Avatar review thread

[Shroom Man 777]

I don't think you get to argue this. Concentration of force is recognized as proof you're getting ready for an assault. ^_^ The Na'vi warriors were concentrating, weren't they? What were the miners supposed to think?

I get to argue this. The Na'vi in the Soul Tree were despondent refugees who just fled from a disaster zone. The Na'vi warrior concentration was a peacekeeping emergency response force bringing food and supplies and medicine and other aid stuff to the Na'vi refugees to treat the wounded and sick, take care of the women and children, and give shelter to those homeless Na'vi who were using the Soul Tree as a stand in for the New Orleans Superdome.

Unless you're saying China should've launched a couple dozen anti-ship missiles at an American aircraft carrier sent to help Indonesian earthquake/tsunami victims.

For example, in the modern world, if your neighboring nation concentrated troops near your mutual border, you'd be concerned. When they start forward deploying their artillery and air force, you know they are going to attack.

Well, they weren't forward deploying anything. They were just gathering a fuck ton of people in the Soul Tree. Besides, how can one tell a Na'vi civilian from a Na'vi warrior, anyway? It's not like they have uniforms, and ALL (or most, or many) Na'vi come with arrows and spears since those are their basic hunting utensils, and all Na'vi have horsies or birdies also.

I have no problem with Sully's tribe going to war against RDA. I'd called RDA a bunch of incompetents and demonstrated them to be assholes in the story. I do not like RDA. .That said, turning a little war between the tribe and the humans into a crusade involving the planetary intelligence struck me as a reckless escalation. That action of Sully's, I have infinite contempt.

Um, Sully didn't turn it into a planetary intelligence crusade. Pandora/Eywa did, out of its own free will. Besides, the reckless escalation was done by the RDA first.

Problem is, it'll take a hell of a lot of power to lift several hundred tons and float it. You're constantly working against gravity. Forgive me, but plants aren't going to supply that kind of energy and thrive in their environment.

I'm not saying that the plants supply that kind of energy. I'm saying that the environment itself supplies that energy, since apparently it's the rocks and the unobtaniums and the hallelujah mountains that provide the power to lift several hundred tons and float it. I'm saying that these things might also provide additional energy for not only inanimate flying mountains, but also to living plants. Energy that they can use for bioluminescence. Might. Maybe.

Earth plants can subsist on sunlight, water and earth.

Pandora plants can also subsist on sunlight, water and earth.

But Pandoran earth (ground) has some energetic properties that allow mountains to fly

This Pandoran earth (ground) is also used by Pandoran plants for subsistence, along with sunlight and water.

So maybe there IS something in Pandora's ground that provides additional energy for the plants (to make them glow in the dark)? After all, there IS something in Pandora's ground that provides additional energy for the mountains (to make them fly).

It's not really an important tangent. What are we, now? Arguing about Pandoran biospherical calorie contents?

We don't know enough about plant nervous systems on earth to tell that. Hell, I'm not even sure we know for sure if they have nervous systems. I think the jury is still out on that one.

Earth plants do not have nervous systems, at least not anything remotely as developed as those on animals. Nervous systems require a crapload of metabolic energy in order to function.

However, Pandoran plants DO have nervous systems, seemingly as developed as those on animals. Nervous systems require a crapload of metabolic energy in order to function. Where do Pandoran plants get this metabolic energy?

Weapons that travel 50 kilometers per second will. Hell, the penetrator in a tank travels at far less velocities and we've seen what happens when they hit armored vehicles. Think much more massive and much faster. You will get mushroom clouds. Just to illustrate, there was a 50kT blast from a suspected meteorite over Indonesia within the last 8/9 months.

Okay. There can certainly be orbital KE weapons in the Avater-verse. But is it within the capability of a bare-bones understaffed corporate mining operation to jerry-rig within such a short span of time, and effectively use with little preparation?

If the miners are forbidden by the execs, they'll simply go easy on the mining explosives and use them to create impromptu mines. Not that hard to make IEDs as the Pastuns in Afghanistan continue to demonstrate everyday. ^_^

Well, they did make that Daisy Cutter.

As for why didn't they make a whole fuckload of mines, or more intensive defenses. I dunno. The RDA operation there looked like it only had a few people. Having those guys spend their time jerry-rigging landmines out of explosives might've been too time consuming or whatever?

Just because I realize and accept this is how the screwed up real world works doesn't mean I'm a Nazi, a jew hater, a holocaust denier/supporter or a supporter of slavery. Off the top of my head, let me name you a few genocidal/persecution pogroms going on right now in our modern world:

1. Darfur - where animist christians are being systematically raped and killed.
2. Karen - ethnic tribal minority in Burma.
3. The Shias in Iraq - the Sunnis really have it in for them seeing as how the Sunnis want to get back to power. Now, this pogrom isn't really organized - its more of terrorist bombing and such to provoke civil war between the Shias and the Sunnis, which bin Laden and his gang think will unite the Arab world against the Americans and the heretic Shias.
4. Baluch - Ethnic group in Pakistan that are in rebellion - though the rebellion isn't going well - and whom the Indian government covertly support for strategic reasons.
5. The tibetans - they're losing their cultural identity and the Hans are taking their lands, too.

This is the world we live in. It's not going to get better because humans have the us vs. them built into their genes.

I know. I'm sure if people saw what I write, they'd probably also call me a Nazi, a jew hater, a holocaust denier/supporter or a supporter of slavery.

Then I'd laugh.

right pezook?

An emotional response, but not a command response. Command would be consolidate command, organize forces and lead.

Oh come on. His vehicle was destroyed and he barely escaped, only to be immediately attacked by the she-bitch on a fucking rabid foaming-at-the-mouth xenopanther, before being further attacked by Jake Sully.

As mighty a leader-rapist Quarritch was, it's really not a fault of his character that he wasn't able to command his disarrayed forces when his command post vehicle just EXPLODED, and he barely escaped while catching fire, only to be attacked by monsters and forced to defend his life. I don't think Winston Churchill could've led the Allies effectively if his command post was destroyed, and if he only barely escaped (while sustaining fire injuries by being on fire) and got immediately attacked by a monster. Not even Stalin could've effectively led in such a situation.

Would your Admiral Deepak have led more effectively if it was HIS command post that got blown up, and if he only barely escaped - while catching fire? Could he have consolidated command, organied forces, and lead when a xenopanther was trying to eat his face?

On that note. Even though Quarritch fucked up, eh. It's not too bad. Lots of people go crazy lots of times. At least he did it with class. If the leader of my mercenary forces was to screw up, I hope that he'd at least screw up by going crazy and trying to kill people with giant fuck-off butcher knives. Stylish.

Now, there's no need for that. I'm not here to debate politics. And even if I were, using such titles is not good for debate. My problem with the earlier posts were, you people were using names and so I stooped low as well.

Mang, grow a thicker skin. Name-calling is SOP for arguments here. But name-calling isn't really important, as whatever point/argument people are using under that name-calling. Name-calling is only for funs.

^_^;;

=^______________________________^=

[aieeegrunt]

arun2110, I want to address the point you made that Quaritch is incompetent because he went after Jake Sully after his command ship was shot down, instead of trying to re-establish command.

Personally I think going after Jake was a sign he's an excellent commander.

In war you want to hit the centre of gravity of the enemy force, you want to hit something that will make them come apart and stop fighting. Sure you can do this by simply killing enough of them that the rest give up, but this is the crudest, shallowest, simplest and most resource intensive way of doing it. There is a reason that pure attrition is disdained in warfare unless it's the only option.

What are the Na'vi? They are a tribal people who's culture and way of life is largely driven by their religious beliefs and legends. Look at how Sully managed to assemble his army. It wasn't by a rational appeal to their own self interest; he did it by inspiring faith in being anointed by the God(s) in his task by taming the giant flying monster creature.

Quaritch took aim at that. His first attempt was by trying to destroy the soul tree. Destruction of the living manifestation of Ewa most likely would have resulted in the Na'vi army disbanding as Quaritch would have demonstrated to them that their God was either non-existent or that he and the Sky People were simply more powerful.

When that didn't work due largely to Act of Plot, look at Quaritch's action. His command shuttle is destroyed and with it his ability to communicate with what is left of his forces. The shuttle is down and with it his ability to destroy the soul tree. Re-establishing command means a lengthy hike through the suddenly incredibly dangerous jungle and linking up with remnants of his forces, which really only have the option of retreating to the base and subsequently being overrun by Na'vi forces.

But what lies before him? Why it's Shake Soooooooooly! Jake Sully is another key centre of gravity he can strike. His personal anointment as War Leader is what holds the army together, him and his flying monster. He is also the only leader in the enemy command that understands modern warfare and Quaritch, he's the only enemy commander who can realisticly formulate plans to beat the RDA. His death has a high probability of causing the Na'vi army to disband, as he is the personal manifestation of Ewa's will.

So despite the extreme personal danger he goes after Jake because he knows he can still win this thing if he kills him. I'd also make the observation that Quaritch is smart enough to know that killing Jake's unconscious human body is far easier than Jake's Na'vi avatar, and that is what he goes after. And he would have won, again, except for Act Of Plot, again.

[Sarevok]

Its strange Quartich went after Jakes unconciouss human body only after he was on virge of defeat. Why did not he use his Dragon gunship to smash the mobile trailer Jake was hiding in earlier ? He obviously had a rough idea where it was. Otherwise he would not have found it within moments of crashlanding. Instead of wasting his mechsuits in a pointless ground battle he should have sent them to seek out and destroy Jake Sullys body. Without a human commander the Navi would have lost for sure.

[Shroom Man 777]

I think he didn't know where it was, and he only happened to crash land so close to it by sheer happenstance.

[eyl]

If the miners are forbidden by the execs, they'll simply go easy on the mining explosives and use them to create impromptu mines. Not that hard to make IEDs as the Pastuns in Afghanistan continue to demonstrate everyday. ^_^

Didn't you argue that explosives are so precious that it would have been more cost-effective to crash the shuttle than rig those two pallets? And now you want them to turn them into mines - which will almost certainly require far more explosives (since you have to cover a large area) than were used for the improvised Daisy Cutter? You can't have it both ways.

[NecronLord]

I think he didn't know where it was, and he only happened to crash land so close to it by sheer happenstance.

I agree with this assessment.

[Sarevok]

I think he didn't know where it was, and he only happened to crash land so close to it by sheer happenstance.

That was a pretty unbelievable coincidence.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I think he didn't know where it was, and he only happened to crash land so close to it by sheer happenstance.

That was a pretty unbelievable coincidence.

Perhaps, but then a lot of things could be argued to have been down to special circumstances. The fight taking place around the Hallelujah Mountains meant that the PMC under Quaritch's command was at a pretty significant disadvantage. Had it been that the engineered Na'vi bodies used as avatars were only able to be controlled by radio wave, then the whole scenario would have been radically changed. And I'm sure they'd have tried going after Sully's command unit, though it did seem they expected to get in and out with the jury rigged Daisy Cutter attack, rather than go on a seek and destroy mission with the human defectors. After all, all would be lost without the sacred site, they could still meet resistance with Sully gone, even if more diffuse and unco-ordinated.

[PeZook]

I really think they did want to find and kill Sully. Why else would they deploy ground troops at all?

[Shroom Man 777]

To contain anyone who might be fleeing under the cover of the trees?

Personally, I don't think it was too great a coincidence. The trailer had to be within the general vicinity, so landing somewhere near it isn't too astronomically against the odds. Stranger things have happened. *shrugs*

[Junghalli]

Maybe. But how many noctural insects are there? Everything glowed. Everything. And when everything glows, what evolutionary advantage do you get by glowing?

So maybe different types of glowing plants attract different types of pollinators. This is easily rationalized.

You see, you have to ask yourself if it is okay to brainwash animals into committing suicide? Because that's what you're saying Eywa should do. Why should Eywa's life be worth more than the animal's life? Why should Na'vi life, for that matter be worth more than the animal's life? Ethical and moral quandry there unless you agree with the guy who executed the mission to exterminate everything on the planet. The same guy who practically said, "me before you and yours." So, why is it okay for Eywa to make such arbitrary decisions, but not for humans?

It's about as OK as going to McDonald's and ordering a hamburger. Besides, it's pretty obvious animals get killed and eaten all the time on that planet, so this is basically business as usual. You can say Eywa's a dick for maintaining an ecology with lots of animals eating each other ... I have no problem with that. I happen to like grey and grey morality; I see no reason Eywa or the Na'Vi should be considered saintly. If anything I wish they'd been portrayed with more ambiguity like the Prawns in District 9.

Do you complain this way about any movie where the hero isn't a vegetarian?

Slight problem with your reasoning. If Eywa meant to control only animals, why do Na'vi have it? Does this mean the Na'vi evolved from animals for a purpose that Eywa alone knows. If so, does this mean Eywa still controls the Na'vi with that religion of theirs. Ooh!

I have no problem with that idea at all. In fact I think it makes the Na'Vi much more interesting. Again, I don't demand the good guys in movies be saintly. Real life doesn't work that way.

Consider lost profit from deteriorating security situation. Consider going for fifteen years shorthanded. Consider damage to critical equipment with few spares and replenishment fifteen years away... You get the idea, right? The shuttle, though costly, is the cheaper alternative considering all this.

It'd be easier to just drop a bomb. Yeah, that wasn't the smartest decision ever, but you can see how it would have seemed sensible at the time. Hindsight is always 20/20.

Er, the humans did not negotiate when they came back. Their attempt at a landing party was beaten off. By Eywa and its staple of animals.

That's exactly what I meant. Eywa acted really dumb.

As for committing genocide of unobtanium, what did the spanish do to the S. Americans for gold, silver and emerald? Or how about Japan and China? Or England and India? Or England and China? Or Belgium and Congo? Or Sudan and Darfur? Or... I think I'll stop here.

Slight cultural difference. Modern society isn't as racist and xenophobic as the examples you give.

[arun2110]

Read the Debating Rules in particular.

You may not care for his language and such not, but ignoring his points just because of such? I would honestly advise against such unless you can prove that he is making some large nonsensical points and he is just using language just to berate you.

Maybe my momma raised me wrong, but when someone stoops to calling one a retard, asshole, motherfucker, a jackass and other things just because they can without a great deal of provocation, then it's best to avoid said hotheaded fucker.

That said, here are a few of his points:
1. Zook argues that my arguments about the spaceship are moot and pointless:
I fail to see how they are. Here's a guy who quotes canon handbooks as facts and when someone tells him that his facts are so much shit - just like my FTL asspull - he asks how that matters (it matters because fractional cee travel at those kind of velocities is absolute bullshit for a spaceship using reaction drives or even solar sails or anything else of that sort, thus making both our assertions equally invalid/valid.) Moreover, it does not say in the movie how far pandora is from earth and I did not care enough to go hunting on the net for the information. They only give the travel times. Not enough information to judge the speed or the mode of travel from that, which is why I went FTL because impossible as scientists think it is, it is just as possible as a self-propelled ship weighing many, many, many tons to travel at 80% the speed of light (max velocity of 0.8c for five years and another 1 year to cover the other 0.36 ly).

2. Orbiting shuttle not aiding security:
A small jetpack and guidance package and a bar of metal that'll survive reentry makes for a pretty good KEW weapon from the shuttle. Use it on the gathering Na'vi below and let them know the futility of resistance as well as spread terror through their ranks. Anytime the army starts to concentrate, send a few more KEWs. Repeat until they break apart or charge like idiots without proper preparations and get slaughtered. How does the shuttle not help mining colony security in this case?

3. Unobtanium as a strategic resource:
Zook started arguing it's something like a diamond (which has some industrial uses, but not all that many) and then reverses to "hey, it's a room temperature superconductor, but I still don't see how it's strategically important." It's strategically important because with it, you get better space ships (lesser heat output in the ship to manage), better electronics, better a lot of things. How is that not strategically important? His nice attempt to counter argue saying that "wars don't just start for strategic items, they also start for useless luxury goods" is moot since I never argued wars start only for strategic resources.

4. Great Depression leading to WWII:
The relation is not direct. Great Depression, Germany's finagling with the payments for the exorbitant and completely unjust payment terms at Versailles (which also hurt the german economy a lot since they devalued their currency by printing a shitload of it), the hurt pride from the loss of the war before all led to Hitler's National Socialist party becoming popular (while the reigning parties fell into disfavor) and seizing power. If it weren't for Hitler seizing power, could we have had WWII? Possibly. Could it have been as bad as what we had? Millions of dead Jews, Russians and the entire economy of Western Europe ruined because of Hitler. Possibly not. Germany might not have had that big and that well trained an army (though the training is reaching out there) or the Germans may not started slaughtering jews. All this happened because one madman seized power out of a hundred nations in the world. That's all is needed. A discontented population and a madman to lead them. And you get plenty of discontent when lots of people lose their jobs simultaneously.

Anyone who says that major events in History have a single explanation or reason doesn't have any idea what he's talking about. The three factors I've given are not even remotely close to exhaustive. They're just the tip of the iceberg. But for Zook, Hitler's rise to power = Treaty of Versailles. The Great Depression and other factors play no role at all in it. Similarly, I'd guess if we asked him, he'd say that WWII was also because of Treaty of Versailles, ignoring such factors as Germany and Japan being new comers to those levels of power, did not have the territorial resources the first-comers had and wanted them, the changing status quo because of the arrival of new powers such as Germany, America and Japan, etc.

5. Conducting war with an external scapegoat because of internal problems or as Zook puts it "deliberately murdering innocents just so you could get out of a depression.":
Wouldn't all the dead on Earth also have been innocent? The RDA fucked up and the people of Earth have to pay the price in blood, starvation, lost livelihoods, etc? How is this fair either? I wasn't arguing that nuking the Na'vi was fair, btw. I was simply saying, it's inevitable, despicable though the action is. The two arguments are entirely different. One makes me a murderous psychopath and bastard. The other makes me a cynical asshole, which I am.

6. Problems with my "nitpicking" kamikaze:
Hehe.

7. Indian Genocide:
The Indians were not violets themselves. Geronimo, I believe, killed little girls and hung them from meathooks. Or how about the Kiowa, the Commanches? No one liked Kiowas and Commanches. They were cantankerous bastards to their neighbors. Thing is, what is thought of as Indian genocide is actually the displacement of numerous cultures each with its own language and culture. Some Indian tribes wore turbans and others wore lioncloths. Others dressed like exotic occidentals - to the eyes of the Europeans - and some more wore elaborate headdresses with feathers. Some were farmers and some hunter gatherers. Some like - I think - the Kiowa and the Commanche were entirely militaristic with the tribe organized along military lines. The American government stuck deals with all these cultures. Some were made in bad faith and some not. Problem was, there was a continuing exodus from Europe and the new immigrants kept pushing the frontier. The government may say something to a tribe with every intent of keeping that promise, but with the United States having an army of about 10000 total around the start of the nineteenth century, how was the government going to police those borders? Was the government supposed to bring these people under its heel with a police state? More often than not, the settlers were persecuted or impoverished folk looking for a better life in the Shores of America. Was America supposed to grind these people into dust because they wanted a better life? Was it fair to the tribes to be pushed out? No, it definitely was not. But that's how these things work.

And let's not forget the massacres committed by the Indians themselves for like I said, none of those tribes were shrinking violets. Let's not forget the Indian auxiliaries of the brits during the war of independence which Washington stopped brutally by going after their corn and their families, or the Creole auxiliaries of the Brits during the last war between America and England. And let's definitely not forget that more often than not, the tribes massacred each other with their never ending vendettas and feuds.

But I'm digressing. The "Noble Indian Tribes who massacred each other for territory and who were in turn pushed out of their tribal territories by western settlers" got what has happened to a technologically inferior people when they ran into a technologically superior people throughout history. Note the wonderful things the Hitites did for their neighbors with their iron swords, or the truly excellent behavior of the europeans in Australia, Africa, Asia and America. Or the mongols with their superior war technology (organization, low level initiative, etc) and the rest of the world. Or the Zulus and their neighbors. Babar and his cannons in India... The list goes on and on.

One of the few cultures to have survived this are the Japanese, btw, who worked with the westerners and got their technology and then made themselves equals, though they also became intolerable militaristic assholes in the doing. So, instead of being a shortsighted prick, Sully could have used his position as the turok rider to force the Na'vi to change at least a little by adopting the human technologies. You know, live to fight another day and kick RDA's ass some other time and then enforce terms on the miners. Obviously, this is going to take a decades, but that's how anything worth doing on a societal scale works.

8. Burning a tree is nuking Tehran and collateral damage:
Dropping a bomb on someone with intent to kill them makes that person the target. Dropping a bomb on a house to destroy the house and in the doing, offing a few people makes the dead people collateral damage. But then, since Zook doesn't seem to have clear knowledge of pretty much anything, I suppose it's my fault for assuming he knows what collateral damage means.

As for burning the tree is worse than nuking Tehran, that's just Zook's opinion. Killing a few people and burning a tree is not the same as nuking a city and killing god knows how many thousands of people. If Zook thinks they are, let Zook think so.

9. Limited war not targeting civilian structure:
Zook's on a roll here. Let me list some of the civilian things that are going to be targeted in any war:
1. Radio transmission stations
2. TV stations
3. Bridges
4. Roads
5. Rail lines
6. Power stations
7. Fuel stations
8. Dams

These are all civilian infrastructure that helps in the conduct of war. Similarly, one can argue that the big fucking tree was a base of operations and by targeting the rear infrastructure first, RDA only wanted a quick end to the coming war and reduced Na'vi casualties. This is, on top of the primary objective to kick out the Na'vi and secure the site for mining, of course.

10. Shuttles not coming back with ships:
It still doesn't matter. Just because Zook thinks the world works in a particular way doesn't mean the world does work that particular way and no other.

Using one shuttle for loading is going to take two and half or three times as would two shuttles. Worst case, four times as long. That's still peanuts compared to a 12 year journey to and from Earth. Delays in delivery on Earth may cause RDA to incur severe penalties, but those would be nothing compared to going back empty handed. If operations on the mine are going to be affected, I would like to know how the absence or presence of an equipment to lift shit out of the gravity well affects mining operations.

11. Refueling times.
This is so funny I have to laugh and I will at this particular piece of crap Zook got fed from his fact book. How much is the spaceship's and shuttle's capacity supposed to be? And why the fuck are they lifting fuel out of the gravity well instead of setting up a station around the gas giant? And if the can't build a station to produce/mine fuel and pump it up, why doesn't the shuttle store the fuel in containers in stable orbit between the times the spaceships come and go? You try to maximize the load carrying time of any equipment because it's more money for you. Idle time is not okay and 1 year fueling is 1 year idle time. So, bwahahahaha! What kind of idiot wrote this factbook? Bwahaha!

12. Sex with human like sentients:
Since Zook represents all of humanity, I suppose I should take his word on this. Oh, wait, Zook doesn't. The billions of people around the world who frown upon homosexuality are not going to be pleased to hear fucking something other than human is okay. And since those billions are the majority and thus, defined as normal with their sexual mores being "the usual thing," I still go with the dictionary definition and call fucking another sentient species deviant. Just because sex is consensual doesn't mean it's not deviant here.

13. Staring at naked women is deviant:
Another zinger from Zook. Since all straight guys I know do this, it's not deviant.

14. Neytiri and Sully:
Still a deviant.

15. Normal men fucking exotic shit:
Does Zook mean normal men fuck goats, camels, chimps and other assorted critter all the time because that's what we were talking about. WTF!

16. Sully didn't start the war:
Zook gets this right. Sully did not start the hot war. But that wasn't what I was saying in the story at all. RDA started a war with a tribe over mining territory and were assholes about it. Sully, in turn, retaliated by involving Eywa in the war, which was tantamount to declaring war on humanity.

17. Love between Sully and Neytiri is morally right.
I argued he was a pervert. I'm not sure where I said he was morally wrong.

18. The dog picture.
ROFL

[arun2110]

By the dictionary definition, it's deviancy because the majority of people aren't attracted to pointy eared imaginary elves. By our sexual moores, it's deviancy. Still, just between us, my lead character in my original work is in love (the non-platonic version) with an AI that has no physical body. That is far more deviant than loving an alien who at least has a physical body. Talk about me being a hypocrite. LOL

I wasn't aware that having pointy ears was a turn off for most people. While some people have a fetish for them, elves are generally portrayed as human enough for the majority of people to find them attractive.

As for being in love with an AI that has no physical body, that is just the equivalent of video porn that interacts with you.

And where's the cite for this? Sure, I found what's her name elf in LoTR hot as hell, but then, I was talking about this to another friend the other day and he made a very astute observation. I'm having this discussion on the net and everyone on the net is a deviant who'd love to fuck cat girls. I quite agree with him.

[Anguirus]

I argued he was a pervert. I'm not sure where I said he was morally wrong.

In this case, I'm curious what the relevance of calling him a pervert is.

I'm also curious if it's occurred to you that Avatar bodies might come with a big dose of Na'Vi sexual hormones.

[arun2110]

On the subject of possible bad plot points, am I the only one that found the horse charge just silly?

I mean, I recall that even nomad steppe fighters had better tactics. I recall that a collection of them even could overrun and destroy more civilized and possibly better-equipped enemies.

Well, it took a lot of courage to mount that charge against modern weapons. Or not. I'm not sure the Na'vi had any conception of how totally outgunned they really were.

As for outrunning civilized armies, didn't take all that much. If my memory serves me right, the average distance covered by most armies throughout history is less than 10 kilometers per day. Consider an army hauling huge artillery pieces. Those have to hauled by bullocks. Can't use horses for those. But those bullocks walked at around a mile an hour. Take the time needed every morning to break camp, march - with periodic breaks as well as all the dust - as well as stopping early in the evening to strike camp, ten miles was a good number for those armies. Those with lighter artillery trains traveled much faster, of course - note how Gustavus Adolphus used light artillery almost exclusively in this campaigns. The armored kights, of course, traveled even slower - worse log trains, which meant they had to forage - and because those suits weighed a ton and had to be hauled by bullocks. LOL

Now, we have three guys that knows that guns kill Na'Vi just fine. One of them, Jake, knows the pros and cons of guns and the soldiers using them especially well. He knows, or at least should suspect, that the ground troops have equipment for detecting the oncoming horde.

So why charge anyway? Why not make flanking maneuvers between the trees and thus take advantage of the horse's ability to traverse terrain better than their enemy? Or herd a group of beasts towards them (although, now that I think about it, that tactic likely would not occur to a Na'Vi but it should to Jake)? Or even ditch the horses for the first moments and snipe from the tree tops, herding the enemy right into a horse charge they can't prepare for?

Because flanking maneuver is easy to talk about, but it requires discipline. Once you're engaged, it's much harder to break away or change your troop dispositions. And it's arguable that Sully and the indigenes could outflank the humans at all. You have to know where your enemy is to outflank him (which Sully couldn't know because his scouts could not travel faster than the human airlift) and once engaged, Sully did not have any control over his "army" to give orders for that kind of complex maneuvers and realistically expect them to be carried out. Note how the Spartans - biggest badasses of the Greeks until the Macedonians rose to prominence under Alexander and his father - could not even change their dispositions against the Sacred Band of Thebes in the battle of Tegyra. The Spartans and their allies outnumbered them by three times and were so thoroughly fucked that this battle marked the ascendancy of Thebes and the start of the fall - in a manner of speaking - of Sparta.

Oh, and when Jake got alone and lost in the forest after the bit with the cat-thing: why didn't he climb a tree? There is certainly lots of those around and up one, he can likely frighten away any treat via poking stick.

*shrugs* don't remember this at all.

“Why do I call Jake a pervert? Well, it could be something to do with the fact that he was remote piloting the na'vi body and wasn't actually inhabiting it. If he'd transferred to the Na'vi body permanently and was removed from interacting with humans for a long period of time, I can understand falling for the alien, but when he's operating the body in a shift that follows his body's internal clock and has plenty of chance to interact with females within the colony and - I have no doubt on this - has access to human porn, why does he love an alien?

I have to ask: so its okay if Jake permanently lived among the Na'Vi to fall in love with them... which he effectively did by living a double-life as a Na'Vi and learning the way of a hunter from Neyriti... but not if there are human people available to him?

He'd still be a pervert. But I could understand his perversion then.

Now, perhaps my definition of a pervert is different, but: Jake didn't seek out Neyriti specifically to fuck her. He didn't show particular interest to do so from the start. He developed those feelings over the three months he has studied under her. It was not a special thing for Jake (well, not any more than falling in love with anybody else): it was just identifying the Na'Vi as human enough that he considered Neyriti as human-enough that he believes his feelings to be normal and genuine.

If this were a human that paid millions of dollars or spent years or did some other comparable effort just to know how fucking a Na'Vi feels like, yes, I may agree that Jake is a pervert. But that's not why he volunteered to be an Avatar.

However, falling in love and later on having sex with Neyriti wasn't part of his original plan. Hell, his plan (learn about the Na'Vi to gain their trust, persuade them to move away from their home tree, get home to get new spine) fell to pieces. Look at the pathetic scene when the bulldozers arrive: he fucked it up (and to be frank, I find him an idiot for not mentioning the giant bulldozers heading the big tree's way beforehand).

To Jake, Neyriti is an equal. Not a alien, foreign thing, but a person of equal worth to a human. After all, she cares for him (by being her teacher) and saved his life. Why should he feel different towards her than towards any other human being? Why should he say "no, I must not fall in love with Neytiri because she is an alien"? He has no girlfriend waiting for him (and if there was, relationships were a bit strained after spending 6 years in cryo) and back on boring old Earth, he has not much to look forward to but a veteran's pension and possibly some extra. Meanwhile, as an Na'vi, Jakesully finds a new culture that accepts him, a new world to explore and a new life. So why not include to that a native girlfriend?

And really, under the circumstances, your objection gives me the impression of "you shouldn't have sex with black people, not when there are white people available" thing.

[/quote]

The impression would be wrong. Blacks are not a separate species. They are human like you and I. Not alien. Why does no one understand the difference here? I'm not forbidding sex between humans from different cultures. I'm saying it's deviant behavior to fuck another species be that species sentient or non-sentient.

As for getting close to a lady for sex being perversion, that'd be the anime definition of what perversion is and is used for comic relief when the lady in question subsequently punches the pervert in question.

[speaker-to-trolls]

Apologies in general if I am contributing to a pileup/pile on, especially since this seems like kind of an anciliary point, but:

The impression would be wrong. Blacks are not a separate species. They are human like you and I. Not alien. Why does no one understand the difference here? I'm not forbidding sex between humans from different cultures. I'm saying it's deviant behavior to fuck another species be that species sentient or non-sentient.

Everybody understands the difference they simply don't understand why the difference is relevant.

First off you've already stated you think it's deviant to be attracted to non human life forms no matter what they look like, so it doesn't matter how similar the Na'Vi are to humans physically. This means that by your standards the determining factor in what you are attracted to should not be the actual features which make someone attractive, e.g. appearance, personality, intellect, shared interest, shared experiences, emotional compatibility or whatever (and keep in mind all those things are relevant since you said it was still 'deviant' for Jake to fall in love with Neytiri)but abstract knowledge about your partners mechanics. Now I'm not saying you don't think any of that other stuff matters, you're just saying it shouldn't matter if you have it on good authority that they aren't biologically human, this is an attitude which I can't understand.
If you are attracted to someone, based upon the same criteria you'd find attractive in someone of your own species then why should it matter if they are not technically a member of your own species? All the relevant features are the same, the difference is a matter of taxonomy.

This is why your position is being compared to those of racists; you are saying that you are a member of a group, humans, and therefore shouldn't have sexual interests outside this group. This is a position which works in the world as it is now, where humans are the only species you can reasonably have a sexual/romantic relationship with (note I say relationship, meaning the emotional, social and intellectual relations on top of inserting tab A into slot B), it does not work in a world where there are other intelligent beings indistinguishable from humans in every way that matters.

If you even think of pointing out that the Na'Vi are ten feet tall elongated blue elves then remember it was you who said that appearance doesn't matter, only the fact these people are alien.

Your position is actually less like saying a white person shouldn't have sex with a black person and more like saying an American shouldn't be attracted to foreigners or a Jew shouldn't be attracted to gentiles or a Republican shouldn't be attracted to anyone from another political party. You're saying that knowing someone is from another group should be enough to turn you off them, and no, I don't think it matters that you've widened this group to include the human species, in a context where other human like intelligent beings exist.

Furthermore I think you're being very disingenuous by saying

Since Zook represents all of humanity, I suppose I should take his word on this. Oh, wait, Zook doesn't. The billions of people around the world who frown upon homosexuality are not going to be pleased to hear fucking something other than human is okay. And since those billions are the majority and thus, defined as normal with their sexual mores being "the usual thing," I still go with the dictionary definition and call fucking another sentient species deviant. Just because sex is consensual doesn't mean it's not deviant here.

Since in the real world most people will not factor humanoid aliens or androids (or gynoids) or anything of that sort into their thinking when they think about what is and isn't ok in terms of sexual morals. That's pretty reasonable because thinking humanoid beings which aren't human don't exist in the real world, whereas they do in the world of Avatar. You are applying the real worlds social norms to a social situation which does not exist in reality and which those social norms can't deal with.

Finally you also said

I argued he was a pervert. I'm not sure where I said he was morally wrong.

I have to echo Anguirus here, why even mention it if you don't actually think it's wrong? Why is this being argued about?
Either you believe that this 'deviant' behaviour is somehow a mark against Sully morally or it really isn't worth mentioning because you're just pointing out that what he did was unusual.

Oh and one more thing

And where's the cite for this? Sure, I found what's her name elf in LoTR hot as hell, but then, I was talking about this to another friend the other day and he made a very astute observation. I'm having this discussion on the net and everyone on the net is a deviant who'd love to fuck cat girls. I quite agree with him.

You can't complain about someone insulting you in one breath and then implicitly call everyone who doesn't agree with you a freak in a post in which you make no other points, not if you don't want to come across as snide prick, anyway.

[PeZook]

Maybe my momma raised me wrong, but when someone stoops to calling one a retard, asshole, motherfucker, a jackass and other things just because they can without a great deal of provocation, then it's best to avoid said hotheaded fucker.

I'm not doing this because I can, I'm doing this because I actually think you're a morally bankrupt asshole. You obviously think I'm an idiot, too: the difference is that I'm being up-front about this, while you're trying to cloud your opinion beneath a veneer of fake civility.

1. Zook argues that my arguments about the spaceship are moot and pointless:
I fail to see how they are. Here's a guy who quotes canon handbooks as facts and when someone tells him that his facts are so much shit - just like my FTL asspull - he asks how that matters (it matters because fractional cee travel at those kind of velocities is absolute bullshit for a spaceship using reaction drives or even solar sails or anything else of that sort, thus making both our assertions equally invalid/valid.) Moreover, it does not say in the movie how far pandora is from earth and I did not care enough to go hunting on the net for the information. They only give the travel times. Not enough information to judge the speed or the mode of travel from that, which is why I went FTL because impossible as scientists think it is, it is just as possible as a self-propelled ship weighing many, many, many tons to travel at 80% the speed of light (max velocity of 0.8c for five years and another 1 year to cover the other 0.36 ly).

It is irrelevant because even if the RDA was an Imperial company and showed up in a fucking Star Destroyer, my main problems with your story would be exactly the same!

I am only arguing this point in the interest of factual accuracy: Cameron did not want FTL in his story, and he specifically brought in an advisor who would help him visualize a relativistic starship that did not use FTL. He even had additional material created to explain this.

The facts are not "shit": as you correctly pointed out, such a starship is actually possible, it would just need tremendous amounts of energy and godtech materials. We know Avatar humanity has this sort of tech, as evidenced by their SSTO atmospheric shuttles which can not only have enough delta-v to skim the atmosphere of a gas giant and return to orbit with more fuel than they burn to do it, they can also operate for a long time with the minimum amount of industrial support.

2. Orbiting shuttle not aiding security:
A small jetpack and guidance package and a bar of metal that'll survive reentry makes for a pretty good KEW weapon from the shuttle. Use it on the gathering Na'vi below and let them know the futility of resistance as well as spread terror through their ranks. Anytime the army starts to concentrate, send a few more KEWs. Repeat until they break apart or charge like idiots without proper preparations and get slaughtered. How does the shuttle not help mining colony security in this case?

Because the RDA has not been established as posessing the capability to jury-rig a kinetic impactor on site.

Contrary to you and other hard sci-fi fanboys, a kinetic impactor is not an easily built weapon because of the extreme aerodynamics involved. You've obviously not considered the technical aspects of building such a weapon in the slightest, yet you try to claim it would be trivial to build one on site with no local expertise, no pre-made plans, no ability to build rocket engines (they had to ship their helicopter turbines from Earth!) or machine an aerodynamic casing to the tolerances required, and finally no time for design, testing and operational deployment.

They could've probably built some on Earth and shipped them, but they were explicitly forbidden from bringing any WMDs to Pandora. Earth government probably felt that just letting them operate relativistic antimatter fusion torches was risky enough.

3. Unobtanium as a strategic resource:
Zook started arguing it's something like a diamond (which has some industrial uses, but not all that many) and then reverses to "hey, it's a room temperature superconductor, but I still don't see how it's strategically important." It's strategically important because with it, you get better space ships (lesser heat output in the ship to manage), better electronics, better a lot of things. How is that not strategically important? His nice attempt to counter argue saying that "wars don't just start for strategic items, they also start for useless luxury goods" is moot since I never argued wars start only for strategic resources.

It may very well be a strategic resource ; But that does not automatically mean the world economy will collapse without it. Uranium is a strategic resource, yet while not useless for civilian applications, it's not essential to the world economy (yet).

Furthermore, the amounts of unobtainium shipped back are completely insignificant. I believe I covered this somewhere in this thread already, but the RDA had no physical capability to ship enough unobtainium to make the world economy depend on it.

And since your moral judgement of Sully's actions hinges completely on unobtainium's importance to Earth, the entire argument for criticizing his actions falls apart the moment you realize that.

This is in addition to my earlier argument, which you completely ignored: when it was expected and logical to bring up unobtainium's tremendous importance to humanity, Selfridge doesn't do it ; All he talks about is its cost and profit, to a person who holds him in contempt precisely because of his greed.

Starships are irrelevant ; The only reason they need unobtainium for them is to make unobtainium mining more efficient.

4. Great Depression leading to WWII:
The relation is not direct. Great Depression, Germany's finagling with the payments for the exorbitant and completely unjust payment terms at Versailles (which also hurt the german economy a lot since they devalued their currency by printing a shitload of it), the hurt pride from the loss of the war before all led to Hitler's National Socialist party becoming popular (while the reigning parties fell into disfavor) and seizing power. If it weren't for Hitler seizing power, could we have had WWII? Possibly. Could it have been as bad as what we had? Millions of dead Jews, Russians and the entire economy of Western Europe ruined because of Hitler. Possibly not. Germany might not have had that big and that well trained an army (though the training is reaching out there) or the Germans may not started slaughtering jews. All this happened because one madman seized power out of a hundred nations in the world. That's all is needed. A discontented population and a madman to lead them. And you get plenty of discontent when lots of people lose their jobs simultaneously.

The Treaty Of Versailles was the crucial part of the entire equation. It's true that without the Great Depression and other factors nazism would probably not get the necessary foothold: thus, it's logically unsound to assume that lack of unobtainium will lead to war and death on a mass scale. At best it will cause a recession ; That's not sufficient justification for the eradication of an entire ecosystem, especially when you consider the fact that Eywa didn't give a fuck about humans mining unobtainium ; It got pissed when they attacked her people, so it should've been possible to arrange for some deal to get at the floating rocks without wiping out the planet.

Anyone who says that major events in History have a single explanation or reason doesn't have any idea what he's talking about. The three factors I've given are not even remotely close to exhaustive. They're just the tip of the iceberg. But for Zook, Hitler's rise to power = Treaty of Versailles.

If you were not born retarded, you'd realize I never wrote that. I claimed the Treaty Of Versailles was a necessary condition, not that it was the only reason for Hitler's rise to power.

5. Conducting war with an external scapegoat because of internal problems or as Zook puts it "deliberately murdering innocents just so you could get out of a depression.":
Wouldn't all the dead on Earth also have been innocent? The RDA fucked up and the people of Earth have to pay the price in blood, starvation, lost livelihoods, etc? How is this fair either? I wasn't arguing that nuking the Na'vi was fair, btw. I was simply saying, it's inevitable, despicable though the action is. The two arguments are entirely different. One makes me a murderous psychopath and bastard. The other makes me a cynical asshole, which I am.

Yes, they should pay the price of mankind's bad decisions. You don't get to escape the consequences of your massive short-sightedness by killing more blue/brown/red people, and expect not to be called an amoral asshole for this.

Of course, the likely economic consequences wouldn't be anywhere near your apocalyptic predictions of war and destruction (how did they manage to assemble an interstellar fleet if Earth's economy collapsed, anyway?), so that's irrelevant.

7. Indian Genocide:
The Indians were not violets themselves. Geronimo, I believe, killed little girls and hung them from meathooks. Or how about the Kiowa, the Commanches? No one liked Kiowas and Commanches. They were cantankerous bastards to their neighbors. Thing is, what is thought of as Indian genocide is actually the displacement of numerous cultures each with its own language and culture.
[snip long-winded rant]

That would've been an excellent argument if I actually argued the Na'Vi should've been left alone because they were saints, not that this was their land and they had a right to defend it.

8. Burning a tree is nuking Tehran and collateral damage:
Dropping a bomb on someone with intent to kill them makes that person the target. Dropping a bomb on a house to destroy the house and in the doing, offing a few people makes the dead people collateral damage. But then, since Zook doesn't seem to have clear knowledge of pretty much anything, I suppose it's my fault for assuming he knows what collateral damage means.

If your goal is to destroy the house without killing the inhabitants, you should give the inhabitants time to leave it.

Quaritch, on the other hand, let his incendiaries lose the very moment the Na'Vi put up any kind of resistance, and he didn't even fire it at the archers: he shot them inside the tree, which was full of panicking civilians.

That's not "collateral damage", that's a fucking war crime.

As for burning the tree is worse than nuking Tehran, that's just Zook's opinion. Killing a few people and burning a tree is not the same as nuking a city and killing god knows how many thousands of people. If Zook thinks they are, let Zook think so.

From the perspective of the Na'Vi, there's no difference. Just like the average Pole would see no differencde between nuking Warsaw and New York, even though the latter would suffer an order of magnitude more casualties, the Omaticaya saw destroying the Home Tree as an attack on their entire culture, because for intents and purposes, it was their capital city.

The Omaticaya did not escalate the war in any way, because for them it was not a "limited war" at all. Their home was destroyed, so they began to gather to strike at their enemy's home.

9. Limited war not targeting civilian structure:
Zook's on a roll here. Let me list some of the civilian things that are going to be targeted in any war:
1. Radio transmission stations
2. TV stations
3. Bridges
4. Roads
5. Rail lines
6. Power stations
7. Fuel stations
8. Dams

These are all civilian infrastructure that helps in the conduct of war. Similarly, one can argue that the big fucking tree was a base of operations and by targeting the rear infrastructure first, RDA only wanted a quick end to the coming war and reduced Na'vi casualties. This is, on top of the primary objective to kick out the Na'vi and secure the site for mining, of course.

Yeah, okay. They "reducded Na'Vi casualties" by firing off every incendiary rocket they had inside a structure full of civilians. Quaritch had no noble goals here. He obviously just wanted to murder as many Na'Vi as he could get away with.

10. Shuttles not coming back with ships:
It still doesn't matter. Just because Zook thinks the world works in a particular way doesn't mean the world does work that particular way and no other.

Why on Earth would they haul the shuttles back?

Using one shuttle for loading is going to take two and half or three times as would two shuttles. Worst case, four times as long. That's still peanuts compared to a 12 year journey to and from Earth. Delays in delivery on Earth may cause RDA to incur severe penalties, but those would be nothing compared to going back empty handed. If operations on the mine are going to be affected, I would like to know how the absence or presence of an equipment to lift shit out of the gravity well affects mining operations.

11. Refueling times.
This is so funny I have to laugh and I will at this particular piece of crap Zook got fed from his fact book. How much is the spaceship's and shuttle's capacity supposed to be? And why the fuck are they lifting fuel out of the gravity well instead of setting up a station around the gas giant? And if the can't build a station to produce/mine fuel and pump it up, why doesn't the shuttle store the fuel in containers in stable orbit between the times the spaceships come and go? You try to maximize the load carrying time of any equipment because it's more money for you. Idle time is not okay and 1 year fueling is 1 year idle time. So, bwahahahaha! What kind of idiot wrote this factbook? Bwahaha!

What the hell are you even rambling about? Whatever the particular details, the shuttles are necessary to refuel the starship, even if all they do is carry the remass from a mining station back to Pandora's orbit. They need the shuttles, destroying one would not only cost billions directly, but also delay the mining ops.

You are literally arguing that Quaritch should've went straight to destroying an expensive SSTO spacecraft when he had all reason to believe his bombing run would be succesful and put the shuttle used a bomber in only limited danger. It would be like an American patrol in Iraq coming upon a mudhut, taking some fire and calling in a B52 to level it.

12. Sex with human like sentients:
Since Zook represents all of humanity, I suppose I should take his word on this. Oh, wait, Zook doesn't. The billions of people around the world who frown upon homosexuality are not going to be pleased to hear fucking something other than human is okay. And since those billions are the majority and thus, defined as normal with their sexual mores being "the usual thing," I still go with the dictionary definition and call fucking another sentient species deviant. Just because sex is consensual doesn't mean it's not deviant here.

I conceded that his behavior was deviant according to your semantics-whoring. I also asked you to concede there was nothing morally wrong with it, which (of course) you ignored.

13. Staring at naked women is deviant:
Another zinger from Zook. Since all straight guys I know do this, it's not deviant.

How about adressing my actual argument?

14. Neytiri and Sully:
Still a deviant.

And I agree. Still morally fine.

15. Normal men fucking exotic shit:
Does Zook mean normal men fuck goats, camels, chimps and other assorted critter all the time because that's what we were talking about. WTF!

Why of course, by "seeking exotic shit to fuck" I obviously meant animals, not, say, exotic women, sex toys or fetishes.

16. Sully didn't start the war:
Zook gets this right. Sully did not start the hot war. But that wasn't what I was saying in the story at all. RDA started a war with a tribe over mining territory and were assholes about it. Sully, in turn, retaliated by involving Eywa in the war, which was tantamount to declaring war on humanity.

How? You keep repeating this, but you never justified that. They fought the RDA ; They wanted to win, so they brought in the means to do so. They never, ever wanted to destroy humanity or attack Earth. They only "fight humanity" in your story because you:

A) Make Eywa retarded

B) Make Earth governments retarded

and C) Make a completely unfounded assumption so as to unobtainium's importance

17. Love between Sully and Neytiri is morally right.
I argued he was a pervert. I'm not sure where I said he was morally wrong.

You mentioned it in the context of Sully being a bastard for "forcing" your psycho mass murdering main character to destroy an entire ecosystem, so forgive me for assuming you were looking for extra justification to rage on his character.

[arun2110]

I have read some papers that thought they might. But seeing as how they were on the fringe, you're almost certainly correct (I use that qualifier because I'm not sure the science is actually settled as with E=mc2 or if this is only a consensus among the scientific community as with dark matter and dark energy. What I mean is, I'm not trying to wheedle out of crying uncle on this one. I promise I will if it's the former. ^_^)

I'm not a botanist. I'm actually pretty sure that complex plants have some sort of cell-to-cell communication system, which is basically what a nervous system is. However, using the cladistic definition of the nervous system, the term would only be used for systems homologous with the simple neural network of the common ancestor of all animals with a nervous system.

Okay. I call uncle since I'm too lazy to go and research this now and independently check if this is consensus or not. ^_^

More importantly, at any rate, plants do not have anything that even particularly resembles neurons, so it would be quite a stretch to call it a nervous system.

The Pandoran network was actually analogous to a nervous system in that each tree represented one neuron. The world-forest actually had fewer synapses than a human brain, however each tree of a certain variety was apparently capable of storing complex thought patterns so a tree isn't an exact analogy to a neural cell body (since a single neuron can process or store anything). In addition, the physiology was totally different in that communication across synapses was electrical rather than chemical, and all of the trees appeared to be physically connected. Essentially, the world-forest resembled Golgi's erroneous conception of the nervous system as a physically integrated network, rather than Cajal's correct one.

However, considering that certain of these trees can store records of multiple mammalian-cortex-analogues and on top of that network with each other...I'd say there could be a staggering amount of processing going on in the world-forest.

The last point raises an interesting thought. Why would Eywa evolve this? There's no evolutionary need that I can think of. Was it created by some other intelligence?

Well, spending hours arguing on the net is technically sadder but we'll ignore that. LOL

I'm not sure if I can answer your question since the impression I get is that you're alluding I'm an armchair genocidal warmonger. I know I'm not one. Reason being, while I'm almost certain I can kill another human being if the situation warrants it, I would not condone the murder of an entire race. That way is the fastest way to lose your humanity, though I'm sometimes angry enough with the slaughter committed by jihadi assholes to wish that someone would drop a nuke on Mecca and Medina. Note that in Deepak's shoes, I would do exactly as he did. I would also have blown my brain apart after my command to bump the trajectory of the asteroids was executed, but that's neither here nor there.

Well, the question applies whether you are one or not. Arguing on the net isn't intrinsically sad (unless I let it interfere with my work, but my break shall end after I post this last thought!). Genociding (yes I know it's not a verb) some poor group of people, no matter where they are from, is a horror almost beyond reckoning, and I can't even decide whether ideology or pure greed makes it worse. But the joke in my original question is the idea of someone who really really wants to perpetrate that horror beyond reckoning and is too lazy to even get off his duff and do that.

Given the quality of most internet arguments - which devolve into pointless name calling (and I'm saying this as one who has contributed his fair share) - I'd say yes. But by this measure, so are most arguments in real life. I concede this one. LOL

Talking of murder is much easier than going out and committing it. Humans - contrary to popular acclaim - are peaceful creatures. My proof is, most people are never involved in a physical fight through their lives except maybe a few altercations that rarely come to blows during their childhood or teenage years. It's only that when we stoop to violence, we are capable of so much more violence than anything else on this planet. It's interesting to note that 9 out of ten soldiers used to not shoot their guns - there are innumerable records of muskets being stuffed to the brim with bullets and gun powder because the soldier followed the order to load, but did not fire while the enemy was standing mere yards away with a musket and blasting away.

At any rate, in your hypothetical you seem to be placing yourself in the role of the bomber pilot from Fail-Safe, perpetrating one horror for the greater good. Now as I've said, I haven't read your story, but in my opinion nothing about Avatar suggests any compelling requirement (it would have to involve, at a minimum, the imminent extinction of the human species in order to approach the justification for destroying an inhabited planet in my opinion) for the perpetration of a massive extinction event. It would not be impossible to negotiate with Sully--after all, the film clearly establishes that the unobtainium deposit under Hometree was the most lucrative and most convenient one, not the only one. In fact, if as you suggest the survival of humanity was threatened by their expulsion from Pandora, most of Jake Sully's actions make no sense. Hatred of humanity never becomes part of his character (except in Quaritch's black-and-white worldview).

Is why I called Sully a shortsighted idiot who gave no thought to the consequences of his actions. I did not depict him as someone who hated humanity. As for what justifies killing a planet, it can never be the right thing to do. But it can the most palatable of a bunch of worse choices.

At any race, blowing your brains out would be little more than a selfish act under the given circumstances. You certainly don't give the dead any satisfaction by doing so. You just prove yourself unable to deal with your own guilt as a war criminal and perpetrator of genocide. (And ecocide? Destroying the whole life cycle down there is a staggering crime as well, though secondary to the obliteration of a sapient species.)

Yes, I'd be coward.

To be perfectly frank, the fic was a rant. ^_^ But it was also meant to provoke thought in people.

It has done so. Have the responses been thought-provoking for you as well?

Yes. There were some really thoughtful discussions I had with some people about this. I'd also learned some as well. I'd never considered the effect blueshift would have on a spaceship, but during one of those discussions, I thought of it and subsequently confirmed it (scientists are very concerned about the real problems it poses for fractional-cee travel. I also learned some other stuff about myself.

I had that huge list of questions in author's notes because I thought them thought provoking. What I got were some interesting, thoughtful discussions with a few reviewers and a lot of accusations of being a racist, murderer, asshole and the like

Why would they suggest this? Could your story be interpreted as putting a lower value on the lives of the Na'Vi and the world-forest as on human life? If so, these accusations will result without some sort of clarification. It is trivial to draw the analogy between the very human-like Na'Vi species and the races of humanity that have been forced to suffer for the benefit of others that wielded more power.

I would say they suggest this because my world view isn't the same as theirs.

One lady was really polished about calling me a racist, but most have been pretty straightforward about it. Most of those accusations were made by progressives, or at least, those espousing progressive thought for some reason. Heh. The ones who preach progressive thought and liberalism are really narrowminded and utterly intolerant against anything that goes against their beliefs, is the lesson I took away from the whole debacle.

This is your logic, diagrammed:
A: Some people think I'm a racist because of my story.
B: No tolerant person could infer racism into my story.
C: Most of the people who think I'm a racist are progressive.

Conclusion: Progressives are intolerant.

The conclusion does not follow from the premises. For one thing, the conclusion is way too general. But let' examine your premises as well.

Premise A is evidently true. It is very doubtful that Premise B holds for any widely-accepted definition of "tolerant." (Protip: people who believe in tolerance are intolerant of apparent racism, because racism is intolerance. This is true regardless of how much of a stretch it may be to infer racism into your story.) Premise C is evidently true, however we have only your word and frankly it sounds like you are attempting to categorize large swathes of your readers (i.e. the ones you don't like) into an oft-demonized category of the public and thus dismiss them.

That is, to put it mildly, unlikely to fly here.

You're correct. I did not give my complete reasoning. It would have been better to call them hypocrites with the data I'd presented. But this is my understanding of things. Everyone is intolerant. The progressives just like to pretend they are tolerant of all things. This chain of thought, however, seems to verge on politics. I'll steer clear of this henceforth.

However, you may have an interesting glimmer of a point. I have read psychology articles (sorry, no citations, so take it for what it's worth) that suggest the primary difference between American "progressives" and "conservatives" is the bias of the former towards the common good for all of humanity, and the bias of the latter towards the good of the people they personally associate with. In that light, it is unsurprising that there would be a bias of progressives against a story that could be perceived as setting humanity (standing in for one race/tribe/community) as intrinsically superior to the Na'Vi (standing in for another race/tribe/community).

I'm aware of this, actually. When the progressives talk of the family of humanity, they say that every other grouping is arbitrary and thus meaningless. But for what reason do they think that the family of man as a group is not arbitrary and why is the grouping based on nationality, cultures, etc, arbitrary?

When someone talks of the common good of the people, I've generally learnt that person really means common good for themselves and their family.

Please understand that I did not do it for fun. It's just I can't see how else the mess would end when the news of the defeat got back to earth. For the profit alone, there would be people who'd do it, but if there's something of strategic importance involved, they'd definitely do it. I was simply pointing that out.

Read Adm. Deepak in the story did not enjoying killing a planet. The contempt he has for RDA, Quaritch and Sully is because he wouldn't have had to become the greatest mass-murderer in history if even if one of the three had performed their job and did right by their duty. But they did not, he had to bloody his hands.

I wouldn't say any one of them is a paragon of virtue. But you are reading something into it that I didn't if you suppose that Sully (and the usually disunited Na'Vi) would attempt to enforce their blockade even in the face of Earth's impending extinction, or their own.

After all, the local tribe was allied with the RDA until some sort of incident involving machine guns and Na'Vi children. The Na'Vi then waged an extremely half-hearted "war" on the RDA, which only escalated when they blew up Hometree, killing hundreds or thousands in cold blood. And then, the world-forest didn't make so much as a twitch until the Tree of Souls was threatened. I don't think it gives an ass about the unobtainium if the Earthers could retrieve it without being a bunch of bomb-happy colonial oppressors. And actually, it didn't even have a problem with THAT until Quaritch flipped his lid and tried to blow up their "racial memory."

The assumption in consequences is, what'd happen if Eywa became hostile towards humanity. It'd make a good story to show this in another story where humans come back and negotiate a treaty with the Na'vi and the two cultures learn to live with each other. But while I was pissed enough at having wasted good money at the theatre to write Consequences, i do not care enough about Avatar to write this.

I understand. My perspective is, Avatar the movie is close to your example. Like Sauron being too smart, RDA, Quarity and Sully got too big a dose of stupid and together escalated something that should have been resolved on the negotiation table in some manner to a war involving a planetary intelligence. That was what angered me most about the movie because a small mining dispute turns into a contest for a planet.

It was more like the contest for a small area of one forest on one planet (technically a moon, but whatev). If Earth really NEEDS unobtainium, they can pursue less expedient and harmful means. If we assume that no unobtainium is to be had on the other, less hospitable bodies in the system, then good-faith negotiation would be a start. The scientists who are staying are the perfect ambassadors. Your scenario only comes about because you make the stakes artificially high. I don't think the relevant parties are QUITE as stupid (/deviant) as you propose.

Well, our opinions differ then. ^_^

[arun2110]

I have read some papers that thought they might. But seeing as how they were on the fringe, you're almost certainly correct (I use that qualifier because I'm not sure the science is actually settled as with E=mc2 or if this is only a consensus among the scientific community as with dark matter and dark energy. What I mean is, I'm not trying to wheedle out of crying uncle on this one. I promise I will if it's the former. ^_^)

I'm not a botanist. I'm actually pretty sure that complex plants have some sort of cell-to-cell communication system, which is basically what a nervous system is. However, using the cladistic definition of the nervous system, the term would only be used for systems homologous with the simple neural network of the common ancestor of all animals with a nervous system.

Okay. I call uncle since I'm too lazy to go and research this now and independently check if this is consensus or not. ^_^

More importantly, at any rate, plants do not have anything that even particularly resembles neurons, so it would be quite a stretch to call it a nervous system.

The Pandoran network was actually analogous to a nervous system in that each tree represented one neuron. The world-forest actually had fewer synapses than a human brain, however each tree of a certain variety was apparently capable of storing complex thought patterns so a tree isn't an exact analogy to a neural cell body (since a single neuron can process or store anything). In addition, the physiology was totally different in that communication across synapses was electrical rather than chemical, and all of the trees appeared to be physically connected. Essentially, the world-forest resembled Golgi's erroneous conception of the nervous system as a physically integrated network, rather than Cajal's correct one.

However, considering that certain of these trees can store records of multiple mammalian-cortex-analogues and on top of that network with each other...I'd say there could be a staggering amount of processing going on in the world-forest.

The last point raises an interesting thought. Why would Eywa evolve this? There's no evolutionary need that I can think of. Was it created by some other intelligence?

Well, spending hours arguing on the net is technically sadder but we'll ignore that. LOL

I'm not sure if I can answer your question since the impression I get is that you're alluding I'm an armchair genocidal warmonger. I know I'm not one. Reason being, while I'm almost certain I can kill another human being if the situation warrants it, I would not condone the murder of an entire race. That way is the fastest way to lose your humanity, though I'm sometimes angry enough with the slaughter committed by jihadi assholes to wish that someone would drop a nuke on Mecca and Medina. Note that in Deepak's shoes, I would do exactly as he did. I would also have blown my brain apart after my command to bump the trajectory of the asteroids was executed, but that's neither here nor there.

Well, the question applies whether you are one or not. Arguing on the net isn't intrinsically sad (unless I let it interfere with my work, but my break shall end after I post this last thought!). Genociding (yes I know it's not a verb) some poor group of people, no matter where they are from, is a horror almost beyond reckoning, and I can't even decide whether ideology or pure greed makes it worse. But the joke in my original question is the idea of someone who really really wants to perpetrate that horror beyond reckoning and is too lazy to even get off his duff and do that.

Given the quality of most internet arguments - which devolve into pointless name calling (and I'm saying this as one who has contributed his fair share) - I'd say yes. But by this measure, so are most arguments in real life. I concede this one. LOL

Talking of murder is much easier than going out and committing it. Humans - contrary to popular acclaim - are peaceful creatures. My proof is, most people are never involved in a physical fight through their lives except maybe a few altercations that rarely come to blows during their childhood or teenage years. It's only that when we stoop to violence, we are capable of so much more violence than anything else on this planet. It's interesting to note that 9 out of ten soldiers used to not shoot their guns - there are innumerable records of muskets being stuffed to the brim with bullets and gun powder because the soldier followed the order to load, but did not fire while the enemy was standing mere yards away with a musket and blasting away.

At any rate, in your hypothetical you seem to be placing yourself in the role of the bomber pilot from Fail-Safe, perpetrating one horror for the greater good. Now as I've said, I haven't read your story, but in my opinion nothing about Avatar suggests any compelling requirement (it would have to involve, at a minimum, the imminent extinction of the human species in order to approach the justification for destroying an inhabited planet in my opinion) for the perpetration of a massive extinction event. It would not be impossible to negotiate with Sully--after all, the film clearly establishes that the unobtainium deposit under Hometree was the most lucrative and most convenient one, not the only one. In fact, if as you suggest the survival of humanity was threatened by their expulsion from Pandora, most of Jake Sully's actions make no sense. Hatred of humanity never becomes part of his character (except in Quaritch's black-and-white worldview).

Is why I called Sully a shortsighted idiot who gave no thought to the consequences of his actions. I did not depict him as someone who hated humanity. As for what justifies killing a planet, it can never be the right thing to do. But it can the most palatable of a bunch of worse choices.

At any race, blowing your brains out would be little more than a selfish act under the given circumstances. You certainly don't give the dead any satisfaction by doing so. You just prove yourself unable to deal with your own guilt as a war criminal and perpetrator of genocide. (And ecocide? Destroying the whole life cycle down there is a staggering crime as well, though secondary to the obliteration of a sapient species.)

Yes, I'd be coward.

To be perfectly frank, the fic was a rant. ^_^ But it was also meant to provoke thought in people.

It has done so. Have the responses been thought-provoking for you as well?

Yes. There were some really thoughtful discussions I had with some people about this. I'd also learned some as well. I'd never considered the effect blueshift would have on a spaceship, but during one of those discussions, I thought of it and subsequently confirmed it (scientists are very concerned about the real problems it poses for fractional-cee travel. I also learned some other stuff about myself.

I had that huge list of questions in author's notes because I thought them thought provoking. What I got were some interesting, thoughtful discussions with a few reviewers and a lot of accusations of being a racist, murderer, asshole and the like

Why would they suggest this? Could your story be interpreted as putting a lower value on the lives of the Na'Vi and the world-forest as on human life? If so, these accusations will result without some sort of clarification. It is trivial to draw the analogy between the very human-like Na'Vi species and the races of humanity that have been forced to suffer for the benefit of others that wielded more power.

I would say they suggest this because my world view isn't the same as theirs.

One lady was really polished about calling me a racist, but most have been pretty straightforward about it. Most of those accusations were made by progressives, or at least, those espousing progressive thought for some reason. Heh. The ones who preach progressive thought and liberalism are really narrowminded and utterly intolerant against anything that goes against their beliefs, is the lesson I took away from the whole debacle.

This is your logic, diagrammed:
A: Some people think I'm a racist because of my story.
B: No tolerant person could infer racism into my story.
C: Most of the people who think I'm a racist are progressive.

Conclusion: Progressives are intolerant.

The conclusion does not follow from the premises. For one thing, the conclusion is way too general. But let' examine your premises as well.

Premise A is evidently true. It is very doubtful that Premise B holds for any widely-accepted definition of "tolerant." (Protip: people who believe in tolerance are intolerant of apparent racism, because racism is intolerance. This is true regardless of how much of a stretch it may be to infer racism into your story.) Premise C is evidently true, however we have only your word and frankly it sounds like you are attempting to categorize large swathes of your readers (i.e. the ones you don't like) into an oft-demonized category of the public and thus dismiss them.

That is, to put it mildly, unlikely to fly here.

You're correct. I did not give my complete reasoning. It would have been better to call them hypocrites with the data I'd presented. But this is my understanding of things. Everyone is intolerant. The progressives just like to pretend they are tolerant of all things. This chain of thought, however, seems to verge on politics. I'll steer clear of this henceforth.

However, you may have an interesting glimmer of a point. I have read psychology articles (sorry, no citations, so take it for what it's worth) that suggest the primary difference between American "progressives" and "conservatives" is the bias of the former towards the common good for all of humanity, and the bias of the latter towards the good of the people they personally associate with. In that light, it is unsurprising that there would be a bias of progressives against a story that could be perceived as setting humanity (standing in for one race/tribe/community) as intrinsically superior to the Na'Vi (standing in for another race/tribe/community).

I'm aware of this, actually. When the progressives talk of the family of humanity, they say that every other grouping is arbitrary and thus meaningless. But for what reason do they think that the family of man as a group is not arbitrary and why is the grouping based on nationality, cultures, etc, arbitrary?

When someone talks of the common good of the people, I've generally learnt that person really means common good for themselves and their family.

Please understand that I did not do it for fun. It's just I can't see how else the mess would end when the news of the defeat got back to earth. For the profit alone, there would be people who'd do it, but if there's something of strategic importance involved, they'd definitely do it. I was simply pointing that out.

Read Adm. Deepak in the story did not enjoying killing a planet. The contempt he has for RDA, Quaritch and Sully is because he wouldn't have had to become the greatest mass-murderer in history if even if one of the three had performed their job and did right by their duty. But they did not, he had to bloody his hands.

I wouldn't say any one of them is a paragon of virtue. But you are reading something into it that I didn't if you suppose that Sully (and the usually disunited Na'Vi) would attempt to enforce their blockade even in the face of Earth's impending extinction, or their own.

After all, the local tribe was allied with the RDA until some sort of incident involving machine guns and Na'Vi children. The Na'Vi then waged an extremely half-hearted "war" on the RDA, which only escalated when they blew up Hometree, killing hundreds or thousands in cold blood. And then, the world-forest didn't make so much as a twitch until the Tree of Souls was threatened. I don't think it gives an ass about the unobtainium if the Earthers could retrieve it without being a bunch of bomb-happy colonial oppressors. And actually, it didn't even have a problem with THAT until Quaritch flipped his lid and tried to blow up their "racial memory."

The assumption in consequences is, what'd happen if Eywa became hostile towards humanity. It'd make a good story to show this in another story where humans come back and negotiate a treaty with the Na'vi and the two cultures learn to live with each other. But while I was pissed enough at having wasted good money at the theatre to write Consequences, i do not care enough about Avatar to write this.

I understand. My perspective is, Avatar the movie is close to your example. Like Sauron being too smart, RDA, Quarity and Sully got too big a dose of stupid and together escalated something that should have been resolved on the negotiation table in some manner to a war involving a planetary intelligence. That was what angered me most about the movie because a small mining dispute turns into a contest for a planet.

It was more like the contest for a small area of one forest on one planet (technically a moon, but whatev). If Earth really NEEDS unobtainium, they can pursue less expedient and harmful means. If we assume that no unobtainium is to be had on the other, less hospitable bodies in the system, then good-faith negotiation would be a start. The scientists who are staying are the perfect ambassadors. Your scenario only comes about because you make the stakes artificially high. I don't think the relevant parties are QUITE as stupid (/deviant) as you propose.

Well, our opinions differ then. ^_^

[arun2110]

I argued he was a pervert. I'm not sure where I said he was morally wrong.

I have to echo Anguirus here, why even mention it if you don't actually think it's wrong? Why is this being argued about?
Either you believe that this 'deviant' behaviour is somehow a mark against Sully morally or it really isn't worth mentioning because you're just pointing out that what he did was unusual.

Oh and one more thing

And where's the cite for this? Sure, I found what's her name elf in LoTR hot as hell, but then, I was talking about this to another friend the other day and he made a very astute observation. I'm having this discussion on the net and everyone on the net is a deviant who'd love to fuck cat girls. I quite agree with him.

You can't complain about someone insulting you in one breath and then implicitly call everyone who doesn't agree with you a freak in a post in which you make no other points, not if you don't want to come across as snide prick, anyway.

I'm grouping myself in the people on the net bunch and thus among the freaks. I brought this up because it's a good topic for a thought provoking discussion.

[arun2110]

I don't think you get to argue this. Concentration of force is recognized as proof you're getting ready for an assault. ^_^ The Na'vi warriors were concentrating, weren't they? What were the miners supposed to think?

I get to argue this. The Na'vi in the Soul Tree were despondent refugees who just fled from a disaster zone. The Na'vi warrior concentration was a peacekeeping emergency response force bringing food and supplies and medicine and other aid stuff to the Na'vi refugees to treat the wounded and sick, take care of the women and children, and give shelter to those homeless Na'vi who were using the Soul Tree as a stand in for the New Orleans Superdome.

Unless you're saying China should've launched a couple dozen anti-ship missiles at an American aircraft carrier sent to help Indonesian earthquake/tsunami victims.

You get to write that fic. :p I don't. I'm working with the assumptions I made in my story and what was shown in the movie.

I find it unconvincing that a primitive people who have no conception of logistics and have terrible communication systems would gather in one area after a disaster for disaster recovery efforts, however.

For example, in the modern world, if your neighboring nation concentrated troops near your mutual border, you'd be concerned. When they start forward deploying their artillery and air force, you know they are going to attack.

Well, they weren't forward deploying anything. They were just gathering a fuck ton of people in the Soul Tree. Besides, how can one tell a Na'vi civilian from a Na'vi warrior, anyway? It's not like they have uniforms, and ALL (or most, or many) Na'vi come with arrows and spears since those are their basic hunting utensils, and all Na'vi have horsies or birdies also.

I repeat my argument above. It also can't be a religious ceremony because the kids from the other tribes stayed home.

I have no problem with Sully's tribe going to war against RDA. I'd called RDA a bunch of incompetents and demonstrated them to be assholes in the story. I do not like RDA. .That said, turning a little war between the tribe and the humans into a crusade involving the planetary intelligence struck me as a reckless escalation. That action of Sully's, I have infinite contempt.

Um, Sully didn't turn it into a planetary intelligence crusade. Pandora/Eywa did, out of its own free will. Besides, the reckless escalation was done by the RDA first.

This is an assumption in Consequences. If it wasn't a planetary intelligence crusade, the story would obviously gone another way. Rear Adm. Deepak comes, lands, negotiates and mining starts with the army and an ambassador to ensure that RDA behaves and that the relations with the natives are healthy.

Problem is, it'll take a hell of a lot of power to lift several hundred tons and float it. You're constantly working against gravity. Forgive me, but plants aren't going to supply that kind of energy and thrive in their environment.

I'm not saying that the plants supply that kind of energy. I'm saying that the environment itself supplies that energy, since apparently it's the rocks and the unobtaniums and the hallelujah mountains that provide the power to lift several hundred tons and float it. I'm saying that these things might also provide additional energy for not only inanimate flying mountains, but also to living plants. Energy that they can use for bioluminescence. Might. Maybe.

Earth plants can subsist on sunlight, water and earth.

Pandora plants can also subsist on sunlight, water and earth.

But Pandoran earth (ground) has some energetic properties that allow mountains to fly

This Pandoran earth (ground) is also used by Pandoran plants for subsistence, along with sunlight and water.

So maybe there IS something in Pandora's ground that provides additional energy for the plants (to make them glow in the dark)? After all, there IS something in Pandora's ground that provides additional energy for the mountains (to make them fly).

It's not really an important tangent. What are we, now? Arguing about Pandoran biospherical calorie contents?

Yes, this is pointless.

We don't know enough about plant nervous systems on earth to tell that. Hell, I'm not even sure we know for sure if they have nervous systems. I think the jury is still out on that one.

Earth plants do not have nervous systems, at least not anything remotely as developed as those on animals. Nervous systems require a crapload of metabolic energy in order to function.

However, Pandoran plants DO have nervous systems, seemingly as developed as those on animals. Nervous systems require a crapload of metabolic energy in order to function. Where do Pandoran plants get this metabolic energy?

*Shrugs*

Weapons that travel 50 kilometers per second will. Hell, the penetrator in a tank travels at far less velocities and we've seen what happens when they hit armored vehicles. Think much more massive and much faster. You will get mushroom clouds. Just to illustrate, there was a 50kT blast from a suspected meteorite over Indonesia within the last 8/9 months.

Okay. There can certainly be orbital KE weapons in the Avater-verse. But is it within the capability of a bare-bones understaffed corporate mining operation to jerry-rig within such a short span of time, and effectively use with little preparation?

Yes. A properly shaped rod would be better, but any large object massive enough to survive reentry would do as well as the jetpacks to move said object.

If the miners are forbidden by the execs, they'll simply go easy on the mining explosives and use them to create impromptu mines. Not that hard to make IEDs as the Pastuns in Afghanistan continue to demonstrate everyday. ^_^

Well, they did make that Daisy Cutter.

As for why didn't they make a whole fuckload of mines, or more intensive defenses. I dunno. The RDA operation there looked like it only had a few people. Having those guys spend their time jerry-rigging landmines out of explosives might've been too time consuming or whatever?

Mines use very little explosive unless we're talking about anti-armor mines.

Just because I realize and accept this is how the screwed up real world works doesn't mean I'm a Nazi, a jew hater, a holocaust denier/supporter or a supporter of slavery. Off the top of my head, let me name you a few genocidal/persecution pogroms going on right now in our modern world:

1. Darfur - where animist christians are being systematically raped and killed.
2. Karen - ethnic tribal minority in Burma.
3. The Shias in Iraq - the Sunnis really have it in for them seeing as how the Sunnis want to get back to power. Now, this pogrom isn't really organized - its more of terrorist bombing and such to provoke civil war between the Shias and the Sunnis, which bin Laden and his gang think will unite the Arab world against the Americans and the heretic Shias.
4. Baluch - Ethnic group in Pakistan that are in rebellion - though the rebellion isn't going well - and whom the Indian government covertly support for strategic reasons.
5. The tibetans - they're losing their cultural identity and the Hans are taking their lands, too.

This is the world we live in. It's not going to get better because humans have the us vs. them built into their genes.

I know. I'm sure if people saw what I write, they'd probably also call me a Nazi, a jew hater, a holocaust denier/supporter or a supporter of slavery.

Then I'd laugh.

right pezook?

I did not mention anything about nazis, jews, the holocaust and slavery. This does not follow.

An emotional response, but not a command response. Command would be consolidate command, organize forces and lead.

Oh come on. His vehicle was destroyed and he barely escaped, only to be immediately attacked by the she-bitch on a fucking rabid foaming-at-the-mouth xenopanther, before being further attacked by Jake Sully.

As mighty a leader-rapist Quarritch was, it's really not a fault of his character that he wasn't able to command his disarrayed forces when his command post vehicle just EXPLODED, and he barely escaped while catching fire, only to be attacked by monsters and forced to defend his life. I don't think Winston Churchill could've led the Allies effectively if his command post was destroyed, and if he only barely escaped (while sustaining fire injuries by being on fire) and got immediately attacked by a monster. Not even Stalin could've effectively led in such a situation.

A commander going on a personal crusade in the middle of a battle is not a commander. Churchill led rather well while london was getting the shit bombed out of it.

Would your Admiral Deepak have led more effectively if it was HIS command post that got blown up, and if he only barely escaped - while catching fire? Could he have consolidated command, organied forces, and lead when a xenopanther was trying to eat his face?

This is pointless. We are not trying to establish Deepak as a great leader. We're trying to decide if Quaritch was a good leader or a shitty one.

On that note. Even though Quarritch fucked up, eh. It's not too bad. Lots of people go crazy lots of times. At least he did it with class. If the leader of my mercenary forces was to screw up, I hope that he'd at least screw up by going crazy and trying to kill people with giant fuck-off butcher knives. Stylish.

Quaritch was responsible for all the people under his command. He does not get to go on quests when their lives are stake. Save them and then go after the enemy later.

[arun2110]

arun2110, I want to address the point you made that Quaritch is incompetent because he went after Jake Sully after his command ship was shot down, instead of trying to re-establish command.

Personally I think going after Jake was a sign he's an excellent commander.

In war you want to hit the centre of gravity of the enemy force, you want to hit something that will make them come apart and stop fighting. Sure you can do this by simply killing enough of them that the rest give up, but this is the crudest, shallowest, simplest and most resource intensive way of doing it. There is a reason that pure attrition is disdained in warfare unless it's the only option.

Sully was the nominal commander, but did he really exercise command of all the Na'vi? Could he exercise command without communication, runners, etc? And since the Na'vi were not fighting in a line, how would the others learn that their commander has fallen?

What are the Na'vi? They are a tribal people who's culture and way of life is largely driven by their religious beliefs and legends. Look at how Sully managed to assemble his army. It wasn't by a rational appeal to their own self interest; he did it by inspiring faith in being anointed by the God(s) in his task by taming the giant flying monster creature.

Quaritch took aim at that. His first attempt was by trying to destroy the soul tree. Destruction of the living manifestation of Ewa most likely would have resulted in the Na'vi army disbanding as Quaritch would have demonstrated to them that their God was either non-existent or that he and the Sky People were simply more powerful.

None of which answers my concerns. The battle that Quaritch was engaged in was going to go its own way with/without Sully. Why not finish the battle, save his soldiers and bomb the trailer. He could always call in an airstrike later and that'd effectively put Sully and co out of business.

When that didn't work due largely to Act of Plot, look at Quaritch's action. His command shuttle is destroyed and with it his ability to communicate with what is left of his forces. The shuttle is down and with it his ability to destroy the soul tree. Re-establishing command means a lengthy hike through the suddenly incredibly dangerous jungle and linking up with remnants of his forces, which really only have the option of retreating to the base and subsequently being overrun by Na'vi forces.

Then he should have waited until he located sully's trailer and bombed the trailer before he engaged the Na'vi. They should have seen his death and lost their rallying point.

But what lies before him? Why it's Shake Soooooooooly! Jake Sully is another key centre of gravity he can strike. His personal anointment as War Leader is what holds the army together, him and his flying monster. He is also the only leader in the enemy command that understands modern warfare and Quaritch, he's the only enemy commander who can realisticly formulate plans to beat the RDA. His death has a high probability of causing the Na'vi army to disband, as he is the personal manifestation of Ewa's will.

So despite the extreme personal danger he goes after Jake because he knows he can still win this thing if he kills him. I'd also make the observation that Quaritch is smart enough to know that killing Jake's unconscious human body is far easier than Jake's Na'vi avatar, and that is what he goes after. And he would have won, again, except for Act Of Plot, again.

For the reasons I'd stated above, I disagree with your conclusions.

[arun2110]

If the miners are forbidden by the execs, they'll simply go easy on the mining explosives and use them to create impromptu mines. Not that hard to make IEDs as the Pastuns in Afghanistan continue to demonstrate everyday. ^_^

Didn't you argue that explosives are so precious that it would have been more cost-effective to crash the shuttle than rig those two pallets? And now you want them to turn them into mines - which will almost certainly require far more explosives (since you have to cover a large area) than were used for the improvised Daisy Cutter? You can't have it both ways.

Mines require very little explosives. A few hundred pounds would have very effectively denied the approaches to the colony.

[speaker-to-trolls]

I'm grouping myself in the people on the net bunch and thus among the freaks.

If so never mind, I obviously misinterpreted your seriousness about this whole point and it seems a bit odd that it got this much attention.

I brought this up because it's a good topic for a thought provoking discussion.

The larger discussion is interesting, and a discussion about the possible dynamics and difficulties and possible issues with how different is too different in terms of sexual/romantic relationships between humans and other sentient beings, that would be interesting. This whole tangent has been nothing but semantics, I only got involved because I got prickly about the idea you were condemning harmless consensual activity between two fully informed adults.

[arun2110]

Maybe. But how many noctural insects are there? Everything glowed. Everything. And when everything glows, what evolutionary advantage do you get by glowing?

So maybe different types of glowing plants attract different types of pollinators. This is easily rationalized.

I get the feeling you're reaching out there. How would this work?

You see, you have to ask yourself if it is okay to brainwash animals into committing suicide? Because that's what you're saying Eywa should do. Why should Eywa's life be worth more than the animal's life? Why should Na'vi life, for that matter be worth more than the animal's life? Ethical and moral quandry there unless you agree with the guy who executed the mission to exterminate everything on the planet. The same guy who practically said, "me before you and yours." So, why is it okay for Eywa to make such arbitrary decisions, but not for humans?

It's about as OK as going to McDonald's and ordering a hamburger. Besides, it's pretty obvious animals get killed and eaten all the time on that planet, so this is basically business as usual. You can say Eywa's a dick for maintaining an ecology with lots of animals eating each other ... I have no problem with that. I happen to like grey and grey morality; I see no reason Eywa or the Na'Vi should be considered saintly. If anything I wish they'd been portrayed with more ambiguity like the Prawns in District 9.

Do you complain this way about any movie where the hero isn't a vegetarian?

If Eywa did such a thing with the kind of connection that Eywa seemed to have with everything, well, I'll complain. Everything lives to support the great Eywa and everything should die to protect the great Eywa. Kind of how Germany is Hitler and if Hitler's going to die, then hell with Germany as well. Now, this analogy is limited as analogies always are, but I think it fits rather well.

Slight problem with your reasoning. If Eywa meant to control only animals, why do Na'vi have it? Does this mean the Na'vi evolved from animals for a purpose that Eywa alone knows. If so, does this mean Eywa still controls the Na'vi with that religion of theirs. Ooh!

I have no problem with that idea at all. In fact I think it makes the Na'Vi much more interesting. Again, I don't demand the good guys in movies be saintly. Real life doesn't work that way.

I was thinking of the Hitler and Germany thing when I wrote that. Not at the Eywa in the movie, but at the Eywa they suggested would send live MREs to the Na'vi.

Consider lost profit from deteriorating security situation. Consider going for fifteen years shorthanded. Consider damage to critical equipment with few spares and replenishment fifteen years away... You get the idea, right? The shuttle, though costly, is the cheaper alternative considering all this.

It'd be easier to just drop a bomb. Yeah, that wasn't the smartest decision ever, but you can see how it would have seemed sensible at the time. Hindsight is always 20/20.

Hindsight is 20/20. Waiting until the Na'vi get out of the area where there's a shitload of interference and bombing them would have worked better because the humans would have had the full benefit of their command and communication lines as well as their tech advantage.

Er, the humans did not negotiate when they came back. Their attempt at a landing party was beaten off. By Eywa and its staple of animals.

That's exactly what I meant. Eywa acted really dumb.

Yes, the assumption was, Sully did a stupid thing and told a planetary intelligence that did not understand human capabilities as well as he did that the humans were out to ruin the planet and they should be kept off it.

As for committing genocide of unobtanium, what did the spanish do to the S. Americans for gold, silver and emerald? Or how about Japan and China? Or England and India? Or England and China? Or Belgium and Congo? Or Sudan and Darfur? Or... I think I'll stop here.

Slight cultural difference. Modern society isn't as racist and xenophobic as the examples you give.

Are you kidding me? Sudan and Darfur are modern society. There are places in Sweden where they're having jews be persecuted again. Or if you meant modern as in western, that itself could be called racist. Not exactly the best argument there is that.