The Salvation War/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch: Often subjected to this. In one case, a critic of the stories admitted he'd never read beyond the second paragraph of the first story.
    • Oftentimes the series gets derided as being simple Gun Porn, but the series takes as many steps to show the horror of using said weapons as it does lovingly describing them.
  • Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: Uriel, the Angel of Death, tries to wipe out a human town in California. Using their love for each other to bolster their willpower, the people of the town deny him in a battle of wills until the Navy puts four anti-air missiles into his face.
    • Later, when Uriel starts to raid Los Angeles, several bouncers at a club risk their lives to organize a team to save the animals at a nearby pet store.
    • When Lemuel-lan has to bring Maion to Earth for treatment, he is shocked at how compassionate the humans are in treating their enemies' wounded. It comes to a peak when he figures that the only reason the humans are helping them is because he is useful to them. Doctor Zinder's response is to explode in anger at him for daring to suggest that a human hospital would let politics or even an existential war interfere; they have a patient, and they will save her... after which Lemuel gives the first genuine, sincere apology by an angel to a human in (unknown to him) about four thousand years.
    • In an odd way, Michael advising his archangel allies of the best way to survive if his plan fails. Seeing that he does genuinely care about some things after ruthlessly manipulating everyone around him for so long can be pretty touching.
      • Which is then topped when they ignore his advice and play the Big Damn Heroes when Yahweh proves too powerful for Michael alone.
    • A Chinese man, describing how ten ageing Korean War veterans took down a baldrick with bayonets, but not before he had been blinded by a lightning bolt. His finishing lines were the CMOH to crown the veterans' CMOA.

“So, you see Doctor, my blindness is nothing to be sorry for. What finer sight could I, Party Leader of Mai Xiao Village, treasure as my last than those ten old men saving our children by bringing down the monster with their bayonets?”

  • Crowning Music of Awesome: Turns out music is the big catalyst that makes magic work, due to being able to draw on so many minds matched up in perfect harmony. The reveal accompanies Michael making his coup against Yahweh backed up by the theme from The Dambusters.
  • He's Just Hiding: Happened to one particular angel, and turned out to be correct.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: There is a bumper sticker that said, "Marines don't die. They go to Hell and regroup."" While this joke is older then the story, with this context it is hilarious.
  • Ho Yay: Ori and Aeneas. One is Japanese and the other is Spartan. They bond over the old ways and are now teaching Baldricks together.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Michael-lan. The plot of the second book is largely the result of a massive Batman Gambit by Micheal to depose Yahweh, take over Heaven, and save the angelic race from what he believes would be total destruction at the hands (or guns) of humans.
    • And then Elhmas completely shows him up in one shrewd scene at the end.
    • The North Koreans, specifically Kim-Jong Il and Kim-Jong Un, manage to outwit Michael-Lan. When Michael-Lan points out how South Korea is vulnerable to invasion, the North Koreans are smart enough to stonewall the angels long enough to figure out that trying to backstab the HEA was a monumentally bad idea.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Michael-lan gets a young female angel hooked on heroin. Then he gets her to be an exotic dancer to feed her addiction. Then it's on to prostitution. And that's before he has her become the mistress of the subverted chief investigator of Yahweh's "secret police," get kidnapped, then sent to a concentration camp and tortured...
  • Nightmare Fuel:
    • Uriel-lan-Yahweh:
      • Kills entire human cities with just his mind. Needless to say, this scares the hell out of a lot of humans, and he is marked as a priority target. The guided missile cruiser USS Normandy "sacrificed" itself (having to spend months in drydock) after its... particular way of wounding him, and in the final battle over Los Angeles, target differentiation and even "avoiding other aircraft" becomes a secondary priority to his death.
      • Those he kills don't reincarnate in Heaven or Hell and may not reincarnate at all, even if there is another afterlife "above" Heaven and Hell. This terrifies Angels and Demons alike.
      • However, Michael states that it is more likely that, rather than completely destroying the souls of those he kills, that Uriel simply sends them to another place besides Heaven or Hell
    • The Leviathan in Stas Bush's side story Don't wake me while I'm quiet.
    • The writer doesn't shrink from describing exactly what modern weapons do to the people/beings they maim and kill. That was an editorial policy decision; if people want to see their favorite weapons used, they ought to be aware of what those weapons do to their victims. Case in point: the Russians breaking out sarin to take down harpies and nagas on the Phlegethon and dealing with the backfire on those troops whose chemical seals had been compromised beforehand.
    • Looking back on some of the earlier chapters in Armageddon about human warfare (specifically them being hounded and pursued when Abigor's army collapses and flees), the language used to describe the human pursuers, or rather their armored vehicles and attack helicopters, actually veers in the direction of Survival Horror and even Humans Are Cthulhu.
    • This obviously extends beyond the weapons: bear in mind that every single human in this story goes to Hell upon death and the tortures that they are subjected to, such as being crucified or thrown into rivers of lava, barring only the highest percentile of those who'd shed every part of their will except a desire to kiss Yahweh's ass.
    • Dust storms, especially as experienced by two survivors of the Dust Bowl.
    • Belial's angel prison. You know something is bad when it makes Michael think My God, What Have I Done?.
    • Chapter 70 of Pantheocide is completely terrifying in its depiction of the aftermath of a nuclear Initiation.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Reading this may make you think "Barack Obama/ Bill Clinton/ George W. Bush is awesome," even if you were politically opposed to them.
      • Some characters ended up either not being rescued, or actually were thrown into the Scrappy Heap in his Take Thats, albeit much of his reasoning for his depictions of particular figures were in discussion outside of the story.
    • Also rescued: James Randi and Iraqi insurgents, Hamas members and even al Qaeda who forget their local grievances in the interest of the war effort as a whole.
  • Tear Jerker: Julie Adams confronting the Demon who tortured her for years, and then spitting on him, and reducing him to a sniveling wreck.
    • Gloria sacrificing herself to save her grandchildren when the portal opens in Detroit.
    • The final human casualty in the War on Hell. Simplicus and his crew of rebel-deceased humans are waiting to ambush a demon when living human soldiers come to the rescue. However, Simplicus barely has time to push Sgt. Voight out of the way of his own crude rock-fall trap. Publius mourns the death of his best friend, but Sgt. Voight gives an order that Simplicus be carried out in full honor guard.
    • At the end of Armageddon?, General Petraeus receives a letter from Robert E. Lee, requesting permission to join the forces of humanity in their upcoming struggle against Heaven. A combination of factors is responsible for this one: firstly, the reputation of the person involved; secondly, the date on which the letter was penned.
    • In Pantheocide, a soldier mentions having adopted a dog who had belonged to some humans who'd lain down and died when The Message hit. The dog was so traumatized, it shivered every time someone had a nap.
  • The Woobie: Maion. Michael gets her hooked on heroin, then turns her into a prostitute, and then has her seduce Lemuel to the point that Lemuel falls in love with her. Then Michael has Maion kidnapped, accused of treason, and handed over to Belial's "detainment camp" where she's tortured and has her wings repeatedly broken - all so Lemuel is forced to take her to the humans for medical treatment and to turn him against Yahweh.


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