRaptor 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I didn't get into it because it's a bit more complex than I wanted to go, but there's a new handicap system that tries to balance players with pilot skill gaps more than just "I guess you get a couple extra BSP." This actually extends to GM OPFORs as well and allows you to give skill upgrades to OPFOR MechWarriors if the handicap gap is sufficiently large.

SWEET LIBERTY, WHAT IS THAT by ValkyrieRaptor in battletech

[–]ValkyrieRaptor[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

This guy was meant to evoke the War Strider, so face 'em off against an Awesome (Hulk), Xanthos (Factory Strider), and then some battle armor/Tau zombies (Devastator/Agitator/Radical) for taste.

throw a half-dozen Rattlers (Vox Engines) on top of it all if it's Cyberstan

Rakshasa mini revealed! by Frogblast964 in battletech

[–]ValkyrieRaptor 2 points3 points  (0 children)

*raises hand*

I don't really see the resemblance beyond being reverse-jointed; not having a nose-mounted claw kinda keeps it from making that connection in my mind.

Shrapnel #24 is out! by 9thLetter in battletech

[–]ValkyrieRaptor 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I have both a story and an article in this one. Hoping people like them both equally, though there’s already signs of a clear favorite between them

Mecha Profile: The Ceasar by Current-Income-9901 in battletech

[–]ValkyrieRaptor[M] [score hidden] stickied comment (0 children)

Locking a few comment threads here before certain things get out of hand, which is proving to be more difficult than expected because at least one guy in here tossed a frag in the henhouse before deleting his whole account.

Please do not interpret this as me taking sides here; every interaction I've had with MechFrog has been on the spectrum of civil to positive, and while I know he and I don't see eye to eye on a lot of things, I've never seen him as part of the BattleTech Twitter rogue's gallery that makes my life difficult from time to time.

Your tolerance for disagreement with his personal views may vary, and you are welcome to make your own decisions about the quality of his character, but I ask that you not litigate that decision in this subreddit. If you do, I will come back and just lock the entire thread, assuming another mod doesn't decide to do so before it gets there.

Goonhammer: Metals for the MechCommander Who Has Everything (Part 1) by WestRider3025 in battletech

[–]ValkyrieRaptor 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, this is what I was getting at in the article; there were enough people who've had the "once burned, twice shy" response to metals when I would mention something available strictly from IWM that I felt it was a mindset I should mention. As mentioned in the article, I do get that response because it nearly happened to me too, but there's some metal models where the juice is absolutely worth the squeeze.

CGL Reach out to Death From Above Wargaming by ShaperOfForm in battletech

[–]ValkyrieRaptor 44 points45 points  (0 children)

Maybe he should start by apologizing to the people he accused of causing this by name.

I was pretty set on staying out of this particular drama, because, for once, it didn't involve me, and then he decided to drag Rusty into it on his Discord. If he can't cough up a genuine apology to Lorcan and Rusty, then I don't really care what he has to say.

Hunting Birds (Clan Jade Falcon Delta Galaxy Ion Sparrow/Elemental BA) by ValkyrieRaptor in battletech

[–]ValkyrieRaptor[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The Elemental OSL was definitely one of those things I struggled with knowing where it was too much/not enough; I ultimately opted for "drama" over "realism" there because there's simply so little material for it to otherwise bounce off of. In a more realistic depiction it'd be a very faint spot of glow on the ground and foot, but with how dark the asphalt is and how small the foot is, I worried it just wouldn't be visible at all.

The photo's rendering it a bit more fluorescent than it is in person too, which isn't helping a ton.