# Pastebin U1IqAg0w 11:17 AM <%red3> Alright. Well, while we wait for Blue, let's get into our opening thoughts on this article. 11:18 AM <+cybersqyd> iunno if it's just cos i'm not as alert as i'd like or what; but this feels...unpleasantly technical 11:19 AM <%red3> I had similar feelings. The majority of the footnotes were used to explain what the article was even talking about. And I can guess that, buried beneath all of this technobabble, there is a story, but I can't push everything else away long enough to figure out what it is. 11:19 AM <+cybersqyd> yeah 11:21 AM Back and yeah this was a lot of technobabble. And I found it very hard to picture what the anomaly actually is 11:22 AM <%red3> I was largely bored throughout this thing. The ending (I think) sets up that some person from a long time ago is killing these things and that this anomaly isn't safe? There's also a really obscure reference to 2998 in the ending, name-dropping Rakmou-leusan. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought 2998 was a largely self-contained story with little references to the Ortothan religion. 11:22 AM <%red3> Oh wait, no, I'm just dumb. Rakmou-leusan isn't a 2998 thing. 11:26 AM Also I'm not entirely certain on what Hytoth is so forgive me for not understanding this article right away but i'm not exactly sold on the Hytoth concept since this is my first time reading one of their articles properly 11:27 AM <%red3> I'm finding it difficult to actually find anything I enjoy in this. A lot of the sentences are unwieldy, the core story lacks focus, and the whole thing reads off as... inconsequential. Like, I didn't get any reward for reaching the ending, it felt almost disconnected since I don't care about any of these things. What do they even do besides send out radio signals? Do they protect us? Are they fighting off some threat? 11:28 AM <%red3> BlueJones: Yeah, this does seem to be a case where a person has to know about Hytoth beforehand to really get it. 11:28 AM <+cybersqyd> hytoths have...something to do with past universes or something? 11:29 AM <+cybersqyd> oh so there was a first hytoth, a universe before ours and then uh, this one was made and it's the second hytoth i guess 11:29 AM red3: Now I'm starting to see how you guys felt when I harped on about Omega-7 lmao. But seriously, I feel like I'm coming into this woefully underprepared 11:29 AM <+cybersqyd> and there's something big coming for it through the passageway or something i guess 11:29 AM <+cybersqyd> yeah 11:30 AM <+cybersqyd> red3, I kinda agree; but I'm open to this being made better retroactively as we read me... 11:30 AM <%red3> I'm pretty sure the core of the GoI is that, a really long time ago, there was a second universe that was filled with these god-like things. And then that one got destroyed and some of those things morphed together to protect this new universe from some threat. I think that that threat is what's alluded to in the ending here? 11:30 AM <+cybersqyd> yeah 11:30 AM <%red3> cybersqyd: That's true. This doesn't feel connected much to the main story, so that may be the case. 11:30 AM <+cybersqyd> ....iunno how i managed to spell 'more' with no 'or' 11:31 AM <%red3> lmao 11:32 AM So pretty much what Ion and Mekhane were doing but on a more galatic scale... interesting. But if I wanna speak positively, I'd say that since this piece is filled with a lot of information, I'm certain an author can come along and find a good piece of info and make something from that 11:32 AM <+cybersqyd> yeah 11:32 AM <+cybersqyd> i think it's possibly a good base to build off even if it's not very interesting alone 11:32 AM <%red3> That's true. 11:32 AM <%red3> Does anyone have any other thoughts they'd like to toss out before we go into our final opinions? 11:33 AM <+cybersqyd> i mean i'm still leaning towards a downvote here but *shrugs* 11:33 AM eh not really, I'm leaning towards a downvote but I'm currently on a novote, since the material here could be used for something greater down the line 11:34 AM <%red3> Same. I fear that this might be a common flaw in this series, the story being pushed aside for more technobabble and cool Sci-Fi technology. I noticed a little bit of that in the first tale, so I do hope that it gets back on track and doesn't lose me again in the next tale. 11:34 AM <+cybersqyd> yeah 11:34 AM <%red3> This is a hard downvote for now, but I do agree with Blue that that vote might change if the material presented in this is used very well.