Why would anyone make a replicant?

[jollyreaper]

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Could you elaborate? I look for stories that feel authentic and are true to their themes. While I want something entertaining, I don't want it to feel like i'm being pandered to. Yes, action is interesting, but I don't want it to feel like action is being tossed in to cover up for poor storytelling. Boobies are fun to look at but if we're getting sexposition in an HBO show because the writing and acting is insufficient to carry the scene, that feels like a cop out.

Feeling that every single artistic choice has to comport with my own sensibilities and standards is silly. But I want there to at least be some conviction behind a decision. Even if I hate what happens to a character, if it feels true I can accept it. But I'd hate it if it feels like little more than a cheap stunt.

What's the difference between something awful happening to a character because the story calls for it and feeling like a cheap ratings stunt? It's subjective, of course. There are times when decisions forced on writers can result in a superior story and other times when it feels like a savage compromise. It's all ultimately YMMV.

It can come back to the marionette metaphor. Any puppet show is, by definition, artificial. The puppeteer's craft is in making it appear that the life comes from within the puppets, making you believe it. If they appear jerked by strings then the illusion is shattered. It might seem nonsensical to say "It looks like they're puppets on strings" when that's exactly what they are but it's really just another way of saying the illusion is not being sustained. Bad writing feels like the puppets just aren't being jerked around but dragged bodily behind the puppeteer in the street.

[Stark]

The fan reaction is mixed. Some think its still the bee's knees and some abandoned it after season 3, feeling the writers lost the story. I am morbidly curious to know how they end it but am no longer watching. It wouldn't bother me in the least except it was a good show and it feels like they lost their way.

You frequently end on question-begging of this sort. You list a bunch of views, state your own view, and then seem not to know what the 'true' situation or assessment is. What I'm saying is that this 'true' assessment or situation does not exist; all that matters are things like 'some people think it started to suck' and 'I'm not watching it anymore' and 'was good, isn't good anymore'. You should be more confident talking about your own views without feeling the need to anchor them on 'truth', if this is how you're thinking.

There's nothing wrong with deciding something in a work is 'stupid', so long as you're open to the idea that people can see how it isn't. This is the subjectivity of art - it changes (well, what it says or means changes) dependent on the viewer. Not just the individual viewer, but the attitude the viewer has at the time. Some art is bad, but some art can be MADE bad or CREATE bad perceptions based on the attitude or preconceptions of the viewer.

For instance, deciding replicants are 'stupid' or 'make no sense' and then talking about how stupid they are simply dodges that they may not be stupid, and that the work may in fact contain the idea that they are not stupid. This is what I mean when I talk about 'engaging' with fiction or being 'inside' it; applying external benchmarks to fiction make it very easy to define literally any fiction as 'stupid' and define things that happen in that fiction 'impossible' or 'bad writing'. If you choose to put yourself inside the fiction and positively try to understand how things can occur as they do, the conclusion can be different.

Otherwise, you end up being angry at every story where someone makes a bad decision, which is clearly sub optimal.

[Connor MacLeod]

I'm not so much a hard SF fetishist. I simply get curious about the underpinnings of settings and wonder where the plot holes are. Certainly it's possible to fall down the fanwank rabbit hole but I at least like to know which discussions lead that direction.

So do I, but you're making some of the same mistakes I did when you start trying to 'pin down' things as being either/or, which is what draws you so much criticism when you say things. You really have to pay attnetion to what you say and how you say it online, since people don't have other visual, auditory, or verbal cues by which to interpret your words by. You may intend one meaning yet end up saying something completely different.

A good example of this is as Stark notes - its easy to think you're asking a question, but end up stating your view as fact, or stating a view that doesn't mesh up with the situation, or whatever.

Bumpy forehead aliens, for example, I know why they're exceedingly unlikely. Any setting that has them is going to be softer scifi in some areas, even if they try to be harder in other ways. Babylon 5 has them but also has human ships with spin gravity and newtonian maneuvering and no energy shields. New Galactica actually had "no bumpy forehead aliens" as part of the premise, Olmos said he'd walk if Klingons showed up, and mostly tried to stick with that.

This is.. kind of what I am talking about. Why does 'bumpy forehead aliens' automatically mean soft sci fi? That can depend on how you define 'alien', why they are 'bumpy forehead' and any number of factors. Yuo seem to be drawing your conclusions of what is 'generally accepted' about sci fi by a vaguely defined fandom, even though those 'commonly accepted' things are pretty much arbitrary.

You seem to kind of grasp the idea sometimes, and then you go and say something that makes it seem like you totally missed the point. Half and half.

I generally assume that any futuristic scifi set on Earth is meant to be in our own future unless a serious timeline divergence is already indicated. But certainly if it's clearly a secondary world, expecting technology and society to progress as ours did is not founded. But if the secondary world borrows heavily from real Earth societies, one might wonder how closely they did adhere.

Generally its better not to make too many assumptions until you get a very good grasp of the setting. Assumptions are very very dangerous to make and unless you're willing to admit the error later (which is not something many people are willing to do, given the caustic nature of the board in the past) you're going to paint yourself into a corner. I'm much better at the assumption game than I was a few years back, much more careful, and I still screw up if I go to far making assumptions.

I'm fine with explaining away the absence of technology that wasn't invented at the time. I know why Kirk's communicator can talk to ships at interplanetary ranges and yet doesn't even have a display screen.

That can be any number of reasons. Having a display screen is not neccesarily an advantage. We're too used to the idea of cell phones and they HAVE TO HAVE EVERYTHING even though alot of those features can be functionally superflous. Similarily people have traditionally leapt onto the idea that shit liek antimatter is inherently better htan fusion (or fission) just because it can generate more energy per kg... even though that's only true given a certain set of assumptions.

It's amusing when a modern jet fighter seems to have better weapons than X-Wings and Vipers. The extended range AAMRAM's are supposed to be able to engage targets a hundred miles away and far more accurately than the Phoenix ever did.

This again depends on the evidence you use, the assumptions you make, and the methodology you use to define the universe. STarfighter firepower, like most sci fi numbers, tends to be rather variable due ot that 'interpretation' thing. Its especially true in stuff like 40K, and 40K is one of the more 'consistent' franchises I've dealt with.

There as a perfect case in point on this site a while back. "Why can't R2D2 speak?" Obviously it's because he's a mute or at least non-speaking character, the kind of character that has a long tradition in literature and cinema. There's not going to be any good reason to justify/rationalize/explain him not speaking from an in-universe perspective. But speaking R2 just wouldn't feel like the same character. I know why he has to be that way. But there was a huge flamewar trying to justify how voiceboxes must be expensive and this and that.

Strict realism can be pretty boring. Even accounts of real life stories usually have the boring bits edited out. Nobody is going to be interested in reading about Miss Marple's vacation where nobody dies, even if she has a lovely time. If the story is about firefighters, they might only encounter one massively impressive structure fire a year. For the sake of keeping things interesting, the writer might have major fires back to back. But if the movie isn't trying to be spoofy or tongue-in-cheek, having the firefighters carrying on with stupid action hero antics might ruin a viewer's suspension of disbelief, even when he's fine with the frequency and severity of the fires being far higher than usual.

I love crazy action comedies like Shoot 'Em Up. I can enjoy the hell out of crazy martial arts like the Raid: Redemption. But I would find it dumb if a movie is sold as a gritty, serious, no-nonsense caper film and wire-fu and gun katas are thrown in. It would feel out of place.

Okay, but maybe again you should be paying more attention to what you say/how you say it? It seems you have that whole 'I mean one thing but I end up saying another thing' going on, and it draws you alot of flak. Too many people are too casual about what they say and how they say stuff like the internet was real life, and that gets them in trouble. That's something you can only do if people know you well and knwo your habits/personality. I can do that in private communications with alot of people because I understand them better and that understanding helps the interpretation, but its not something I can do with a random stranger.

So, what would you consider to be a suspension-ruining implausibility? What does it take to knock you out of a story?

I dont think you can really generalize. I mean I suppose you could say something like Tom and Jerry, Roadrunner/Bugs Bunny cartoons, or shit like that may be 'implausible', but its still possible to 'explain' or analyze it if you're willing ot put in the effort (and jump through enough hoops.) The problem is in most cases it probably isn't worth the effort and its just simpler to say 'its not realistic' or something along those lines. But there's a difference between 'it can't be rationalized' and 'its difficult to rationalize and there are easier ways to deal with it.' Its all relative, and even arbitrary, depending on the situation and context. CAse by case basis.

[Tethis]

I don't recall the book/movie whatever where this is being taken from but no matter. If they were truly indistinguishable from humans i.e. not better at doing anything then a human would be, then the most likely place I could see using them is when you don't have enough people to do the work.

Perhaps a colony planet might want to crank out some replicants to get things going faster. People take years to get to where they're productive; presumably replicants can get up to speed much faster.

Also, for work which humans don't want to do although I imagine they're a bit too expensive for menial labor.

[aieeegrunt]

Why would anyone make a replicant?

Humans take at least a dozen very expensive years to raise to an age where you can start using them as soldiers or workers. From what we see in the movie it seems that replicants can be mass produced in vats ("I make you eyes") and pop out adult sized.

That alone would make them displace human labour even without the whole legal/ethical angle. The apathetic masses on earth are probably being thrown a guaranteed base income or something to keep starving mobs away from the base of Tyrel's pyramid.

[Guardsman Bass]

Why would anyone make a replicant?

Humans take at least a dozen very expensive years to raise to an age where you can start using them as soldiers or workers. From what we see in the movie it seems that replicants can be mass produced in vats ("I make you eyes") and pop out adult sized.

That alone would make them displace human labour even without the whole legal/ethical angle. The apathetic masses on earth are probably being thrown a guaranteed base income or something to keep starving mobs away from the base of Tyrel's pyramid.

Replicants are banned from Earth, possibly for that reason. It's different out on the colonies, where it might be cheaper to mass-manufacture a labor force to supplement the human colonists instead of trying to entice a ton of people to leave Earth for colonial life. Earth life does not look particularly nice, but it still might be much better than the back-breaking life of a colonist.

[Simon_Jester]

It can come back to the marionette metaphor. Any puppet show is, by definition, artificial. The puppeteer's craft is in making it appear that the life comes from within the puppets, making you believe it. If they appear jerked by strings then the illusion is shattered. It might seem nonsensical to say "It looks like they're puppets on strings" when that's exactly what they are but it's really just another way of saying the illusion is not being sustained. Bad writing feels like the puppets just aren't being jerked around but dragged bodily behind the puppeteer in the street.

I like this and think it ties into the very core of the matter.

I think that helps explain why almost all "bad writing" really comes from character and plot problems, not so much from the technology. As long as technology is handled consistently, the 'strings' of how the technology controls the story are probably staying invisible. Character actions which reveal the strings (worst enemies becoming best friends without any sign of friction, etc.) are much more likely to be conspicuous.

I speculate that this is because normal people devote more of their brain to spotting strange social behavior than logical inconsistencies in technology.

[Stark]

People often declare 'bad writing' in situations where they simply don't like (or don't want to bother trying to understand) the changes occurring. Char dropping asteroids on Earth to speed migration? BAD WRITING! Except its the result of a decade of failure within the political system, decades of ignorance and bigotry, forty years of intentional lack of support, a hundred years of centralism, and exposes the critical frustration and despair in a powerful but ultimately human character.

There's a huge gulf - sometimes an uncrossable gulf - between best friends becoming enemies for 'no reason' and best friends becoming enemies for 'reasons I don't agree with' or even 'reasons I didn't even notice when reading the text'.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah. Ignorance leads to accusations of incompetence; the Dunning-Kruger effect is as big in literature as anywhere else.

This can make it tricky to find examples that are almost always bad writing, when trying to explain the concept of what is and isn't.

[jollyreaper]

There's nothing wrong with deciding something in a work is 'stupid', so long as you're open to the idea that people can see how it isn't.

That's one of the reasons why I look for discussions in the first place. I'd like to see if I'm missing out on something.

This is the subjectivity of art - it changes (well, what it says or means changes) dependent on the viewer. Not just the individual viewer, but the attitude the viewer has at the time. Some art is bad, but some art can be MADE bad or CREATE bad perceptions based on the attitude or preconceptions of the viewer.

Two people can see the same event and come away with different lessons learned.

For instance, deciding replicants are 'stupid' or 'make no sense' and then talking about how stupid they are simply dodges that they may not be stupid, and that the work may in fact contain the idea that they are not stupid.

But that's the very question I asked. I didn't say that the idea is stupid and anyone who disagrees is a numpty fuckwit. I asked if there was a rationale for artificial beings that were indistinguishable from humans and could only be discerned with a highly-subjective test.

This is what I mean when I talk about 'engaging' with fiction or being 'inside' it; applying external benchmarks to fiction make it very easy to define literally any fiction as 'stupid' and define things that happen in that fiction 'impossible' or 'bad writing'. If you choose to put yourself inside the fiction and positively try to understand how things can occur as they do, the conclusion can be different.

Well, the Japanese Empire in WWII is a good example. They certainly made some mistakes but reading up on the history makes the bad decisions understandable. You can follow the thought process in context. Hindsight being 20/20, it seems incredible that they might actually imagine they could defeat the US. Convince yourself of Japan's divine superiority and America's weak and lazy moral character, now victory seems ordained.

If a similar story were told in fiction, I could understand the ersatz-Japan starting the war. Winning it? That's tougher. If the stronger power gets drawn off into a larger war and sees this theater as a sideshow, it's possible. Ersatz-Japan driving the enemy fleet back across the sea, then destroying it utterly? Is their enemy ersatz-Imperial Russia?

For character-on-character decisions, there's more room for subjectivity. Character A trusts Character B, are they operating off the same information as the audience? Are they meant to be smart or naive?

Otherwise, you end up being angry at every story where someone makes a bad decision, which is clearly sub optimal.

It all comes down to whether I believe it's the character making the mistake or the writer.

[Simon_Jester]

The question, jollyreaper, is how you react when facing fiction where some of the outcomes are deliberately fictional: they would not make a great deal of sense in real life, but exist within the context of the story for a reason. Say, to illustrate the theme of the work.

[jollyreaper]

So do I, but you're making some of the same mistakes I did when you start trying to 'pin down' things as being either/or, which is what draws you so much criticism when you say things. You really have to pay attnetion to what you say and how you say it online, since people don't have other visual, auditory, or verbal cues by which to interpret your words by. You may intend one meaning yet end up saying something completely different.

This I try to be very careful of. Not careful enough, it seems.

Bumpy forehead aliens, for example, I know why they're exceedingly unlikely. Any setting that has them is going to be softer scifi in some areas, even if they try to be harder in other ways. Babylon 5 has them but also has human ships with spin gravity and newtonian maneuvering and no energy shields. New Galactica actually had "no bumpy forehead aliens" as part of the premise, Olmos said he'd walk if Klingons showed up, and mostly tried to stick with that.

This is.. kind of what I am talking about. Why does 'bumpy forehead aliens' automatically mean soft sci fi? That can depend on how you define 'alien', why they are 'bumpy forehead' and any number of factors. Yuo seem to be drawing your conclusions of what is 'generally accepted' about sci fi by a vaguely defined fandom, even though those 'commonly accepted' things are pretty much arbitrary.

By "bumpy forehead aliens" I mean any alien who is played by a human in makeup. Obviously, concessions to this have to be made in live-action television and movies. It's the same reason why we can forgive artificial gravity in a setting that's otherwise trying to stick to hard science.

Why aren't they likely? Because it seems like an improbable chain of events that will lead to the evolution of superficially similar, bipedal, mostly humanoid creatures independently arising on multiple independent planets. On our own planet, we see examples of convergent evolution that still yield very different creatures operating in the same ecological niches.

Does this mean that any setting with bumpy forehead aliens is crap? No. But it helps to know where they're coming from.

Generally its better not to make too many assumptions until you get a very good grasp of the setting. Assumptions are very very dangerous to make and unless you're willing to admit the error later (which is not something many people are willing to do, given the caustic nature of the board in the past) you're going to paint yourself into a corner. I'm much better at the assumption game than I was a few years back, much more careful, and I still screw up if I go to far making assumptions.

I'm more than happy to be proven wrong. I don't really see the need for acrimony when we're just shooting the shit over scifi and fantasy.

That can be any number of reasons. Having a display screen is not neccesarily an advantage. We're too used to the idea of cell phones and they HAVE TO HAVE EVERYTHING even though alot of those features can be functionally superflous. Similarily people have traditionally leapt onto the idea that shit liek antimatter is inherently better htan fusion (or fission) just because it can generate more energy per kg... even though that's only true given a certain set of assumptions.

A lot of the tech-wank can get pretty silly. Pretty much all I ask is a writer figure out where he stands on purple/green arguments and is internally consistent. Super-hard SF is only going to be in the very near future. The further out you move, the more speculative you get. By the time we're talking giant space battles, we're far, far into speculative territory. Much of the technology will simply have to come down to author fiat, as you say, the given set of assumptions.

It's amusing when a modern jet fighter seems to have better weapons than X-Wings and Vipers. The extended range AAMRAM's are supposed to be able to engage targets a hundred miles away and far more accurately than the Phoenix ever did.

This again depends on the evidence you use, the assumptions you make, and the methodology you use to define the universe. STarfighter firepower, like most sci fi numbers, tends to be rather variable due ot that 'interpretation' thing. Its especially true in stuff like 40K, and 40K is one of the more 'consistent' franchises I've dealt with.

Well, we can run with Star Wars. From the movies, the only guided weapons we see are the proton torpedoes and I think we only really saw those in a New Hope. Concussion missiles I think came from the RPG's and later the video games. In the movies it seemed like lasers were still the primary fighter weapon.

I figure they stuck with the lasers because they were closer in performance to WWII machineguns and that's the visual style they were trying to replicate. I don't think there's any kind of explanation for why they can build droids but don't seem to use guided missiles which should be far simpler to design. But it would probably look very, very boring to watch fighters blowing each other up from beyond visual range.

By contrast, Gundam's whole m-particle thing is a pretty interesting hack to get the fight down to a cinematically-interesting range.

Okay, but maybe again you should be paying more attention to what you say/how you say it? It seems you have that whole 'I mean one thing but I end up saying another thing' going on, and it draws you alot of flak. Too many people are too casual about what they say and how they say stuff like the internet was real life, and that gets them in trouble. That's something you can only do if people know you well and knwo your habits/personality. I can do that in private communications with alot of people because I understand them better and that understanding helps the interpretation, but its not something I can do with a random stranger.

Well, I must not be doing it right. I know there are some hot-button topics here that will set people off just by broaching them. TVTropes is certainly one of them.

I dont think you can really generalize. I mean I suppose you could say something like Tom and Jerry, Roadrunner/Bugs Bunny cartoons, or shit like that may be 'implausible', but its still possible to 'explain' or analyze it if you're willing ot put in the effort (and jump through enough hoops.) The problem is in most cases it probably isn't worth the effort and its just simpler to say 'its not realistic' or something along those lines. But there's a difference between 'it can't be rationalized' and 'its difficult to rationalize and there are easier ways to deal with it.' Its all relative, and even arbitrary, depending on the situation and context. CAse by case basis.

This was unrealistic in an awesome way and that was unrealistic in a stupid way.

[jollyreaper]

The question, jollyreaper, is how you react when facing fiction where some of the outcomes are deliberately fictional: they would not make a great deal of sense in real life, but exist within the context of the story for a reason. Say, to illustrate the theme of the work.

By this I think you mean "In a story that otherwise seems like a realistic fiction that could take place in our world, something improbable or impossible occurs."

Well, I suppose some happy endings are that way. Trying to think of a good example and the first thing that springs to mind is Shawshank Redemption. Despite all the crap Andy Dufresne went through (figuratively and literally!), he was able to win on his own terms. He got his revenge on the warden, stole the dirty money, got his beach and his boat just like he said he wanted, and Red even made it out to join him. While all of that felt like long odds, it was such a beautiful ending and tied everything together. Realistically, he probably would have had his poster ripped down for spite by some guard before he'd even made more than a dent in the wall.

Or do you mean more like Forrest Gump where a simple man traipses through all the significant historic and cultural developments of the 20th century?

[Guardsman Bass]

1. The "forehead alien" element really depends on context, and that's where I think Star Trek failed. There's tons of ways you could explain it, especially since this is a setting where they have god-like beings who seem to specifically enjoy fucking around with humanity (AKA the Q). Perhaps they moved a ton of human variant populations and dropped them all over the galaxy, which would have been a better way than the "DNA programmed to generate near-humans" thing it actually was.

2. The torpedoes could just be a way of packing in a lot of firepower into a smaller craft, while being less valuable on ships where you can attach much larger power supplies to your energy weapons to get more firepower than you could if you had to try and pack it all into a missile. Alternatively, this is a setting where there is FTL travel, FTL sensors, and shields. Long-distance missiles are just going to get picked off, possibly even by snub fighters.

[Spoonist]

Perhaps they moved a ton of human variant populations and dropped them all over the galaxy, which would have been a better way than the "DNA programmed to generate near-humans" thing it actually was.

Wasn't that actually a NG episode?

*goes googling*

Yupp, here it is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chase_ ... eneration)

[jollyreaper]

The Chase was interesting but one of the threads they dropped, just like warp drive damaging subspace. The reset button always bothered me but that's the objection of someone who watches all the episodes, not the casual fan who drops in and out and doesn't really think about the episode after it's over. Paramount's money isn't coming from continuity buffs.

This is in the nature of Trek and why I ended up drifting away. Continuity with their own story lines was not important and the writing never really had much direction. The original plan was to make episodic television for syndication. With TNG, the goal was you could air a season 1 episode followed by a season 5 episode and have no issue with it. And I really enjoyed it at the time. But their attempts at developing longer storylines and then random use of reset buttons just soured me. I don't need every show I watch to be heavy on plot and dense with intrigue but I would like them from introducing things with universe-changing consequences that we know will be ignored. Or when you have plots that are like question headlines where you know the answer is no. Will voyager's new try at getting home work? Is it the finale? No? Then no. I mean sure, the ship is threatened with destruction, you know they will get out of it because otherwise you won't have a show. But what about when the mind control bugs were taking over the federation in the first season? That was cool, at least when I saw it as a kid. I don't have a problem with the federation eventually winning but they didn't win so much as just let the plot drop and never speak of it again.

[Stark]

That's like saying you can't enjoy any show involving jeopardy of characters, people or concepts you (as a viewer) know will not be defeated. This is emphatically not the case - even without consciously somehow 'forgetting' that the viewer knows this, good fiction should be able to sell jeopardy anyway. This is obvious, because a good work should be able to sell tension on a second viewing, when obviously there can be no 'real' tension.

Star Trek was poorly written, worse acted, pointless crap. Was the problem that you knew they'd never get home this episode, or the weak rationale/contrived moralising/technobabble copout that actually expressed this expectation in the episode? Certainly, for people who accepted these elements, the show was enjoyable anyway.

[Connor MacLeod]

This I try to be very careful of. Not careful enough, it seems.

It comes with time, but an important part of the learning process is actually putting aside your ego or what oyu think people are saying and actually listening to them. You're having the same issues with stark, for example, that I've had in the past. I responded more to the way HOW he said things (or rather how I perceived his intention from the stuff he said) rather than paying attention to the substance. Once I made a consicous effort to pay attnetion to the substance of what he said, alot of what he said made sense, and it helped me to crystallize alot of things I had been working through my head WRT my own attitudes and perceptions of fiction and such. Exchange of ideas is valuable for PRECISELY this reason, but if it becomes adversarial or antagonistic you can't exchange ideas.

By "bumpy forehead aliens" I mean any alien who is played by a human in makeup. Obviously, concessions to this have to be made in live-action television and movies. It's the same reason why we can forgive artificial gravity in a setting that's otherwise trying to stick to hard science.

Why aren't they likely? Because it seems like an improbable chain of events that will lead to the evolution of superficially similar, bipedal, mostly humanoid creatures independently arising on multiple independent planets. On our own planet, we see examples of convergent evolution that still yield very different creatures operating in the same ecological niches.

Does this mean that any setting with bumpy forehead aliens is crap? No. But it helps to know where they're coming from.

But on the other hand, this assessment depend entirely on the standards/methods you apply to the analysis to reach a given conclusion. The 'problems' you see for example are not something other people would agree with or conclude, because they approach it from a different mindset entirely. This is not unusual in fiction in the least - everyone puts their own spin on things, and you have to make allowances for that or you never get anywhere in an exchange of ideas because everyone is too busy trying to argue whose opinions are better.

I'm more than happy to be proven wrong. I don't really see the need for acrimony when we're just shooting the shit over scifi and fantasy.

Well this depends on who you ask? One person's acrimony isn't how naother person is going to view it. What is 'shooting the shit' to you may come across as something alot less informal than you make it out to be. This is why I keep emphasizing that 'paying attnetion to what people say' matters. And to be blunt, part of the problem is how you phrased the entire context of this thread - as if it were a near-impossibility to make sense of the replicants. Rather than 'I'm not sure how this can make sense could someone please provide insight' you come off as 'I can't see ANY way this makes sense except this single way I've come up with.' I think by now there has been shown lots of different ways it makes sense, and maybe you didn't intend to come off so dogmatic, but any problems in the discussion can and probably do stem from the manner in which things are phrased.

A lot of the tech-wank can get pretty silly. Pretty much all I ask is a writer figure out where he stands on purple/green arguments and is internally consistent. Super-hard SF is only going to be in the very near future. The further out you move, the more speculative you get. By the time we're talking giant space battles, we're far, far into speculative territory. Much of the technology will simply have to come down to author fiat, as you say, the given set of assumptions.

Pretty much, yes.

Well, we can run with Star Wars. From the movies, the only guided weapons we see are the proton torpedoes and I think we only really saw those in a New Hope. Concussion missiles I think came from the RPG's and later the video games. In the movies it seemed like lasers were still the primary fighter weapon.

I figure they stuck with the lasers because they were closer in performance to WWII machineguns and that's the visual style they were trying to replicate. I don't think there's any kind of explanation for why they can build droids but don't seem to use guided missiles which should be far simpler to design. But it would probably look very, very boring to watch fighters blowing each other up from beyond visual range.

Well thats one way to look at it, but what makes that particular approach any better than one that, for example, is inclusive of EU sources? Longer ranges and different combat styles show up there, and there are other factors to consider (does EW perform the same? Would modern fighters be able to jam (or brek through the jamming) of STar Wars craft? Moreover, do Star Wars craft fly/maneuver the same way as jets? They're by and large not aerodynamic, so there is some issue whether they HAVE to manuver that way - stuff like repulsors and manuvering jets (vectored thrust) will also be a factor.

Moreover, what if the combat ranges are dictated not so much by accuracy but by the success of penetrating defeness and inflicting damage. 'HARD' sci fi lasers (Luke Campbell style, for example) are very much range dependent for penetration and damage for example.

By contrast, Gundam's whole m-particle thing is a pretty interesting hack to get the fight down to a cinematically-interesting range.

Why is it a 'hack'? I've never seen anything about M-particles that make them particularily implausible as an in-universe thing. Its no worse than any other sci fi contrivance (and 'hack' also makes it sound like its some sort of arbitrary 'no limits' crap, when in Gundam it is not.) Its not like Minovsky particles = NO SENSORS AT ALL after all. Its just a complicating factor to permit the sorts of combat Gundam wants to employ.

Well, I must not be doing it right. I know there are some hot-button topics here that will set people off just by broaching them. TVTropes is certainly one of them.

Its not really even just that. AS I pointed out before, the manner in which you phrased your opening posts had some problems, because you started from the opinion that there was a problem that did not really exist. There's nothing wrong with admitting 'This doesn't make sense to me, can someone help me explain it' because noone can know that - but that certainly is not what you indicated in your OP.

Fuck there's tons of shit I don't always grasp, but I also understand that doesnt mean its inherently nonsensical, it just means I don't have the right knowledge or understanding to make sense of the pattern. Others sometimes do, though.

It isn't so much the topics themselves are hot button, but the manner in which they are broached or discussed (or the person who brings them up) causes the conflict. People don't really recall just how utterly conflict-oriented this board is or make allowances for that in their posts. Learning to pay attention to what you say, how you say it, and what other people say is a survival trait here. A careless word, or the wrong word, can easily lead to a misunderstanding, and there are people here who aren't forgiving of misunderstandings or opinions they dislike (again the conflict oriented nature of this board.)

That said, there ARE people here who want interesting conversations and discussion of ideas, its just people don't always realize it because they don't pick up on the cues or they aren't trained to recognize them. Again I never really 'got' stark until he and I started talking, and now I find the stuff he says makes sense ot me even if it doesn't to others. Go figure.

I dont think you can really generalize. I mean I suppose you could say something like Tom and Jerry, Roadrunner/Bugs Bunny cartoons, or shit like that may be 'implausible', but its still possible to 'explain' or analyze it if you're willing ot put in the effort (and jump through enough hoops.) The problem is in most cases it probably isn't worth the effort and its just simpler to say 'its not realistic' or something along those lines. But there's a difference between 'it can't be rationalized' and 'its difficult to rationalize and there are easier ways to deal with it.' Its all relative, and even arbitrary, depending on the situation and context. CAse by case basis.

This was unrealistic in an awesome way and that was unrealistic in a stupid way.

You have lost me with this last bit.

[jollyreaper]

That's like saying you can't enjoy any show involving jeopardy of characters, people or concepts you (as a viewer) know will not be defeated. This is emphatically not the case - even without consciously somehow 'forgetting' that the viewer knows this, good fiction should be able to sell jeopardy anyway. This is obvious, because a good work should be able to sell tension on a second viewing, when obviously there can be no 'real' tension.

Note what I said: "I mean sure, the ship is threatened with destruction, you know they will get out of it because otherwise you won't have a show." I understand and accept that. What I didn't like is when they introduced plot points that should have carried consequences with them and then never mentioned them again. While plot immunity for main characters is typically a given in fiction and we come to accept it, premise immunity can make some stories boring on the face of it. "Captain court-martialed, crew might be broken up!" could make for compelling drama. "Can this new lead get us a shortcut back to the alpha quadrant?" just seems more boring, mainly because resolving the legal drama involves doing something and winning and not getting back to the alpha quadrant requires failing at something. It's the same reason why I had a real problem with the premise of B5's Crusade which, having seen more about Space Battleship Yamato, makes it look like even more like a needless and uninteresting ripoff. And I say this as someone who freaking loved B5. "Will we find the cure for the Earth plague this week? No. Tune in next week to watch us fail again."

Star Trek was poorly written, worse acted, pointless crap. Was the problem that you knew they'd never get home this episode, or the weak rationale/contrived moralising/technobabble copout that actually expressed this expectation in the episode? Certainly, for people who accepted these elements, the show was enjoyable anyway.

All of the above, plus the ship looked like a baleen whale with nacelles. I can't think of a single positive thing to say about the show but that it's over and they never made any movies. Make that two things. I cut my losses and was happier for it. And yes, many people certainly enjoyed it. Not my cuppa.

There's a lot of good things that could be done with the Trek premise and themes and the good episodes can still hold up upon subsequent viewing. But there's a lot of bad stuff they did that they never seemed to want to back away from. For what it's worth, I do think it says something that they stopped making shows after Enterprise. I heard something about letting the field lay fallow for some time before trying another series, same as what's being done with the Godzilla franchise. That's probably a smart move.

[jollyreaper]

But on the other hand, this assessment depend entirely on the standards/methods you apply to the analysis to reach a given conclusion. The 'problems' you see for example are not something other people would agree with or conclude, because they approach it from a different mindset entirely. This is not unusual in fiction in the least - everyone puts their own spin on things, and you have to make allowances for that or you never get anywhere in an exchange of ideas because everyone is too busy trying to argue whose opinions are better.

It's also a matter of learning where your tastes lie. If soft science sticks in your craw, don't watch a soft science show. If dense political plotting isn't your thing, find a story that's more about action. I'm not bothered at all by something I have no interest in, more by things that are right up my alley but aren't sticking to the premise. I know I'm never going to enjoy anything Damon Lindelof does. It would be utterly pointless to watch one of his projects and complain about how nothing makes any sense or is ever sufficiently explained. It's what he does. It'd be like watching Cronenberg and complaining about body horror.

Well this depends on who you ask? One person's acrimony isn't how naother person is going to view it. What is 'shooting the shit' to you may come across as something alot less informal than you make it out to be. This is why I keep emphasizing that 'paying attnetion to what people say' matters. And to be blunt, part of the problem is how you phrased the entire context of this thread - as if it were a near-impossibility to make sense of the replicants. Rather than 'I'm not sure how this can make sense could someone please provide insight' you come off as 'I can't see ANY way this makes sense except this single way I've come up with.' I think by now there has been shown lots of different ways it makes sense, and maybe you didn't intend to come off so dogmatic, but any problems in the discussion can and probably do stem from the manner in which things are phrased.

I'll try a different tact for my next thread.

Well thats one way to look at it, but what makes that particular approach any better than one that, for example, is inclusive of EU sources? Longer ranges and different combat styles show up there, and there are other factors to consider (does EW perform the same? Would modern fighters be able to jam (or brek through the jamming) of STar Wars craft? Moreover, do Star Wars craft fly/maneuver the same way as jets? They're by and large not aerodynamic, so there is some issue whether they HAVE to manuver that way - stuff like repulsors and manuvering jets (vectored thrust) will also be a factor.

I think that both approaches can be useful. Marvel has the tradition of the noprize, you find a problem with a story and then an explanation for why it wasn't a problem in the first place. You can understand the out-universe reason for doing something, then try to find an explanation in-universe that makes it perfectly sensible. Writers need a way to depower superman so weaker villains could still be a threat, hence kryptonite which also has some really good thematic elements to go along with said character.

As for the crazy non-aerodynamic maneuvering that should be possible with the repulsors and the like, I'd love to see it. That would be damned cool. Cowboy Bebop played around with the implications of VTOL fighters. I'm thinking of something like the final battle from True Lies in and around some massive industrial hive city, dodging around exhaust stacks, flying down ventilation shafts, going from a hover to an afterburner dash across open space and then bleeding off that speed to make it through another tight space. That would be incredible.

Moreover, what if the combat ranges are dictated not so much by accuracy but by the success of penetrating defeness and inflicting damage. 'HARD' sci fi lasers (Luke Campbell style, for example) are very much range dependent for penetration and damage for example.

Star Wars dogfighting gets really ugly when you try to factor in realistic orbital mechanics. The Shuttle has to get up to Mach 25 to attain orbit. However, it has a finite fuel supply. If we took any fighter with a thrust/weight ratio greater than one and gave it infinite fuel, it could just do a tailstand on takeoff and fly straight up into space. (And Star Wars starfighters seem to have incredibly high delta-v reserves.) Said fighter would still have to tip over and eventually reach orbital velocity if it wanted to stay up with the engines off. Dogfighting in modern jets is already very difficult. I'm not even sure it's possible anymore to make a head-on pass given closure rates.

Some fans might be happier with an in-universe explanation and find it completely convincing. While I would also like to have that, w

Why is it a 'hack'? I've never seen anything about M-particles that make them particularily implausible as an in-universe thing. Its no worse than any other sci fi contrivance (and 'hack' also makes it sound like its some sort of arbitrary 'no limits' crap, when in Gundam it is not.) Its not like Minovsky particles = NO SENSORS AT ALL after all. Its just a complicating factor to permit the sorts of combat Gundam wants to employ.

It's not meant to be a disparaging word choice. I'm using it in the sense of "a neat and inventive solution." It's self-consistent, plays into the other tech assumptions that the series is based on, and doesn't egregiously crap on the rest of physics that we know to be true, giving us a situation that helps to make more sense of giant robots.

This was unrealistic in an awesome way and that was unrealistic in a stupid way.

You have lost me with this last bit.

Was trying to get at the idea of two things equally unrealistic and yet one is accepted and the other rejected. Going by the reaction of people I saw movies with, the magic performance of the Blues Brothers' car was greatest with shouts and laughs and the limousine's race to the airport in 2012 got snorts and snarks.

[Simon_Jester]

Bizarre unrealisms are most easily accepted in the context of comedy. In comedy it works because it violates the viewer's expectations; half the time that's the point. We laugh because we see something we (or our subconscious at least) didn't expect.

In a work that is clearly not comic in tone, if we see unrealism, and it is presented as a serious, valid way for things to happen, we get the same shot of cognitive dissonance. But instead of the dissonance making us laugh, it causes some kind of discomfort.

There are obvious exceptions. Say, stories about the indomitability of the human spirit in which the protagonists do physically impossible things literally, explicitly, because of their burning ambition and spirit. In that case, the 'unreality' is actually a self-contained part of the story's premise, and if the writing is good it will be handled in a way that doesn't trigger cognitive dissonance except in stupid people.

[Connor MacLeod]

`It's also a matter of learning where your tastes lie. If soft science sticks in your craw, don't watch a soft science show. If dense political plotting isn't your thing, find a story that's more about action. I'm not bothered at all by something I have no interest in, more by things that are right up my alley but aren't sticking to the premise. I know I'm never going to enjoy anything Damon Lindelof does. It would be utterly pointless to watch one of his projects and complain about how nothing makes any sense or is ever sufficiently explained. It's what he does. It'd be like watching Cronenberg and complaining about body horror.

The problem with that mindset is that deciding you won't watch stuff because you 'dont like it' alos means you can shut yourself off from all sorts of great stories and entertainment just because it doesn't fit your preconceptions. I was that way about Gundam before I actually started watching it, and then I started getting into it and its a great setting for me. In fact I very much consider it to be a sort of HARD science fiction in the way some people mean it to be (it has many of the traits) with maybe a few 'magical' elements to that (which are still actually intenrally consistent and plausible, rather than outright handwaves.) Heck, alot of the shit in Gundam has actually softened my attitude on Hard Sci Fi because of that.

There's nothign wrong with liking some things and disliking others, but you have to be careful doing it because it can hold you back if it goes too far.

I think that both approaches can be useful. Marvel has the tradition of the noprize, you find a problem with a story and then an explanation for why it wasn't a problem in the first place. You can understand the out-universe reason for doing something, then try to find an explanation in-universe that makes it perfectly sensible. Writers need a way to depower superman so weaker villains could still be a threat, hence kryptonite which also has some really good thematic elements to go along with said character.

Explanation is easy. Making people accept the explanation when it contradicts their preconceptions is hard. You said last year (around December) that 40K must be a hard universe to make sense of, when it is in fact far easier for me to make sense of compared to, say, Star Wars. Its open ended approach and lack of strictures (EG 'canon') actually are advantages in that respect, as it forces me to a more fluid and open ended approach rather than saying THIS IS CANON TRUTH. There are no absolute truths in sci fi, although we sometimes delude ourselves into thinking there are.

As for the crazy non-aerodynamic maneuvering that should be possible with the repulsors and the like, I'd love to see it. That would be damned cool. Cowboy Bebop played around with the implications of VTOL fighters. I'm thinking of something like the final battle from True Lies in and around some massive industrial hive city, dodging around exhaust stacks, flying down ventilation shafts, going from a hover to an afterburner dash across open space and then bleeding off that speed to make it through another tight space. That would be incredible.

Frankly, while the movie starfighters are not exactly 'newtonian' they're not exactly WW1/2 either, the way the TIE fighters manuver and weave about is a bit... weird for me. Out of universe its the nature of the way the models and the camera moved, but oh well. (Case in point, think of how the X-wings in ANH moved during the trench run.

Star Wars dogfighting gets really ugly when you try to factor in realistic orbital mechanics. The Shuttle has to get up to Mach 25 to attain orbit. However, it has a finite fuel supply. If we took any fighter with a thrust/weight ratio greater than one and gave it infinite fuel, it could just do a tailstand on takeoff and fly straight up into space. (And Star Wars starfighters seem to have incredibly high delta-v reserves.) Said fighter would still have to tip over and eventually reach orbital velocity if it wanted to stay up with the engines off. Dogfighting in modern jets is already very difficult. I'm not even sure it's possible anymore to make a head-on pass given closure rates.

SW ships are nowhere near realistic in sense of orbital mechanics, but with repulsors and thrusters (and various other means of propulsiv emanuvering) they don't need to. They have what amounts to vecotred thrust and that can be a huge advantage.

A better example might be 40K aeronautica (Aircraft.) They sometimes dogfight at close ranges (less than a few km) and yet they're also armed with lasers (at least in the megawatt range, which means their range and power should be at least as good or better htan, say, the ABL) and with rocket boost they can survive atmospheric reentry (and escape). What's more they don't need runways to take off because they have considerable vectored-thrust capabilities which is a considerable agility advantage even if one infers they have a range advantag (they have AAM's they just may not use them or have stuff as long ranged as some of the more long-legged modern AAMs like Phoenix.)

Ultimately it comes down to the assumptions and conclusions one runs with in these sorts of matters, rather than some objective 'truth'.

Some fans might be happier with an in-universe explanation and find it completely convincing. While I would also like to have that, w

Were you going to complete a point?

It's not meant to be a disparaging word choice. I'm using it in the sense of "a neat and inventive solution." It's self-consistent, plays into the other tech assumptions that the series is based on, and doesn't egregiously crap on the rest of physics that we know to be true, giving us a situation that helps to make more sense of giant robots.

This is why you have to be careful what you use casually. To me things like 'hack' or using something like 'trope' has a negative connotation because of popualr use or misuse, even though there is technically nothing wrong with the word. THere are lots of terms like that, and there are lots of examples on this board of people causing problems that way because they thoughtlessly use the term (because its 'acceptable' in other parts of the internet, because they don't consider their audience, etc.) The use of the word 'retarded' for an insult even though it can be disparaging to certain others is a good example of that (I find myself still using it instinctively even though I know I shouldn't.)

In the case of 'hack' I tend to associate a negative connotation with it because I've often seen it used as what amounts to a no-limits fallacy, the same way 'magic' is assumed to be 'arbitrary' because its MAGIC AND FANTASY and therefore does not have to be consistent or obey rules. I alos tend to have similar problems iwth the phrase 'common sense' because I've often seen it used to justify one's preconceptions in a debate, argument or analysis (EG HUGE YIELDS ARE BAD BECAUSE COMMON SENSE TELLS ME SO.)

Was trying to get at the idea of two things equally unrealistic and yet one is accepted and the other rejected. Going by the reaction of people I saw movies with, the magic performance of the Blues Brothers' car was greatest with shouts and laughs and the limousine's race to the airport in 2012 got snorts and snarks.

Well again technically if you're prepared to go the distance you can explain anything. Even Roadrunner cartoons (actually kind of fun as an intellectual exercise just to see how absurd or creative you can get.) but I suppose a better example might be Mike's 'suspension of disbelief' approach to something like Godzilla or a Dragon. It can't be made of meat because flesh and bone wouldn't support it, so it might be metal or artificial. That works, but if you have a setting that allows magic, you could also subsitute 'magic forceifled' as an explanation.

[jollyreaper]

There are obvious exceptions. Say, stories about the indomitability of the human spirit in which the protagonists do physically impossible things literally, explicitly, because of their burning ambition and spirit. In that case, the 'unreality' is actually a self-contained part of the story's premise, and if the writing is good it will be handled in a way that doesn't trigger cognitive dissonance except in stupid people.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that. If you talk of burning ambition and spirit, it could be someone saying "I want to be the very best, Like no one ever was" or "risin' up to the challenge of our rival." In a lot of anime there is a complete validation of the concept that you can achieve the impossible so long as you have reached a point of emotional explosion. Your conviction shapes reality. The robot you pilot fights better if you are super pissed-off.

What's your take on Christian fiction where faith in an invisible, unknowable deity is consistently rewarded? I grew up in a fundamentalist environment and so have an allergic reaction to that sort of material. I can't really enjoy Christian mythology in the same sense that I can Greek and Roman myths.

Lord of the Rings had a great example of the question of faith and belief. The final confrontation before the Black Gate of Mordor, there's no reason to believe Sam and Frodo are even still alive. all Aragorn has to go on is faith. However, even a confirmed atheist would tell him he's dead if the quest fails, if Frodo doesn't destroy the ring. So if you're dead either way if Frodo fails, why not send the army to the Gates on the off chance he succeeds? If not, you'll tie tired instead of rested.

[Stark]

If you reject core conceits of fiction, is it any surprise you don't understand or enjoy it in the way that people who do not reject them might do? The human content of drama is so core to pretty much all the effective drama I can think of right now that rejecting it and focusing on events in a purely materialist, shopping-list manner is like burning a bridge and wondering why you can no longer cross the river to reach the meaning on the other side.

This is why people are encouraging you to actually accept the fictional elements in stories rather than rejecting (or cataloguing them into meaninglessness) before you create your conclusions.

[jollyreaper]

The problem with that mindset is that deciding you won't watch stuff because you 'dont like it' alos means you can shut yourself off from all sorts of great stories and entertainment just because it doesn't fit your preconceptions.

This is true. But what's the use of being an insufferable bastard if you'll never, ever, ever like the material? I watched the Yamato 2199 remake. It's really, really Japanese space opera, hardcore, not dispute. It's enjoyable in those terms. You do have to accept the premise going in or else you'll be forever questioning things that nobody else cares about.

I was that way about Gundam before I actually started watching it, and then I started getting into it and its a great setting for me. In fact I very much consider it to be a sort of HARD science fiction in the way some people mean it to be (it has many of the traits) with maybe a few 'magical' elements to that (which are still actually intenrally consistent and plausible, rather than outright handwaves.) Heck, alot of the shit in Gundam has actually softened my attitude on Hard Sci Fi because of that.

I give Gundam props for some of the concepts they ran with. No FTL (did they ever use it in later series?), most action constrained to Cislunar space, no aliens, O'Neill colonies, real robots and not self-aware super robots, etc.

Explanation is easy. Making people accept the explanation when it contradicts their preconceptions is hard. You said last year (around December) that 40K must be a hard universe to make sense of, when it is in fact far easier for me to make sense of compared to, say, Star Wars. Its open ended approach and lack of strictures (EG 'canon') actually are advantages in that respect, as it forces me to a more fluid and open ended approach rather than saying THIS IS CANON TRUTH. There are no absolute truths in sci fi, although we sometimes delude ourselves into thinking there are.

Well, it all depends on how you try to explain it. It's not the sort of thing you explain with hard science, you explain it by what would be more cool. Warhammer is about aesthetics rather than logical extrapolation. I can enjoy Warhammer for what it is, in part because it clearly explains what it is not.

Frankly, while the movie starfighters are not exactly 'newtonian' they're not exactly WW1/2 either, the way the TIE fighters manuver and weave about is a bit... weird for me. Out of universe its the nature of the way the models and the camera moved, but oh well. (Case in point, think of how the X-wings in ANH moved during the trench run.

I kept wanting them to cut thrusters, rotate 180 degrees and fire back at the Imperials.

This is why you have to be careful what you use casually. To me things like 'hack' or using something like 'trope' has a negative connotation because of popualr use or misuse, even though there is technically nothing wrong with the word. THere are lots of terms like that, and there are

It can be tough navigating this sort of minefield. Myself, I like to find out if a person means what he appears to have said before getting miffed. But I can see how some might flame first, ask questions later.

In the case of 'hack' I tend to associate a negative connotation with it because I've often seen it used as what amounts to a no-limits fallacy, the same way 'magic' is assumed to be 'arbitrary' because its MAGIC AND FANTASY and therefore does not have to be consistent or obey rules. I alos tend to have similar problems iwth the phrase 'common sense' because I've often seen it used to justify one's preconceptions in a debate, argument or analysis (EG HUGE YIELDS ARE BAD BECAUSE COMMON SENSE TELLS ME SO.)

Yeah. I can respect vigorous purple/green debates. But when an author expressly says "In the premise of this story, purple wins," it is vexing to have so many people arguing with the assumption.

Well again technically if you're prepared to go the distance you can explain anything. Even Roadrunner cartoons (actually kind of fun as an intellectual exercise just to see how absurd or creative you can get.) but I suppose a better example might be Mike's 'suspension of disbelief' approach to something like Godzilla or a Dragon. It can't be made of meat because flesh and bone wouldn't support it, so it might be metal or artificial. That works, but if you have a setting that allows magic, you could also subsitute 'magic forceifled' as an explanation.

That kind of gets me into my zombie territory. So long as you never explain how zombies work and scientists are freaking out about all the ways they shouldn't be, I'm fine. For me, scientific inexplicability is a zombie core characteristic right after "undead" and "hungry." You start explaining zombies, now I'm sucked out of the illusion and telling you why it can't work.