2392: SUECOM: Mirror Image – Chapter 2, Part 1
Posted: August 3, 2019 Filed under: Stargate, XCOM, XSGCOM: Mirror Image | Tags: Adventure, Stargate SG-1, Stu-Over, Television, Video Game, XCOM 20 Comments
Title: XSGCOM Mirror Image
Author: Hotpoint
Topic: X-COM: UFO Defence/Stargate SG1
Media: Video game/TV show
Genre: Adventure
URL: Chapter 2
Critiqued by Crazy Minh
Hello folks, and welcome back to “XSGCOM: Mirror Image”! I’m your guest host, Crazy Minh, and today we cover the first part of the second chapter! Now for a recap!
Previously on XSGCOM: Mirror Image…
SUECOM SOLDIER: What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire UK armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the world and you’re being located right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United Kingdom Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your question was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.
MAJOR WADE: Hey, all I asked was where the bathroom was! You don’t have to get defensive! Also, stop snarling at the wall. It’s giving me the wrong impression.
***
MAJOR WADE: So what’s this thing?
SUECOM SOLDIER: It’s da most powarful gun in da house!
MAJOR WADE: It looks like a bright red dildo.
SUECOM SOLDIER: Well, what do you think we use it for? Killing aliens?
***
SUECOM SOLDIER: We’re so xenophobic that we’re going to kill Earth’s most powerful ally, even though we stand no chance at all!
MAJOR WADE: Oh god…you can’t do that! The Asgard are our friends!
SUECOM SOLDIER: THEY’RE CALLED SECTOIDS YOU SACK OF SHIT!!! WE LOVE WATCHING THEM GET VIVISECTED!!! IT’S CALLED MOVIE NIGHT AROUND THERE PARTS!!!
MAJOR WADE: Um…I’ve gotta go…I don’t have time for assholes.
And now the continuation…
I own neither Stargate nor the X-COM franchise. No infringement is intended, no profit is to made and I’m just not worth the hassle of suing anyway unless you want a share of the wages of an underpaid Civil Servant.
Hawaii – Earth – August 2000
As opposed to…Y’know, this joke’s getting old. Let’s try something different.
*CLICK*
Major Cameron Mitchell slowly started to push the throttle up as soon as he cleared land, he didn’t want to leave a sonic boom behind to ruin the surfing going on down there but once he was out over the Pacific it was time to have some fun.
TOK’RA: (12)
Also, oh Hai Mitchell! Mitchell, played by Ben Browder of Farscape Fame. When he joined the cast of Stargate (alongside former Farscape co-star Claudia Black), Farscape had just been cancelled. Coincidentally, Colonel Jack O’Neill had retired from SG1, and was now a general heading up the Office of Homeworld Defence. Thus, Major Cameron Mitchell joined SG-1, replacing O’Neill as team leader. So, at this point, he must still be a test pilot for the US military. I wonder why he’s flying over Hawaii though? He’s meant to be stationed in the Middle East, flying F-16’s. So why is he here?
As the twin pulse detonation engines started to strut their stuff he felt himself pushed back hard in his seat and the mach meter dial being projected onto the Head Up Display in front of him started spinning upwards fast. He could have altered the display to give him a digital readout instead but he liked watching those dials spin as the fighter effortlessly went through the speed of sound and kept accelerating smoothly towards Mach 2 and beyond.
TOK’RA: (13)
What the fuck is he flying? This isn’t a F-16, and the F-302 Fighter/Interceptor hasn’t even been developed yet! If this is set around ‘Watergate’, they haven’t even gotten around to testing the slightly modified Goa’uld Death Glider that they captured from Apophis following his attack on earth! Which failed, by the way!
The guys back at base just called it an Interceptor, which was its function in a nutshell, but technically it was an XF-701 Sigrdrífa, and it was named for its spiritual ancestor the XB-70 Valkyrie bomber, a Nineteen-Sixties design for a very high speed bomber that could maintain high supersonic speeds for an unusually long time because of a little trick it had of actually riding its own supersonic shockwave almost like a goddamn surfboard, the beach bums being left far behind would have appreciated the technique. Once past the sound barrier the last third of each delta wing folded downwards to an angle of 65 degrees to best catch the wave and it was surf’s up dude as many an XF-701 Pilot was known to joke, even the ones not based in Hawaii.
TOK’RA: (14)
Oh shit, I do NOT like where this is going…
When the UFO’s started turning up in ’98 the various airforces that tried to catch them had run into one major stumbling block, the damn saucers were just too damn fast. The Japanese Kiryu-Kai flying F-15J’s never got close and even the Russians found that their notably faster fighters, the MiG-25’s and 31’s, couldn’t be vectored in quickly enough, they had the sprint speed but not the endurance to get where they needed to be before the unwelcome visitors made themselves scarce.
[Headdesk]
TOK’RA: (15)
Earth needed a fighter that could get up to beyond Mach 3.2 and stay there, so they dusted off the 1960’s Valkyrie program, made a smaller scale copy and then as the piece de resistance stuck on two pulse-detonation engines that had come from the same stable as the Hypersonic Aurora Spy-Plane program. The result was a machine that could really haul-ass, and thanks to avionics, radar and electronics taken from aerospace firms all over the world, plus a decent weapons load, it could kick it too.
Jesus Christ, I may not be a aerospace engineer, but this seems like a incredibly bad design. Even from a engineering standpoint, just sticking on two engines to the craft isn’t going to do much! I did look this up though, and the design wasn’t exactly perfect. There were apparently numerous flaws with the design, such as a vulnerability to SAM batteries; a tendency for the superstructure to fail while travelling at Mach-3 and above, wings falling off, engines falling off…I mean, they MIGHT have fixed that, but there’s far better tech that can do the same thing and more. I also think that it’d be better to design something from the ground up. The XB-70 was apparently designed as a supersonic bomber, back when the intercontinental ballistic missile was a pipe dream. It’s not really designed as a interceptor. So…new counter? Computer?
*BEEP*
Badly Enacted Engineering Practices: (2)
Mitchell headed towards his target as the XF-701 Sigrdrífa, named for one of the Valkyrie’s of myth, and which literally meant “Victory Bringer”, passed through Mach 3 and he was soon tearing across the sky going a thousand miles an hour faster than a speeding bullet. He maintained radio silence and had his own radar shut down, being vectored towards his target by X-COM’s base dug in up on Mauna Loa, the fighter was shielded against electronic emissions, and the particularly vicious ECM they used, but he certainly didn’t want to loudly advertise his presence until he was coming up on firing range.
TOK’RA: (17)
That’s a really convoluted way of saying that the fighter was in stealth mode, and also reiterating that it travels at supersonic…speeds…oh shit, that was redun…
AWOOGA!!! AWOOGA!!!
Tactical Redshirt: Contact! DRD Warbirds vectoring in on our position! Heading two-two-four-point-nine-eight-six!
Action stations. Set condition one throughout the ship. Shields up, arm all railgun batteries. Load the Furpvay tubes. Bring us around, helm.
[SCENE REDACTED FOR EXTREME VIOLENCE]
Mitchell began humming a tune, this was his fifth interception which meant if the saucer went down instead of him, he was about to become the third guy to make ace shooting down alien spaceships. Not that he could boast about it anywhere but at the bar back at base, but he was itching to get that tiny saucer number five painted just below his canopy.
TOK’RA: (19)
He was carrying a full war load, six of the AIM-54X Avalanche Missiles, an upgraded and modified version of the venerable Phoenix which sacrificed some of the range for greater speed and a larger warhead, usually a five kiloton yield nuclear device but this time the first two off the rails would be something special.
TOK”RA: (20)
While I initially thought this was a stupid decision on the behalf of the author, I was swiftly corrected by Batjamags and Zeus Killer Productions on the topic of avalanche missiles from the original game. Unfortunately, this showcases a tendency for Hotpoint to treat gameplay as gospel, and as proven by the riffs of Subnautica The Novel (Chapter Bundle 4 is out!), The Legend of Zelda: The True Force, and dozens more; such regurgitation is almost always detrimental to the quality of the story. That’s not to say it’s all that bad. I myself have been guilty of the same thing. To be perfectly honest, I myself might as well be classified as a badfic writer! Most of my early stories on FF.net were inspired by stories I wrote when I was 13, and admittedly the quality- or rather the lack thereof- shows in my two earliest stories Borderlands: The Post Sequel and Subnautica: The Depths of the Night. I did have one prior to that, but it was really shitty, and no one read it, so I deleted it almost immediately after writing the third chapter. Hell, until Outbound Hopes, most of my chapters were around 500 words in length, which is really stupid, and I still average around 2500 words per chapter on my current projects! But I digress, and this was extremely tangential to begin with. Let’s move on.
His father had been a test pilot but Dad had never got to try out something this special Mitchell thought as he approached the target, even with the shielded electronics and the heavy use of radar-absorbent-material in the airframe the bugs were bound to pick him up soon.
Well, at least that’s canonical. But still:
*DING*
TOK’RA: (21)
I have a sinking feeling that the Tide Of Kringy’ Run-on Ass-speak counter is going to triple over the course of this chapter. It was at 11 as of the end of Chapter 1, and I suspect it’ll be up to 33 or more by the time we’re done with chapter 2.
‘Crap’ he swore as the threat warning box indicated that the saucer had picked him up. There was no point in trying to be sneaky now, once they got a lock on you it stayed locked, so Mitchell powered up his radar, an AN/APG-79 from the F-22 program and started hunting.
Um…this is August 2000 right?
*looks shit up*
OK, I’ll admit that I had the wrong idea there. I did already know that the F-22 Raptor wasn’t introduced until December 2005, but what I didn’t know was that the plane was already flight-ready, and had already performed its first flight in September 1997. So, I will grant the author a redemption cookie for doing some pretty decent research over this. But still:
TOK’RA: (22 – the counter has now doubled)
As a fighter pilot going after them, the best thing you could say about the bugs was that, unless you ran into their very biggest ships, the Avalanche outranged their Plasma Beams.
I dunno about the original game, but in terms of the 2013 reboot, the plasma beams can hit you anywhere on the screen. IIRC, the only two weapons with the same range are the Avalanches, and the Fusion Lances you reverse-engineer from the alien beam weapons themselves. In addition, I think a race as advanced as the ones in X-COM would at least know to fire their beam weapons at the shooty explodey missiles so that they don’t blow up your ship. I get that this isn’t part of either continuity within the games. But still, it’d actually create a reason for X-COM to create a new way of shooting down UFO’s, like a beam weapon of their own, or some kind of ballistic weapon.
A couple of other X-COM fighter-jocks had found out the hard way about the reach of those big bastards and since then they only ever tried to tackle them on the ground, though that of course was hard on the poor bloody infantry instead.
TOK’RA: (23)
So, because the fighter pilots got shot down, they tried to take down the UFO on foot? Even though their craft are really fucking fast as stated in this fic? The intelligence level of the X-COM soldiers just drastically dropped in my eyes.
This thing looked to be one of their mediums, you could usually reckon to need several nearby Avalanche detonations to bring those down, and after the first couple they would typically throttle up and outrun your sorry ass which kinda sucked after you went to so much effort to fly over and offer them an extremely warm welcome to planet Earth.
TOK’RA: (24)
So, you typically need several nuclear detonations to take down a enemy UFO? Assuming this happens consistently- I.e. nuclear detonations going off around the globe- it’d be a nightmare to keep the public from panicking. Also, it’d be a nightmare to contain the massive fallout effects. Oh, and you’d probably damage public utilities with the EMP effect from a airburst.
Hopefully this time was going to be very different, they wouldn’t be getting the chance to respond to the first howdy-do’s, it would be a done-deal with the first handshake.
TOK’RA: (25)
I have no idea what that’s meant to mean. Are they killing aliens, or conducting a business transaction? Does anyone else want to chip in?
Turning on his telemetry transmitter, so that the boys watching with interest back home could watch the action, Mitchell waited until he was a couple of nautical miles inside the maximum range on his AIM-54X’s and tried for a lock.
Their ECM and ECCM was good, but X-COM had taken apart a couple of the units stripped from UFO’s captured on the ground and knew how to avoid them breaking the lock like they used to at first.
I’m no expert on missile locks, but a quick search on Wikipedia shows that modern day missile locks do not give the target any indication that something has locked onto them. The targeting data is simply programmed into the missile’s onboard computer. Thus, I highly doubt that the aliens have any way to break said lock, unless it involves either destroying the missile, or damaging or disabling the avionics package in the missile, thus rendering it useless. Considering that the interceptor has a targeting system from the F-22 program, I’d say that the craft most likely uses a modern target lock system.
‘Lock and tone’ Mitchell said to nobody but himself. ‘Fox-Three’ he added and launched the first two Avalanche Missiles from the rails which were partially recessed into the wings to reduce aerodynamic drag.
While the use of military lingo suggests research, I won’t be handing out a redemption cookie for that, as this is lingo commonly featured in movies involving fighter piloting. And games. And really any audiovisual media. What I will be handing one out for is the momentary loss of the damm run-on sentences. Actually, I’ll hand out two, since I missed handing one out for the last two paragraphs in the previous ficbit. *slow clap*…well done. You get two cookies.
The twin missiles tore off ahead of the Interceptor riding a trail of fire from their rocket engines, hurtling up to beyond Mach 5 and rapidly closing the gap with the alien ship.
Huh. Another cookie for decent description that my imagination can actually depict.
‘If you’re listening to this on the charred remains of my black box flight recorder the geeks got the minimum safe distance wrong’ Mitchell observed wryly as he tracked both missiles and target on his radar. The aliens didn’t seem to have true stealth but rather an active cancellation system that left a lot to be desired because you could still track them even if only intermittently sometimes.
Wait, what???
‘If you’re listening to this on the charred remains of my black box flight recorder the geeks got the minimum safe distance wrong’
*headdesk*
So you’re telling me that not only have they build some enhanced nuclear weapon (which I assume uses Naquadah in the warhead to enhance the yield of the nuke), which could potentially have unforseen consequences (which does actually happen in the 4th season episode ‘Chain Reaction’, and turns a entire planet into a ball of frakking plasma)…BUT THEY HAVEN’T EVEN RUN TESTS ON THE FUCKING WEAPON????
*headdesk*
Even the scientists and engineers of the fucking Manhattan Project weren’t this bloody stupid when they came up with the first nuclear weapon. There were extensive tests before Hiroshima and Nagasaki! Hell, this was during one of the biggest conflicts in human fucking history, and they still found time to test the superweapon to end all superweapons!
*BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP*
Badly Enacted Engineering Practices: (10002)
*PHTOOM*
Dumbasses!
TOK’RA: (26)
The UFO, one of the types X-COM had christened an “Abductor”, because of it’s primary and unsettling function, was just starting to accelerate away when the two missiles arrived within the range set for their proximity fuses and simultaneously detonated roughly eight miles above the Pacific and approximately three hundred and fifty miles East of the Hawaiian Islands.
*sigh*
TOK’RA: (27)
I take my previous comment back. We might actually triple the count in the first part of this chapter.
X-COM had never used Naquadah enhanced warheads before but they instantly became huge fans when the Avalanches, their nuclear yields increase by well over an order of magnitude by only a few kilos of the material, promptly enveloped the alien craft in a thermonuclear fireball that was visible almost all the way back to Hawaii and which basically turned the thing to plasma in a nanosecond.
I won’t reiterate what I said about the bad engineering, but I don’t think Hotpoint gets what a order of magnitude is, or how to use the phrase in a sentence.
TOK’RA: (28)
Extremely glad they had advised him to steer away, run like hell and keep his eyes squeezed firmly shut under a pair of aviator sunglasses Cameron Mitchell wondered if it still counted as a kill if there wasn’t really any physical evidence left that the target had ever actually existed in the first place? He also decided to advise them that a full load of six Naquadah enhanced AIM-54X’s was probably overkill and they might as well stick on one of the new Laser Cannons as a backup instead.
Why the fuck would you need a backup if this is what happens with two fucking missiles? Why would you just give someone fucking aviator sunglasses when they’re firing off a nuke? The crew of the B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay, the craft which dropped the Hiroshima bomb, were all issued the equivalent of fucking welding goggles to protect their retinas. They dropped the very first nuclear bomb, which is weak as hell compared to what Mitchells is firing off here. And he’s wearing fucking sunglasses. Does he want to be blinded, or has SUECOM just turned his brain into fucking taffy?
*BEEP*
Badly Enacted Engineering Practices: (10003)
TOK’RA: (30)
Yup, he was definitely glad he took the X-COM job when they offered it to him instead of quitting the Airforce, he decided. Well what were the chances he was going to be offered any other job remotely as cool as this one in the future if he had turned them down?
Well, I dunno. You could be appointed head of SG-1, and travel through the Stargate to other planets? Also, you could fly the F-302 Fighter-Interceptor in space? And captain a fucking supercarrier in space???
*headdesk*
Shooting down ships crewed by a race everyone was starting to call the Asgard with a fighter named for a figure from Norse Myth was a damn fine notion too he decided, as he headed back to base wondering if a victory roll over the airfield would be too much?
THEY’RE!!!
*PHTOOM*
NOT!!!!
*PHTOOM*
THE!!!!
*PHTOOM*
FUCKING!!!
*PHTOOM*
ASGARD!!!
*PHTOOM*
YOU!!!
*PHTOOM*
DUMBASS!!!
*PHTOOM*
With that, we end the first part of chapter two. While we didn’t end up tripling the Tide Of Kringy-Ass’ Run-on Speak counter this time round, but I’m thinking we’ll see 33 in part 2 of this unholy chapter. I’ve been your guest riffer Crazy Minh, and I’ll see you…later.
Library of the Damned 
More game mechanics. The interceptor you start with isn’t really equipped to take on the larger ships, but it can trail them at a safe distance until they land, which allows you to deploy your ground team to breach it and try to kill all the aliens. Why the aliens don’t just take off is unclear, but I’d guess they probably are busy with their mission and think they can win without running.
He ain’t kidding about it being hard on the infantry, either. On my playthrough (which I haven’t touched in a while, actually), I once cleared out an entire terror ship with no casualties, and then in the next mission lost most of my team attacking a scout ship, because X-COM.
That’s XCOM Baby!
What I took it to mean was that the pilots got shot down, bailed put, and then attempted to continue the pursuit on foot.
I feel like you’re mixing metaphors here.
So…off topic here…but has anyone heard of the YouTube channel “Internet Historian”? They’re doing a dramatic read of Sonic High School sometime next week.
I know him. And what exactly is that? Other than “probably bad.”
Look it up. There’s a riff of it by Lyle here on the Library. Nearly pissed myself laughing the first time I read it.
Looked it up.
Ended up looking into Face the Strange when that got referenced.
Ended up re-reading the Homura Afterstory riff when Ulrich-Stu got mentioned (cracks table with rage).
All in all, a productive afternoon.
Dude, we all know how to use Wikipedia, you don’t have to copy the articles into your fic.
I actually wrote this story and amusing though these reviews are (though not for the intended reason I’m sure) might I suggest you use the TtH version of XSGCOM in future because I included hyperlinked references in the author’s notes there for the benefit of those less familiar than myself as regards X-COM and Stargate canon. The story originated on spacebattles forums and was always intended to have these but ff.net won’t allow it.
https://www.tthfanfic.org/Story-16092/Hotpoint+XSGCOM+Goa+uld+Defence.htm
Just to note one thing that made me particularly chuckle in the latest review though. The events of “Chain Reaction” only occurred because there was naquadah on the target world (unlike Earth) and that wasn’t really unforeseen, they blew the planet up deliberately as a test to see if they could. As for the nuke flash, X-COM were already using nuclear missiles to shoot down UFO’s long before they got any naquadah, so logically the Interceptor canopy is already protected against flash, going a little further in precaution for the bigger yields is just playing safe.
As for having a laser cannon as backup, a nuke is massive overkill against a deathglider and besides which you can’t reverse-engineer small pieces of radioactive metal fragments. ;-)
Holy shit, author endorsement
[ahem]
Heya Hotpoint. It’s nice to see you’re taking this in stride. I have PM’d you on FF.net…and left three reviews…and I honestly didn’t expect you to have found this before I even sent that PM. So, welcome to the Library!
Second: this is kinda awkward. You’re a reasonably good writer. Seriously, we’ve seen worse around here. But there are major flaws with this story, and honestly? They’re fixable.
But for the love of all thst is frakking holy: fix that goddam grammar ;) !!!
Yeah, I didn’t want to complain before, but since you bring this up, I have been pretty confused that this fic is not actually all that bad. Some overreliance on game mechanics and the X-COM characters are kind of jerks, but given that the premise seems to intentionally involve how over-the-top the game’s X-COM would look to outsiders, even that makes sense.
It’s a HFY fic, bats. It mucks with the Stargate canon. A lot. As we will (hopefully) see.
Truth be told, it’s more the way that XCOM behave that caught my eye. They seem to act like edgy 13-year olds pretending yo be badass space marines. Which is really jarring at times.
Then there’s the whole slew of times later on where the issues that took entire episodes to solve in SG1 are magicked away by XCOM’s superior stu-ness, for apparently no reason other than ‘XCOM is the best’.
Truth be told, I’m beginning to see that most of the ussues with this fic boil down to attrocious SPaG, XCOM being xenophobic jerks in a universe where this shouldn’t be tollerated by any of the friendly factions, and a gradual descent of the story intomadness. I’m not having much fun writing the riffs either. There’s entirechapters further ahead that are kinda a slog to find something riffable in, and it kinda goes up/down in wuality almost at random.
Putting the grammar issues aside (proof-reading is for the weak ;-p ) most of the flaws, as you see them, aren’t really flaws they’re deliberate. The egregious HFY aspect of the first few chapters, to give one example, is more of a bait-and-switch than you may think. There are reasons why X-COM troopers come across like they do and it’s not a exactly a ringing endorsement of their methods.
It’s X-COM canon, not game mechanics, that they went from assault rifles, kevlar body armour and VSTOL jet transports in January 1999 to plasma weapons, man-portable nukes, applied psionics, powered-armour and interplanetary spacecraft before the end of 2002. Their ability to not only reverse-engineer alien technology but improve upon it and get it into the field in a matter of weeks *is* ludicrous but it is also canon so if you throw that out it’s just not X-COM anymore baby. ;-)
Their casualty rates aren’t just game-mechanics either. It’s canon that they have the highest PTSD rates of any military unit in history. Think of the average trooper as being “war wacky” and they make a lot more sense. “Don’t talk about the First Alien War. You weren’t there man”, as it were.
Given what SG-1 managed with MP-5’s and P90’s isn’t it entirely logical that they would get even better results if equipped with X-COM tech? Fundamentally X-COM and their capabilities are just a massive out-of-context problem for the Goa’uld. The laser weaponry and plasma-resistant body armour is bad enough, but Mind Probes and Psionic Amplifiers would be just a total game-changer (or game-breaker perhaps).
As the story progresses the Goa’uld do up their game a lot though. The Ancient tech that Anubis introduces, as well as better Jaffa tactics and equipment generally, makes life much more difficult (the first time X-COM meets a Kull Warrior, for example, is a nasty wake-up call).
Just a couple more things as regards the reviews left on ff.net :
(1) Before the story begins X-COM obtained the DHD and other Stargate from the Russians so the USAF had no choice but to play ball with them (a Stargate with a DHD overrides one without it). It was either joint operations with X-COM or no SGC whatsoever. Given that X-COM are clearly xenophobic lunatics who needed to be kept on as short a leash as possible XSGCOM is the result. Better to have them inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in, to put it crudely.
(2) Carter is prettier than Andianov (the latter actually observes so herself within the story) so I’m not sure why she is being visualised as super-hot? She’s athletic in build but only stunning in the sense that she carries a stun-rod. :-D
I really would advise reading the TtH version of the story with the hyperlinked references by-the-way. I put in an awful lot of effort into explaining the changes I made to the way stargate episodes turned out by logical means backed by canon. Like I said a few paragraphs higher up, X-COM tech would be frequently game-breaking in SG-1, and vice-versa for that matter. Technologies from stargate like the sarcophagus, zat’nik’tels and healing devices help X-COM against the Sectoids a great deal, even if Goa’uld weaponry is generally inferior.
Honestly in many cases it’s not so much “X-COM is the best” as it is the gear they stole from the Sectoids make this previously insurmountable problem from SG-1 look *much* less daunting. Being able to read your enemies thoughts, for example, is pretty damn useful!
It would be remiss of me not to point out several things with what you said.
Dude, even TV tropes has noticed this and commented on it. Proofreading is everything, at least when it comes to readability.
Really? I’ve read through the entire fic. It honestly seems pretty consistent, and (IMHO) just gets worse as Earth and XCOM amass more power.
While I understand there are reasons for them coming across as they do; it’s not a matter of whether they’re given reason too…but rather how they do so. I’d be OK if their personalities were a little less…obnoxious. Here on the library, we’ve come across some pretty insufferable characters. Look up the riffs of ‘Madalorian Effect’ and ‘Gabriel Hawke’ if you want to know more. These soldiers are up there with some of the most smug, obnoxious characters I’ve seen in a fanfic. They…honestly act like children playing soldier. Like, edgy 13-year olds with an obsession with their Dad’s firearm and bodybuilding periodicals. Also porn mags. But then again; we’ve ~all~ been there, right? ;)
Which again, is reasonable for a X-COM fic. While I haven’t had the pleasure of playing the original X-COM games (I’ve been meaning to for a while, but I’ve been restricted to whatever runs on my aging MacBook or my PS4 for a while now); I have played both XCOM: Enemy Unknown/Enemy WIthin and XCOM 2/XCOM 2: War of the Chosen. More XCOM than XCOM 2. But still, I do get where you’re coming from with the ‘salvaging alien equipment is a XCOM characteristic’. But when they salvage equipment that the SGC failed to recover for whatever reason (like Martin’s escape pod; something which I also take issue to because of the implied/explicit torture of Martin…one of my favourite guest characters) and do it without much description…I mean, most of these amazing feats are restricted to either offhanded mentions by canon characters, or confined to tangential narration within the story. I’d be less bothered if they were actually shown and elaborated on. Well, at least ‘shown and elaborated on’ more than they are.
Look, Hotpoint, I get that it’s part of XCOM’s character. In all honesty, I stumbled onto this fic while checking out the XCOM/Stargate section of FF.net while researching what the majority of the stories in the category (which turned out to be your first XSGCOM story, and I ~think~ two other fics, one of which was written in another language. I wouldn’t stuff up that part of XCOM either, because it’s definitely what sets them apart from other fictional alien hunting groups.
What is a problem is when this all takes place ‘off-camera’ as it might be. We’re told- not shown- all of this technology being dissected. I do get that having constant delves into the engineering workshops and science labs of the XCOM project would be hard to make exciting. But again, I think the story could have benefited from having more detail about what’s going on, how these characters got there, and why they’re currently on-location. Having a named scientist/engineer in the labs to give personal narration as they make some vital discovery or whatever might have been good to see. All we really see is either the perspective of the commanders, SG1, or (on occasion) another character within the fic. While we get exposition…that’s all we really get. We don’t get shown all of the exciting bits happening, and a lot of potentially interesting events (like the Aschen incident) are just glossed over within a paragraph or two.
My issue is that their PTSD seems to make them act more like edgy, macho 13-year olds than shell-shocked soldiers. It’s not a matter of ‘it’s wrong that they have PTSD’…it’s a matter of ‘this is not what PTSD is like’. I’m no expert, but I don’t think PTSD makes people act like a teenage Rambo-impersonator who’s never actually seen ‘Rambo’, and has just read the plot synopsis on Wikipedia.
The issue I have is that the Goa’uld are presented by your fic as two-dimensional villains who can’t adapt to a change in force. Even at the end of SG1’s run; the Goa’uld were still causing issues for the SGC. Hell, that movie where they have to fix the continuum due to Ba’al’s tomfuckery is evidence of exactly that. Admittedly, the show occasionally hands them the idiot ball…but this fic does this consistently. That incident with the mine, Apophis, and Heru’ur…I dunno why Apophis doesn’t have those ten cloaked motherships, like in the actual episode. Or why it goes differently to how the canon had it. If Teal’c wasn’t aboard Heru’ur’s flagship, then he wouldn’t have had something to attract Apophis with, and thus the episode couldn’t have gone down like that.
This is all stuff that could have influenced the way that this encounter went. Unfortunately, it’s again let down by a lack of significant detail or narration. We’re given a scenario that is tense within the canon it came from…but for a reader who hasn’t watched the episode in question, there’s no tension within the fic. It glosses over so much, and simply uses the scene as a means to discuss the Tok’ra’s opinion of XCOM. Which is fine, but it makes the story meander quite a bit from scene-to-scene…and kinda lacks direction, if I’m being honest. All it seems to do is fix the SGC’s problems really easily, and make XCOM look brilliant (or morally dubious when your intentions actually carry through).
I’m glad you brought up the Kull Warrior, because I take special annoyance in that.
So, the Kull are initially this nigh-invincible superwarrior unit. They can’t be stopped with conventional weapons, they’re relentless. They’re immune to energy and ballistic weapons.
In the SG1 canon, this is solved with the help of the Tok’ra, and the Kull Disruptor is introduced. This is where the problem is: with the lack of diplomatic conduct XCOM presents, I highly doubt that the Tok’ra would be willing to jointly create such a weapon with the human race. They certainly have the resources to create one themselves. It’d just take longer without the SGC’s help.
My issue is that the way XCOM behaves should have such bad consequences with the way the Stargate galaxy is set up. They piss off the Nox, one of the most powerful races in the galaxy. They piss off the Tolan. Hell, Sharp is a complete asshole to Thor…I mean, that’s not diplomacy, that’s overt hostility. The Asgard are Earth’s staunchest ally. They’re one of the most powerful factions in the Stargate canon! Yet here Sharpie is, potentially ruining an alliance that is vital to Earth’s survival! A alliance he obviously knows next to nothing about, given his behaviour.
There’s no way that the Tok’ra- a race who despises the Goa’uld- would stand for the humans behaving more-or-less the same way: arrogant and xenophobic.
Except they’re explicitly said to ‘merge’, which is just impossible. As I said in a earlier installment to this riff, there is so much wrong with that just happening that it’s unbelievable. I’d also like to point out yet again that the acronym XSGCOM is just amusing. I mean, eXtraterrestrial StarGate COMbat? Are they fighting aliens, or Statgates? ;)
It’s more what patron Zeus Killer Productions (who’s also read this story) commented about. It seemed appropriate to repeat, as a sarcastic description of how this story ends up going.
As for the stuff about the other version of it…One of the tools I use to make writing these riffs easier is a fanfic downloader that turns FF.net stories into plaintext files. It’s easier to copy, and the lack of author’s notes allows me to talk about two series I rather enjoy. The rest…I’m not going to go into detail on those.
As someone who still kinda likes the fic despite its flaws, and came in for the X-COM side of things, what stopped me from reading further was what I termed “Hot Russian XCOM Chick kicks ass.”
Which is kinda sad considering that multiple perspectives were actually utilized decently during the beginning.
Like Bats said, it’s fixable.
Apologies for spoilers below. If you don’t want to see any don’t read this comment!
You don’t think that the Goa’uld (and Loki) adopting new weapons and tactics that make for a much more even fight reins in the HFY at all? The entirely one-sided slaughter at the start of chapter one isn’t a permanent state of affairs is it?
But it’s not just the PTSD is it? The cocktail of performance-enhancing drugs they’re on (including nootropics, steroids and other pharmaceuticals specifically designed to impact the fight-or-fight reflex and boost aggression) makes them… well complete jerks. To give you an idea, some of the known side effects of steroids alone include irritability, heightened aggression and hypomania and that’s not even getting into what certain nootropics do to you and your personality.
That’s fair. Boy would the story be long if I added in that sort of stuff too though.
You’ve got to remember that despite the Tok’ra not liking X-COM one little bit they are doing far more resource and tech-trading with Earth here because Earth simply has more to offer, even beyond access to a captured Anubis Ha’tak that outclasses and previous Goa’uld vessel. We see the Tok’ra bartering for Elerium Plasma Weaponry, Mind Probes and the like. Earth providing metric *tonnes* of weapons-grade naquadah per year to them and the Tok’ra even selling the SGC a (somewhat clapped out) Tel’tak in return for access to some novel transporter technology.
Moreover the Kull are even tougher here than in canon. The addition of tech supplied by Loki increases how formidable they are, the Tok’ra need a solution ASAP.
The Tollan are in a similar position. Sharp is a total jerk, but he’s a jerk that can give them Sectoid and Ancient technology which go a *long* way into making up for that. In canon Stargate the SGC just didn’t have nearly as much bargaining power.
As for the Asgard X-COM can provide them not only with weapons technology they can use against the Replicators but even a potential solution to the cloning problem that is going to end up leading to their extinction as a species. Remember that experimentation on other species, as Loki is doing, *was* the answer as the Vanir in Pegasus demonstrated.
Close international cooperation between the militaries of different countries is hardly unheard of is it? NORAD based at Cheyenne Mountain itself is a jointly American and Canadian command in real life to give one example. Another would be NATO’s ACE Mobile Force and there is also the Franco-German Brigade.
As for XSGCOM as a name. Well the fact they call it X-COM not E-COM indicates a lack of giving too much of a stuff about acronym precision methinks. :-p
…Except NORAD is not based at Cheynne mountain anymore. They stopped using the facility as a primary Ops center some time ago.
Other than that, I do see where you’re coming from. The problem at this story’s heart is that it has a great premise…but is so light on detail outside of exposition dumps that it barely constitutes a story. The biggest part of the plot is plot regurgitation from SG1, and that consitutes maybe a third of the whole fic.
Honestly? I’d reccomend sitting down and rewriting this entire thing. Ditch the HFY, make the XCOM characters a little less cringey, show-don’t-tell, put in more detail, and lose the attrocious SPaG; and this story could rock ass.
Didn’t know that. NORAD was still there back when I started on XSGCOM.
The plot regurgitation from SG-1 is a feature not a bug though. The core premise of the story is how the introduction of X-COM tech and methods impact on each situation. It was what I always had in mind when plotting the thing out.
As for entirely ditching the HFY… that would effectively negate the revelation on humanities origins from the sequel so it’s a big no no I’m afraid (again, it’s a feature not a bug and it’s going to run headlong into AFY).
Oh just one more thing. In riff terms my suggestion would be playing on the X-Commers as roid-raged and stoned out of their minds. Taking too many nootropics gives you the “Thousand Light-Year Stare” after all. :-p