Avatar review thread

[PeZook]

You incorrectly attributed my quotes to Shroom. It would be wise to learn how to use the goddamned quote function properly.

I will ignore your replies to other people since, well, they're not replying to my points.

You responded to the following:

The guy isn't even consistent with the movie. He invents numbers, capabilities the RDA didn't have (like FTL), criticizes them for not doing impossible things ("LOL build orbital stations! Just in case we need to bomb the planet from orbit!"). Mentioning his invention of Quaritch being a "civilian relations puke" for most of his career is just pure cruelty

And, of course, he needs to extensively justify how starting an economic recession is somehow less moral than genocide. Not that he ever justifies that lack of unobtainium will cause an economic collapse: in the beginning of the movie, the US economy is already shit, even with unobtainium flowing freely.

With:

Well, you got my sex right. Kudos.

That said, I was told by a fan that the distance between pandora and Earth is between 4 and 5 light years. To get a transit time of around seven years, you need a peak velocity of something like 70-90 percent the speed of light ( considering the time having to do with acceleration and deceleration times involved.) At 90% the speed of light, you are going to get some really awesome blueshift. Awesome as in hard X-rays and all that. You better have very thick lead shields or you’re fucking toast inside your ship. So are all your instruments unless they’re shielded against EMP.

Everything you wrote here is wrong: Pandora is in the Alpha Centauri system, which is 4,36 light years from Earth. Transit time is circa six years, which means a speed of about 0.7c. Still ridiculously high by our standards, but nowhere near 0.9c in terms of relativistic effects and the like.

But wait, that’s not all. At that velocity, a micrometeorite impact is going to be worse than a 1000 pound bomb against your hull. So, thick, powerful armor with the shield.

So, absent FTL, what miraculous material did mankind come up with to beat these two problems? Or as I think if most likely the case, they did not consider this in the story at all, did they?

So, what's your point? That they have awesome materials and high-yield power generation is a given, nobody's disputing that. It's quite explicit that they did not have any sort of FTL whatsoever, because they took more than 4.36 years to get to Pandora.

Also, a shuttle in geostationary orbit is an impromptu orbital station. Just so you know.

You wrote about building space stations for observation, not jury-rigging (useless) ones with shuttles they need to do other things.

And moving on, the choice is, a tribe of at most a thousand kicked out of their homes so that a world of many billions does not sink further into depression. Now, phrased this way, do you favor the tribe or the world? To put this in better perspective, you’re driving a bus carrying sixty passengers on a narrow bridge over a raging river. You see a kid in the middle of the road, blocking your way. The kid is too close and you can’t avoid him/her even if you slam the emergency breaks. If you try to avoid the kid, your bus will fall into the bridge and a lot of your passengers are going to drown to death, which is not a pleasant way to die. What do you do? Note that the sane answer is break and hit the kid, hoping the kid will pull through. The insane one is, “the kid is helpless. I must not hurt him/her and so will swerve the bus.” So, to emphasize, what will you do?

That's all well and good, but you did not provide evidence that unobtainium is in any way crucial to Earth's economy. We know from the fluff they can make really fast trains with it, and from the movie that Earth is already in a shitty state despite having free access to unobtainium.

The other thing you have not properly justified is that while a depression results in lowering the standard of life, it doesn't automatically mean death or starvation. Your sad attempt at an utilitarian argument fails horribly, because economic woes are not equal to death. A more apt analogy would be a decision between "run over the child", and "be eight hours late to your destination".

To my point:

Yeah, after fifteen years of abuse at the hands of the RDA while the company fought a legal battle on Earth, the natives would've been totally fine with a diplomatic solution. Sure.

EDIT: Oh, yeah, the funniest part was the one about doing a kamikadze run with a ridiculously expensive SSTO spacecraft to blow up a fucking tree. Not to mention the humans need the shuttles to refuel their interstellar starships

You responded:

A kamikaze is when one goes on a suicide mission. I was talking about remote piloting the shuttle. Kind of a basic thing when we have UAVs today, you know.

Don't act like a nitpicking asshole. You know perfectly well what I meant.

As for native tribes being happy with diplomatic solution, I’d say yes. They would have built new houses (or in their case, found a new tree), had kids, buried parents, you know get on with life instead of going on a holy quest to rid the world of the humans.

Yes, we all know that rationally they had no chance of victory and it would've been better in the long run not fighting but moving. We also know that intelligent beings can get pissed off when you forcibly evict them out of their homes and slaughter them en masse because they refused to bow to your demands, which means it's completely unrealistic to expect Jake to somehow magically convince them to take the abuse while the RDA fights a legal battle on Earth.

I was under the impression that there were two shuttles. But beyond that, are you telling me the ship used reaction drives to propel itself to relativistic speeds? *chuckles* good one that. For a minute there, I thought you were being serious about this.

Except, of course, that's exactly what they did, and fluff explicitly states they need the shuttles to refuel their starships with reaction mass. So you throw a giant wrench in the entire operation by sacrificing the shuttle, creating a logistical bottleneck that will not be solved for several decades.

To my point:

"Traitor scientists" Like they (scientists) should have had loyalty to some greedy corporation perfectly willing to graze the Na'Vi or even mass slaughter them to get the unobtanium. Why?

But Stas! The RDA paid for their transportation! This means the company owns their souls! Didn't you see how Grace was compelled to do anything Selfridge said? It was totally in the movie, dude! Totally!

Personally, I think by "traitor" he means something more like "race traitor". But I'm sure he has many black friends and so cannot, by definition, be a racist fuck!

(Witness his accusation that Sully must be a perverted animal fucker if he falls in love with a Na'Vi woman)

You replied:

To quote myself from further up the chain: “Tell me, oh, broadminded sage, would you condone a man loving a dog the way mates love each other if the dog were uplifted to sentience? What about a chimpanzee? A Gorilla? If you do not, I see no reason why I should condone a pervert loving any alien be they blue skinned or hotter than miss universe.

Holy shit, are you blind? Or just a retard? The Na'Vi are not dogs. They're very humanoid, to the point that their secondary sexual characteristics are practically identical!

If there was a hypothetical race of aliens who looked just like humans, were smoking hot and sexually compatible, according to your logic, humans who popped boners upon seeing them are complete sexual deviants?

“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? It's the human hormones that matter because he is remotely piloting the body and is not living in it. And I'm supposed to say a human who makes lovey-dovey eyes at an alien is normal? I don't consider humans who fuck dolls or animals normal either. Fuck a human - any-which-way or be called a pervert. It's as simple as that. Or am I supposed to call him a differently aroused person because I don't want to hurt your or his feelings?”

This is rich. Did you perhaps miss the slight detail in Jake's character - that he's a fucking cripple?! Yeah, he could've totally gotten it on with all the chicks on base, man! No matter that he's a former soldier who can't walk, I'm sure his self-esteem issues wouldn't have gotten in the way of forming relationships, right?

It's not like he only got his sense of self-worth back when he began participating in the tribe's customs? Or that love isn't just about hormones and lust and satisfying urges?

Guess what, I can masturbate. In fact, I whack off a lot, yet it doesn't satisfy many needs that a relationship gives you. It's not just about the fucking hormones, and even if it was, the Na'Vi are close enough to human form that there's nothing strange about finding some of them sexually attractive.

I mean, check this out:

American Indian warrior:


Na'Vi warrior:


Dog:

[Shroom Man 777]

Shroom man 777,

The fanfic is excellent. It does not take sides. It slams RDA for being incompetent assholes who were acting like amoral colonials. The Navi don't receive any blame. Jake and the traitor scientists had very good intentions but their methods were wrong. They chose violence instead of negotiation.

Are you AN ASS?

Schindler and the traitor Polish partisans had very good intentions but their methods were wrong. They chose violence instead of negotiation AFTER the fucking Nazis destroyed their homes, murdered their loved ones, and initiated the violence by committing fucking atrocities.

Jesus Shitchrist, the RDA were the ones who went to the Soul Tree with the intention of destroying it in a deliberate act of terror, calling it a "preemptive" strike. The only Na'vi "violence" was the fucking act of self-defense! 

How the fuck do you negotiate with a bunch of assholes who'll only say "no" when you ask them "please don't evict us from our homes"? How the fuck do you negotiate with a bunch of assholes who intend to commit violence and wage war when their demands aren't met? 

Defending the tree is self-defense. Attacking the enemy when the enemy has ceased offensive operations against you is called launching an offensive of your own.

You wage war against an enemy you stand a chance of defeating. You lose hopelessly against someone who controls orbitals. Difference there. A big one, too. Your fate will be similar to what happened to the Khwarezmian Empire.

That's what the Na'vi did in the end. They defended the Soul-Tree from the RDA's attempt at dropping a Daisy Cutter on it. They never attacked the enemy when the enemy has ceased offensive operations against them. Because the RDA was CONTINUING its offensive operations by going to the Tree of Souls with the attempt at nuking it. The Na'vi never launched an offensive of their own.

Well, yeah. I can agree with the merits of waging a war against someone with superior whatevers. But when the RDA was blowing up their trees, did they have any other choice? Either that, or lie down and die. *shrug*

Why does everything glow? Bioluminescence requires energy and there’s only so much of it in any ecosystem. So, unless it offers an advantage in attracting mates/prey or evading predators, genetic mutations that lead to it will be less competitive than those that don’t and will therefore lose the evolutionary race. And yet, everything on Pandora glows…

Bioluminescence requires energy and there's only so much of it in any ecosystem that has evolved in an environment where flying sky-mountains are a common occurrence.

Ah, forgive this stupid one, master. But what does flying sky-mountains have to do with bioluminescence?

Just because something floats doesn't mean it's powered, just in case this escaped you.

Um, it is powered. By biological metabolical processes. That use energy. Seeing as how minerals that can lift entire mountains in the sky exist, and how there's a global brain network, it could be possible that there's something in the environment that provides additional energy/power/nutrition/whatever to fuel bioluminescence and brain networking.

All I'm saying is that Pandora's environment is full of weird shit. Certainly I don't think the Earth biosphere can support a brain network of trees, since the trees can't get enough nutrition for brain networking from the sun/water/ground. But the Pandora biosphere can, and their trees apparently get enough nutrition for brain networking from the sun/water/groun. So, yeah.

For that matter, why use explosives to off the Sacred Tree? Why not simply crash the big re-entry vehicle at supersonic velocities in a ballistic trajectory?

Because there are flying mountains everywhere around the Sacred Tree? 

Yes, I can see now. A high yield KEW against one of those floating rocks will expend all energy against said rock alone and will not ignite the surrounding forest. Kinda like how the Tunguska blast did not damage the forest on the ground at all.

Because you brought me a chuckle, I'll let you have one: "Oh, how could I have forgotten this? Oh, woe is me! I’m losing my intelligence and going senile at an young age! Is there no one around to help me regain a modicum of my intelligence? Oh, noes!"

Okay, they can Tunguska it. Fair enough. Though not ALL kinds of kinetic whatevers will cause Tunguska-style blasts.

Tell that to The East India company and their private armies equipped with artillery trains.

It behooves that a small colony of miners intent on antagonizing and exploiting a precious resource in another world with reinforcements many light years away to mine and fortify their camp.

Mines are also easy to make onsite - today, mines are as cheap as 5 to 10 USD. I would think that smart mines that report their locations to you would be even easier for a culture that’s mastered travel between the stars.

They may not have had the authorization to get those other forms of ordnances if the higher-up RDA execs on Earth decided against it in the annual Power Point Pandora Presentation? Maybe Space America finally ratified that convention that banned mines and cluster weapons? Who knows? Just because the local political conditions in the Mesozoic Era permitted the development of the East India Company with artillery trains and whatever, doesn't mean that the political situation in Space America circa Avatar is similar.

*shrug*

The guy isn't even consistent with the movie. He invents numbers, capabilities the RDA didn't have (like FTL), criticizes them for not doing impossible things ("LOL build orbital stations! Just in case we need to bomb the planet from orbit!"). Mentioning his invention of Quaritch being a "civilian relations puke" for most of his career is just pure cruelty

And, of course, he needs to extensively justify how starting an economic recession is somehow less moral than genocide. Not that he ever justifies that lack of unobtainium will cause an economic collapse: in the beginning of the movie, the US economy is already shit, even with unobtainium flowing freely.

Well, you got my sex right. Kudos.

That said, I was told by a fan that the distance between pandora and Earth is between 4 and 5 light years. To get a transit time of around seven years, you need a peak velocity of something like 70-90 percent the speed of light ( considering the time having to do with acceleration and deceleration times involved.) At 90% the speed of light, you are going to get some really awesome blueshift. Awesome as in hard X-rays and all that. You better have very thick lead shields or you’re fucking toast inside your ship. So are all your instruments unless they’re shielded against EMP.

But wait, that’s not all. At that velocity, a micrometeorite impact is going to be worse than a 1000 pound bomb against your hull. So, thick, powerful armor with the shield.

So, absent FTL, what miraculous material did mankind come up with to beat these two problems? Or as I think if most likely the case, they did not consider this in the story at all, did they?

Also, a shuttle in geostationary orbit is an impromptu orbital station. Just so you know.

And moving on, the choice is, a tribe of at most a thousand kicked out of their homes so that a world of many billions does not sink further into depression. Now, phrased this way, do you favor the tribe or the world? To put this in better perspective, you’re driving a bus carrying sixty passengers on a narrow bridge over a raging river. You see a kid in the middle of the road, blocking your way. The kid is too close and you can’t avoid him/her even if you slam the emergency breaks. If you try to avoid the kid, your bus will fall into the bridge and a lot of your passengers are going to drown to death, which is not a pleasant way to die. What do you do? Note that the sane answer is break and hit the kid, hoping the kid will pull through. The insane one is, “the kid is helpless. I must not hurt him/her and so will swerve the bus.” So, to emphasize, what will you do?

Deplorable though were the decisions that the Head of the Mining Operation Parker Selfridge and Quaritch made, their actions were illegal and in direct violation of the mining charter. Sully could have gathered evidence of their actions and pleaded the indigene’s case with the concerned authorities after returning to Earth. This process could have taken a decade – due mostly to the transit times between Earth and Pandora – and a few Na’vi tribes may have suffered at the hands of the miners, but it would have preserved the peace between our peoples.

Yeah, after fifteen years of abuse at the hands of the RDA while the company fought a legal battle on Earth, the natives would've been totally fine with a diplomatic solution. Sure.

EDIT: Oh, yeah, the funniest part was the one about doing a kamikadze run with a ridiculously expensive SSTO spacecraft to blow up a fucking tree. Not to mention the humans need the shuttles to refuel their interstellar starships

A kamikaze is when one goes on a suicide mission. I was talking about remote piloting the shuttle. Kind of a basic thing when we have UAVs today, you know.

As for native tribes being happy with diplomatic solution, I’d say yes. They would have built new houses (or in their case, found a new tree), had kids, buried parents, you know get on with life instead of going on a holy quest to rid the world of the humans.

I was under the impression that there were two shuttles. But beyond that, are you telling me the ship used reaction drives to propel itself to relativistic speeds? *chuckles* good one that. For a minute there, I thought you were being serious about this.

I don't think those are my posts you are quoting as they seem too well-written and well thought out.

Shroom Man 777,
You said,

Nazi Germany was in total economic shit before the war. This justifies the Holocaust and World War 2. All those repossessed Jewish gold (EMINENT DOMAIN! ) and those shaved hair used for textiles, not to mention the slave labor and all the lebensraum, justifies this. lol

This is my favorite among all your posts in this chain. I note the implied assertion that I’m a Nazi sympathizer, a jew hater and a holocaust denier/supporter, plus a supporter of slavery. That’s easily the most wide sweeping insult delivered so far. To satisfy my curiosity, are you sure you are anything but a troll?

I'd like to think that I'm not. Well, if you DON'T celebrate/support genocide or extinction level events, and just write characters doing all sorts of abhorrent shit while NOT advocating such crap as moral, then I guess you're not a Nazi sympathizer, a jew hater, and a holocaust denier/supporter, or a supporter of slavery. Just like how if I write stories about a schizophrenic psychopath cutting women's tits off and eating them at night (and I do write stories about a schizophrenic psychopath cutting women's tits off and eating them at night), without condoning these actions, it doesn't make me a Nazi sympathizer, a jew hater, and a holocaust denier/supporter, or a supporter of slavery. Or misogynistic cannibalism.

That said, I did not celebrate Rear Adm. Deepak’s actions in the story. Neither did the man himself. He knew he was doomed for his sins, but he could do nothing else because he had no other choice. If it was a local war, you move to some other mining spot and hope you can patch up things later. But when the planetary intelligence goes to war with you, it means you are at war with the planet. If you want to take back the mines, you can’t leave the planetary intelligence around because god knows what it’d do. And the only way you can even remotely be sure the planetwide intelligence is taken out is to cause an extinction level event.

Very well then. BTW, I haven't read your story.

But yeah, if I was Quarritch, I too would jump off an exploding gunship while donning power armor, heedless of the fact that I'm on fire, and I'd throttle the living shit out of Jake Sully and kill his Na'vi whore with my bigass power armor butcher knife, and lead the rest of the RDA forces to victory. Then I'd get rich off my pension, like blood money from killing the Na'vi and the subsequent resource extraction, and whatever. If I was Quarritch.

If I wasn't, then I'd screech about the abhorrent immorality of such acts. But if I was Quarritch, I'd probably use my power armor to throttle the fuck out of those abhorrent immorality screechers too. Fucking liberal pussy whores. I'd throttle the living fuck out of PeZook too, if I was Quarritch. Fucking PeZook.

Sorry PeZook.

Shroom Man 777,
You said,

On another note I'd like to say that this is amazing, really.

Though simplistic and stuff, Cameron seems to have touched people very deeply with Avatar. I mean, in here, you can see all the milwankers and fucktards rise up in a tide of utter ugliness as they try to justify morally reprehensible military actions. Despite the very basic storytelling, Cameron was trying to show us that same ugliness that haunts our humanity, and I think he's succeeded quite profoundly in a metafictional way.

EDIT:

Call it... audience participation.

Yes, O’ Great Liberal Maven. Now, should all the military fucktards drop dead so that you can live in peace?

No. The military fucktards can get bombarded from orbit so that I can live in peace mining their unobtanium. Yes.

[K. A. Pital]

American Indian warrior:


Na'Vi warrior:


Dog:

Damn folks... I didn't expect this thread to SUDDENLY become this much fun again.

The guy thinks I'm from America, apparently. Sadly, I can't write anything in reply because I'm basically sitting on our suitcases and tomorrow my train's leaving...

[Shroom Man 777]

Have fun on the Trans-Siberian Express

[arun2110]

You incorrectly attributed my quotes to Shroom. It would be wise to learn how to use the goddamned quote function properly.

I will ignore your replies to other people since, well, they're not replying to my points

Since I was typing on notepad copy-pasting a bunch of posts, I think I can be excused for my oversight.

You responded to the following:

The guy isn't even consistent with the movie. He invents numbers, capabilities the RDA didn't have (like FTL), criticizes them for not doing impossible things ("LOL build orbital stations! Just in case we need to bomb the planet from orbit!"). Mentioning his invention of Quaritch being a "civilian relations puke" for most of his career is just pure cruelty

And, of course, he needs to extensively justify how starting an economic recession is somehow less moral than genocide. Not that he ever justifies that lack of unobtainium will cause an economic collapse: in the beginning of the movie, the US economy is already shit, even with unobtainium flowing freely.

With:

Well, you got my sex right. Kudos.

That said, I was told by a fan that the distance between pandora and Earth is between 4 and 5 light years. To get a transit time of around seven years, you need a peak velocity of something like 70-90 percent the speed of light ( considering the time having to do with acceleration and deceleration times involved.) At 90% the speed of light, you are going to get some really awesome blueshift. Awesome as in hard X-rays and all that. You better have very thick lead shields or you’re fucking toast inside your ship. So are all your instruments unless they’re shielded against EMP.

Everything you wrote here is wrong: Pandora is in the Alpha Centauri system, which is 4,36 light years from Earth. Transit time is circa six years, which means a speed of about 0.7c. Still ridiculously high by our standards, but nowhere near 0.9c in terms of relativistic effects and the like.

My education might be faulty, but doesn't 4.36 fall between 4 and 5? As for accelerating to 0.7c, you know what kind of energy budget is involved if you're using reaction drives? What kind of mass? Look that up. How did you get 0.7c btw? Do you have the acceleration profile for the ship? I was assuming a lower acceleration with a final velocity of 0.9c and a higher accel with a final velocity of 0.7c. But disregarding that 0.7c is high enough you're going to have significant trouble with radiation.

But wait, that’s not all. At that velocity, a micrometeorite impact is going to be worse than a 1000 pound bomb against your hull. So, thick, powerful armor with the shield.

So, absent FTL, what miraculous material did mankind come up with to beat these two problems? Or as I think if most likely the case, they did not consider this in the story at all, did they?

So, what's your point? That they have awesome materials and high-yield power generation is a given, nobody's disputing that. It's quite explicit that they did not have any sort of FTL whatsoever, because they took more than 4.36 years to get to Pandora.

My point being, your ship would have to weigh a hell of a lot and would require reaction mass in the several hundred thousand ton range. And as for your demonstration of total transit time proving FTL is impossible, are you kidding me? I could say there was a boundary around a star within which FTL is impossible and the ship took nigh three years to cross that boundary.

Also, a shuttle in geostationary orbit is an impromptu orbital station. Just so you know.

You wrote about building space stations for observation, not jury-rigging (useless) ones with shuttles they need to do other things.

Yes, but in the absence of money/infrastructure to run one, you can use a shuttle in the manner I'd described as a field expedient one. And why is a shuttle serving as a space station useless?

And moving on, the choice is, a tribe of at most a thousand kicked out of their homes so that a world of many billions does not sink further into depression. Now, phrased this way, do you favor the tribe or the world? To put this in better perspective, you’re driving a bus carrying sixty passengers on a narrow bridge over a raging river. You see a kid in the middle of the road, blocking your way. The kid is too close and you can’t avoid him/her even if you slam the emergency breaks. If you try to avoid the kid, your bus will fall into the bridge and a lot of your passengers are going to drown to death, which is not a pleasant way to die. What do you do? Note that the sane answer is break and hit the kid, hoping the kid will pull through. The insane one is, “the kid is helpless. I must not hurt him/her and so will swerve the bus.” So, to emphasize, what will you do?

That's all well and good, but you did not provide evidence that unobtainium is in any way crucial to Earth's economy. We know from the fluff they can make really fast trains with it, and from the movie that Earth is already in a shitty state despite having free access to unobtainium.

Tell me, why else would someone travel 4.36 ly to get a substance that costs $20 million a kilogram if it's not crucial?

The other thing you have not properly justified is that while a depression results in lowering the standard of life, it doesn't automatically mean death or starvation. Your sad attempt at an utilitarian argument fails horribly, because economic woes are not equal to death. A more apt analogy would be a decision between "run over the child", and "be eight hours late to your destination".

Economic woes lead to war, Zook. Wars lead to death. My argument is apt. Quite unlike yours.

To my point:

Yeah, after fifteen years of abuse at the hands of the RDA while the company fought a legal battle on Earth, the natives would've been totally fine with a diplomatic solution. Sure.

EDIT: Oh, yeah, the funniest part was the one about doing a kamikadze run with a ridiculously expensive SSTO spacecraft to blow up a fucking tree. Not to mention the humans need the shuttles to refuel their interstellar starships

You responded:

A kamikaze is when one goes on a suicide mission. I was talking about remote piloting the shuttle. Kind of a basic thing when we have UAVs today, you know.

Don't act like a nitpicking asshole. You know perfectly well what I meant.

No I do not. Kamikaze means suicide bomber. End of story. It doesn't mean shuttle on autopilot. Or are we rewriting dictionaries here?

As for native tribes being happy with diplomatic solution, I’d say yes. They would have built new houses (or in their case, found a new tree), had kids, buried parents, you know get on with life instead of going on a holy quest to rid the world of the humans.

Yes, we all know that rationally they had no chance of victory and it would've been better in the long run not fighting but moving. We also know that intelligent beings can get pissed off when you forcibly evict them out of their homes and slaughter them en masse because they refused to bow to your demands, which means it's completely unrealistic to expect Jake to somehow magically convince them to take the abuse while the RDA fights a legal battle on Earth.

So keep it a fight between the tribe and the miners. I have no problem with that. Why involve all your neighbors and the planetary intelligence unless you're a vindictive psychopath who deserves to be put down like a dog?

I was under the impression that there were two shuttles. But beyond that, are you telling me the ship used reaction drives to propel itself to relativistic speeds? *chuckles* good one that. For a minute there, I thought you were being serious about this.

Except, of course, that's exactly what they did, and fluff explicitly states they need the shuttles to refuel their starships with reaction mass. So you throw a giant wrench in the entire operation by sacrificing the shuttle, creating a logistical bottleneck that will not be solved for several decades.

So, without one shuttle, they refuel slower. They could always build another shuttle back home on earth. They would have a shuttle as backup because it makes business sense. The mass of the shuttle, btw, will have a positive effect on your acceleration and deceleration. That would mitigate your logistical bottleneck quite a bit.

To my point:

"Traitor scientists" Like they (scientists) should have had loyalty to some greedy corporation perfectly willing to graze the Na'Vi or even mass slaughter them to get the unobtanium. Why?

But Stas! The RDA paid for their transportation! This means the company owns their souls! Didn't you see how Grace was compelled to do anything Selfridge said? It was totally in the movie, dude! Totally!

Personally, I think by "traitor" he means something more like "race traitor". But I'm sure he has many black friends and so cannot, by definition, be a racist fuck!

(Witness his accusation that Sully must be a perverted animal fucker if he falls in love with a Na'Vi woman)

You replied:

To quote myself from further up the chain: “Tell me, oh, broadminded sage, would you condone a man loving a dog the way mates love each other if the dog were uplifted to sentience? What about a chimpanzee? A Gorilla? If you do not, I see no reason why I should condone a pervert loving any alien be they blue skinned or hotter than miss universe.

Holy shit, are you blind? Or just a retard? The Na'Vi are not dogs. They're very humanoid, to the point that their secondary sexual characteristics are practically identical!

You ignore the chimpanzee and the gorilla. I threw those two in because I knew I would get this from you or someone else. Why ignore the chimp and the gorilla? They're humanoid enough, aren't they? Or no hair and boobs alone make one lovable?

If there was a hypothetical race of aliens who looked just like humans, were smoking hot and sexually compatible, according to your logic, humans who popped boners upon seeing them are complete sexual deviants?

Yes. They are deviants. Normal is human attracted to human. By dictionary definition, human attracted to hot/buttugly alien or critter is a deviant.

“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? It's the human hormones that matter because he is remotely piloting the body and is not living in it. And I'm supposed to say a human who makes lovey-dovey eyes at an alien is normal? I don't consider humans who fuck dolls or animals normal either. Fuck a human - any-which-way or be called a pervert. It's as simple as that. Or am I supposed to call him a differently aroused person because I don't want to hurt your or his feelings?”

This is rich. Did you perhaps miss the slight detail in Jake's character - that he's a fucking cripple?! Yeah, he could've totally gotten it on with all the chicks on base, man! No matter that he's a former soldier who can't walk, I'm sure his self-esteem issues wouldn't have gotten in the way of forming relationships, right?

So, are you saying cripples don't get into relationships? Not everyone is shallow, zook.

It's not like he only got his sense of self-worth back when he began participating in the tribe's customs? Or that love isn't just about hormones and lust and satisfying urges?

Let him fall in love with the indigene culture and customs, Zook. I have no problem with that. Falling in love with the alien, I have.

Guess what, I can masturbate. In fact, I whack off a lot, yet it doesn't satisfy many needs that a relationship gives you. It's not just about the fucking hormones, and even if it was, the Na'Vi are close enough to human form that there's nothing strange about finding some of them sexually attractive.

So, you'd be okay with loving a statue, a chimp or a gorilla. Okay.

[arun2110]

Defending the tree is self-defense. Attacking the enemy when the enemy has ceased offensive operations against you is called launching an offensive of your own.

You wage war against an enemy you stand a chance of defeating. You lose hopelessly against someone who controls orbitals. Difference there. A big one, too. Your fate will be similar to what happened to the Khwarezmian Empire.

That's what the Na'vi did in the end. They defended the Soul-Tree from the RDA's attempt at dropping a Daisy Cutter on it. They never attacked the enemy when the enemy has ceased offensive operations against them. Because the RDA was CONTINUING its offensive operations by going to the Tree of Souls with the attempt at nuking it. The Na'vi never launched an offensive of their own.

Well, yeah. I can agree with the merits of waging a war against someone with superior whatevers. But when the RDA was blowing up their trees, did they have any other choice? Either that, or lie down and die. *shrug*

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?

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.

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.

Ah, forgive this stupid one, master. But what does flying sky-mountains have to do with bioluminescence?

Just because something floats doesn't mean it's powered, just in case this escaped you.

Um, it is powered. By biological metabolical processes. That use energy. Seeing as how minerals that can lift entire mountains in the sky exist, and how there's a global brain network, it could be possible that there's something in the environment that provides additional energy/power/nutrition/whatever to fuel bioluminescence and brain networking.

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.

All I'm saying is that Pandora's environment is full of weird shit. Certainly I don't think the Earth biosphere can support a brain network of trees, since the trees can't get enough nutrition for brain networking from the sun/water/ground. But the Pandora biosphere can, and their trees apparently get enough nutrition for brain networking from the sun/water/groun. So, yeah.

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.

Yes, I can see now. A high yield KEW against one of those floating rocks will expend all energy against said rock alone and will not ignite the surrounding forest. Kinda like how the Tunguska blast did not damage the forest on the ground at all.

Because you brought me a chuckle, I'll let you have one: "Oh, how could I have forgotten this? Oh, woe is me! I’m losing my intelligence and going senile at an young age! Is there no one around to help me regain a modicum of my intelligence? Oh, noes!"

Okay, they can Tunguska it. Fair enough. Though not ALL kinds of kinetic whatevers will cause Tunguska-style blasts.

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.

Tell that to The East India company and their private armies equipped with artillery trains.

It behooves that a small colony of miners intent on antagonizing and exploiting a precious resource in another world with reinforcements many light years away to mine and fortify their camp.

Mines are also easy to make onsite - today, mines are as cheap as 5 to 10 USD. I would think that smart mines that report their locations to you would be even easier for a culture that’s mastered travel between the stars.

They may not have had the authorization to get those other forms of ordnances if the higher-up RDA execs on Earth decided against it in the annual Power Point Pandora Presentation? Maybe Space America finally ratified that convention that banned mines and cluster weapons? Who knows? Just because the local political conditions in the Mesozoic Era permitted the development of the East India Company with artillery trains and whatever, doesn't mean that the political situation in Space America circa Avatar is similar.

*shrug*

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. ^_^

I don't think those are my posts you are quoting as they seem too well-written and well thought out.

My bad. The post isn't well written and thought out though.

This is my favorite among all your posts in this chain. I note the implied assertion that I’m a Nazi sympathizer, a jew hater and a holocaust denier/supporter, plus a supporter of slavery. That’s easily the most wide sweeping insult delivered so far. To satisfy my curiosity, are you sure you are anything but a troll?

I'd like to think that I'm not. Well, if you DON'T celebrate/support genocide or extinction level events, and just write characters doing all sorts of abhorrent shit while NOT advocating such crap as moral, then I guess you're not a Nazi sympathizer, a jew hater, and a holocaust denier/supporter, or a supporter of slavery. Just like how if I write stories about a schizophrenic psychopath cutting women's tits off and eating them at night (and I do write stories about a schizophrenic psychopath cutting women's tits off and eating them at night), without condoning these actions, it doesn't make me a Nazi sympathizer, a jew hater, and a holocaust denier/supporter, or a supporter of slavery. Or misogynistic cannibalism.

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.

That said, I did not celebrate Rear Adm. Deepak’s actions in the story. Neither did the man himself. He knew he was doomed for his sins, but he could do nothing else because he had no other choice. If it was a local war, you move to some other mining spot and hope you can patch up things later. But when the planetary intelligence goes to war with you, it means you are at war with the planet. If you want to take back the mines, you can’t leave the planetary intelligence around because god knows what it’d do. And the only way you can even remotely be sure the planetwide intelligence is taken out is to cause an extinction level event.

Very well then. BTW, I haven't read your story.

But yeah, if I was Quarritch, I too would jump off an exploding gunship while donning power armor, heedless of the fact that I'm on fire, and I'd throttle the living shit out of Jake Sully and kill his Na'vi whore with my bigass power armor butcher knife, and lead the rest of the RDA forces to victory. Then I'd get rich off my pension, like blood money from killing the Na'vi and the subsequent resource extraction, and whatever. If I was Quarritch.

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

If I wasn't, then I'd screech about the abhorrent immorality of such acts. But if I was Quarritch, I'd probably use my power armor to throttle the fuck out of those abhorrent immorality screechers too. Fucking liberal pussy whores. I'd throttle the living fuck out of PeZook too, if I was Quarritch. Fucking PeZook.

Sorry PeZook.

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.

Shroom Man 777,
You said,

Yes, O’ Great Liberal Maven. Now, should all the military fucktards drop dead so that you can live in peace?

No. The military fucktards can get bombarded from orbit so that I can live in peace mining their unobtanium. Yes.

^_^;;

[arun2110]

Sorry for the mistaken identity then. Still feel sorry for your country, though.

[PeZook]

I know I wasn't supposed to answer for other people, but I couldn't resist:

When sully ascertained negotiations weren't possible, RDA went to limited war.

[open_sketchbook]

I think the theory that they went on a limited offensive flew out the window when they brought in the townhouse-sized helicopter battleship and shot a couple thousand rockets into somebody's home. Or, you know, decided it would be a good idea to cut them off from what is essentially their afterlife by poking the planet in a nerve cluster.

[arun2110]

I think the theory that they went on a limited offensive flew out the window when they brought in the townhouse-sized helicopter battleship and shot a couple thousand rockets into somebody's home. Or, you know, decided it would be a good idea to cut them off from what is essentially their afterlife by poking the planet in a nerve cluster.

Look up limited war. It doesn't mean limiting yourself to certain weapons. It means limiting yourself to certain goals short of the complete and utter destruction of the enemy.

[PeZook]

My education might be faulty, but doesn't 4.36 fall between 4 and 5? As for accelerating to 0.7c, you know what kind of energy budget is involved if you're using reaction drives? What kind of mass? Look that up. How did you get 0.7c btw? Do you have the acceleration profile for the ship? I was assuming a lower acceleration with a final velocity of 0.9c and a higher accel with a final velocity of 0.7c. But disregarding that 0.7c is high enough you're going to have significant trouble with radiation.

Again, why the hell does it matter?

They require tremendous amounts of energy and incredibly strong materials to get there. What's your point?

My point being, your ship would have to weigh a hell of a lot and would require reaction mass in the several hundred thousand ton range. And as for your demonstration of total transit time proving FTL is impossible, are you kidding me? I could say there was a boundary around a star within which FTL is impossible and the ship took nigh three years to cross that boundary.

Yes, and I could say they teleported there instantly but decided to sleep in, that doesn't make it true.

Yes, but in the absence of money/infrastructure to run one, you can use a shuttle in the manner I'd described as a field expedient one. And why is a shuttle serving as a space station useless?

Because it serves no purpose to the mining operation?

Tell me, why else would someone travel 4.36 ly to get a substance that costs $20 million a kilogram if it's not crucial?

I don't know: why do people fight wars over natural diamonds? They're completely useless. They cost about the same as unobtainium. Yet, DeBeers could go bankrupt tomorrow and the world would actually be better off, not worse.

Economic woes lead to war, Zook. Wars lead to death. My argument is apt. Quite unlike yours.

Economic woes only lead to war in the most extreme of circumstances, asshole. Is America in a war now because of the recession? Did it go to war with somebody because of the Great Depression?

No I do not. Kamikaze means suicide bomber. End of story. It doesn't mean shuttle on autopilot. Or are we rewriting dictionaries here?

Didn't I just say that you should quit being a nitpicky asshole?

So keep it a fight between the tribe and the miners. I have no problem with that. Why involve all your neighbors and the planetary intelligence unless you're a vindictive psychopath who deserves to be put down like a dog?

Because, obviously, they want to win and survive the war. Jesus christ, were you really born this retarded? How did you remember to take your first breath?

Do you really think counterattacking your enemy after he struck first is escalation? If the US nuked Tehran tomorrow, and then pulled back and patted itself in the back, would the Iranians be considered "vindictive psychopaths" for responding against the US forces in Iraq?

Not by anybody sane. If you go to war with somebody, expect him to fight back. And don't call the destruction of the home tree anything less than an act of war (and a war crime to boot), you'll just come off as a weasly little cunt.

So, without one shuttle, they refuel slower. They could always build another shuttle back home on earth. They would have a shuttle as backup because it makes business sense. The mass of the shuttle, btw, will have a positive effect on your acceleration and deceleration. That would mitigate your logistical bottleneck quite a bit.

What the hell are you talking about? The ships come home without the shuttles, which are left behind on Pandora to serve as refuellers until the end of their service life. Extending refuelling time would screw up the company's cash flow, possibly making it go bankrupt due to the incredibly high capital requirements necessary for the mining operation to work.

You ignore the chimpanzee and the gorilla. I threw those two in because I knew I would get this from you or someone else. Why ignore the chimp and the gorilla? They're humanoid enough, aren't they? Or no hair and boobs alone make one lovable?

The chimpanzee or the gorilla looks nothing like a human, jackass. The Na'Vi do - you could probably find humans that would be indistinguishable from a shorter, non-blue Na'Vi without the pointy ears and tail. And, of course, they do not possess human-like intelligence.

Yes. They are deviants. Normal is human attracted to human. By dictionary definition, human attracted to hot/buttugly alien or critter is a deviant.

You have a completely screwed up image of what if means for a person to be a sexual deviant. By the same logic, a human aroused by drawings of hot women is a deviant, because the drawing is obviously non-human.

So, are you saying cripples don't get into relationships? Not everyone is shallow, zook.

I'm not saying that. I'm saying a crippled man will have a harder time getting into a proper relationship, especially if he has deeply seated emotional issues due to his injury.

Didn't you notice that Sully's self-esteemed and sense of belonging only returned when he began participating in the avatar program? It's no big surprise he completely ignored the people on base beyond his most closest colleagues. He even compared his real life to a dream in the movie, thinking his life in the Na'Vi village to be more real.

Let him fall in love with the indigene culture and customs, Zook. I have no problem with that. Falling in love with the alien, I have.

That's because you're an asshole who thinks love is just about hormones and sex, and that sexual attraction to any creature sentien yet not human (even if it's actually indistinguishable from a human, which is particularly stupid) signifies deviancy.

So, you'd be okay with loving a statue, a chimp or a gorilla. Okay.

Did I say that? Oh, look! I haven't!

I think the theory that they went on a limited offensive flew out the window when they brought in the townhouse-sized helicopter battleship and shot a couple thousand rockets into somebody's home. Or, you know, decided it would be a good idea to cut them off from what is essentially their afterlife by poking the planet in a nerve cluster.

Quaritch was obviously looking for the slightest excuse to just massacre them all. He waited all of what, 30 seconds before he unleashed the incendiaries? How many Na'Vi children did he burn to death inside that tree before bringing it down onto fleeing civilians?

[Anguirus]

Plants don't have nervous systems. Nervous systems turn up in the clade that includes cnidarians (jellyfish) and all other animals except for sponges and placozoans.

Anyway, you didn't actually answer my question. IS there anything sadder than an armchair genocidal warmonger?

Please note that I have not read your story. The small snippets that were posted in this thread gave me no desire to. I consider myself a casual fan of the film who agrees with a lot of the logic holes that you point out. It seems that it's not merely a venting fic as had been my impression.

However, despite the fact that I do not find the Na'Vi, as they say, "fuckable," I find the idea of Sully falling in love with one to be much less "perverted" and "freakish" than the idea of writing about an induced extinction event for fun. I'm not trying to be judgmental, it's just...odd to me.

I'm trying to come up with an analogy...I guess it's sort of like writing a "Darker and Edgier" fanfic for The Lord of the Rings where Sauron is MUCH too smart to fall for that "putting his essence in the ring" trick and destroys Gondor, thus significantly aiding the economy of the Orcs. I don't care how much moral ambiguity you put into it, it comes off a bit sour grapes-ish.

[arun2110]

I know I wasn't supposed to answer for other people, but I couldn't resist:

When sully ascertained negotiations weren't possible, RDA went to limited war.

Total war, or war to the knife was what happened between the nazis and the russians on the eastern front. Between carthage and rome. Just two examples. ^_^

[arun2110]

My education might be faulty, but doesn't 4.36 fall between 4 and 5? As for accelerating to 0.7c, you know what kind of energy budget is involved if you're using reaction drives? What kind of mass? Look that up. How did you get 0.7c btw? Do you have the acceleration profile for the ship? I was assuming a lower acceleration with a final velocity of 0.9c and a higher accel with a final velocity of 0.7c. But disregarding that 0.7c is high enough you're going to have significant trouble with radiation.

Again, why the hell does it matter?

They require tremendous amounts of energy and incredibly strong materials to get there. What's your point?

It means, Zook, your fancy ship is a pipedream. The canon of sublight fractional-cee velocity ship is crap. But beyond that, to have a transit time of six years with a max velocity of 0.7c and cover 4.36 ly is mathematically impossible, Zook. See, 0.7 c *6 -> 4.2ly. And that's if 0.7c is the average velocity and not max velocity. Take in the year or so to accelerate and decelerate and well, your calculation comes up even worse. So, in the absence of proof to the contrary that you

My point being, your ship would have to weigh a hell of a lot and would require reaction mass in the several hundred thousand ton range. And as for your demonstration of total transit time proving FTL is impossible, are you kidding me? I could say there was a boundary around a star within which FTL is impossible and the ship took nigh three years to cross that boundary.

Yes, and I could say they teleported there instantly but decided to sleep in, that doesn't make it true.

Could be, Zook. Just as farfetched as my theory and canon.

Yes, but in the absence of money/infrastructure to run one, you can use a shuttle in the manner I'd described as a field expedient one. And why is a shuttle serving as a space station useless?

Because it serves no purpose to the mining operation?

Security, Zook.

Tell me, why else would someone travel 4.36 ly to get a substance that costs $20 million a kilogram if it's not crucial?

I don't know: why do people fight wars over natural diamonds? They're completely useless. They cost about the same as unobtainium. Yet, DeBeers could go bankrupt tomorrow and the world would actually be better off, not worse.

The reasons why I do not think Unobtanium is a luxury item are the scale of operations on Pandora and Earth, and the immense distances involved. We're talking billions upon billions invested in equipment, people, ships, etc. To demonstrate the complexities involved I'll expand on a few of them.

First is fuel for operations and the spaceship. Where does that come from? Did they establish a fueling station on Pandora or they do bring all fuel from Earth? If the former, that's an impressive investment right there - extracting fuel from a gas planet is energy intensive and Pandora is not a way station or anything. It's a remote mining and research colony from the looks of things. The mine has to high capacity because it has to fuel a spaceship weighing thousand upon thousands tons on a six year voyage (energy for initial acceleration, translation to Faster Than Light travel, energy for sustaining FTL (if required) and energy for final deceleration.) It must also supply enough fuel for the lifting the ore out of the gravity well, transporting people, powering the facilities and the equipments on land. If the latter, the voyage is going to consume more energy as the ship has to initially start off with enough fuel for too and fro travel as well as carry enough fuel to top-off the mining station's reserves. If you're talking ships visiting twice a year, that leaves you with a fleet of 24 ships, with all the specialized training and other expenses, both capital and operational.

Second, the miners. Every crew member RDA hires is going to be unproductive for 12 years - the time to travel to and from Pandora. But RDA has to pay them for those 12 years when they're doing nothing. Pay them more actually because the crew members will be separated from family for minimum 12 years and the environment they're going to be working in is hazardous. Throw in the fact that any personnel loses will not be replaced for 12 years and you can get an understanding of the kind of inefficiencies that RDA is operating under. Why do this for a luxury item at all? There certainly can't be a big enough market for such a luxury item in the first place no matter how big the economy.

What I'm getting at is, extracting Unobtanium is too big a hassle for it to be a luxury item or for it to have some mundane applications that can be fulfilled by cheaper, inferior substitutes. The only reasonable explanation for why anyone would go to all the trouble of mining Unobtanium is if it's of strategic importance.

Economic woes lead to war, Zook. Wars lead to death. My argument is apt. Quite unlike yours.

Economic woes only lead to war in the most extreme of circumstances, asshole. Is America in a war now because of the recession? Did it go to war with somebody because of the Great Depression?

Why do you keep profaning? Is it because you have nothing to argue with?

Anyways, not exactly true. There's this little guy in Germany who came to power owing partly to the failure of the German economy during the Great Depression. Adolf Hitler.

People do not have to die only because of war, Zook. People may not starve to death in the western world, but do you think there aren't any starving to death right now in Africa because the rich nations have reduced their handouts?

No I do not. Kamikaze means suicide bomber. End of story. It doesn't mean shuttle on autopilot. Or are we rewriting dictionaries here?

Didn't I just say that you should quit being a nitpicky asshole?

Pot calling the kettle black? You haven't been the paragon of gentlemanly conduct here, Zook.

So keep it a fight between the tribe and the miners. I have no problem with that. Why involve all your neighbors and the planetary intelligence unless you're a vindictive psychopath who deserves to be put down like a dog?

Because, obviously, they want to win and survive the war. Jesus christ, were you really born this retarded? How did you remember to take your first breath?

Which is why they needed to keep the war limited. Insulting my intelligence is not going to work. I'm very secure on that front. Try something else if you want to keep on trolling for a flame war.

Do you really think counterattacking your enemy after he struck first is escalation? If the US nuked Tehran tomorrow, and then pulled back and patted itself in the back, would the Iranians be considered "vindictive psychopaths" for responding against the US forces in Iraq?

It was one tree, Zook. And some collateral casualties. It wasn't nuking Tehran. There's no comparison between the two. It wasn't even bombing the WTC.

Not by anybody sane. If you go to war with somebody, expect him to fight back. And don't call the destruction of the home tree anything less than an act of war (and a war crime to boot), you'll just come off as a weasly little cunt.

I have kept saying limited war, Zook. But you don't even know what limited and total war are. Your deplorable level of education should be your problem. Not mine.

So, without one shuttle, they refuel slower. They could always build another shuttle back home on earth. They would have a shuttle as backup because it makes business sense. The mass of the shuttle, btw, will have a positive effect on your acceleration and deceleration. That would mitigate your logistical bottleneck quite a bit.

What the hell are you talking about? The ships come home without the shuttles, which are left behind on Pandora to serve as refuellers until the end of their service life. Extending refuelling time would screw up the company's cash flow, possibly making it go bankrupt due to the incredibly high capital requirements necessary for the mining operation to work.

Less mass * same power -> more acceleration. Simple relation, Zook. So, without a second reentry vehicle weighing it down, your interstellar ship is going to accelerate and decelerate faster for the same thrust, which means it can reach max velocity earlier and start breaking later, which equates to reduced transit time.

Also, with more than a decade between order placement and fulfillment, I would think that a few weeks delay because of unloading isn't going to hurt your market capitalization or your profit none.

You ignore the chimpanzee and the gorilla. I threw those two in because I knew I would get this from you or someone else. Why ignore the chimp and the gorilla? They're humanoid enough, aren't they? Or no hair and boobs alone make one lovable?

The chimpanzee or the gorilla looks nothing like a human, jackass. The Na'Vi do - you could probably find humans that would be indistinguishable from a shorter, non-blue Na'Vi without the pointy ears and tail. And, of course, they do not possess human-like intelligence.

This is your argument? My initial question was, would you be attracted to a chimp or a gorilla if they were also uplifted into sentience like the uplifted dog you found so loathsome. But since we're on the subject of giving plastic surgery to aliens - how else are you going to get a human looking non-blue Na'vi without pointy ears and tail - will it be okay to fuck a gorilla or a chimp if we do the same operation on them as well?

Yes. They are deviants. Normal is human attracted to human. By dictionary definition, human attracted to hot/buttugly alien or critter is a deviant.

You have a completely screwed up image of what if means for a person to be a sexual deviant. By the same logic, a human aroused by drawings of hot women is a deviant, because the drawing is obviously non-human.

Drawing of a human woman, Zook. Drawing of a dog or a chimp or a gorilla - be they uplifted or mundane - or Na'vi is deviant. BTW, I do not consider people who are into S&M, hirsute or any of the other stuff, deviant. I would kill someone with an incest fetish, though.

So, are you saying cripples don't get into relationships? Not everyone is shallow, zook.

I'm not saying that. I'm saying a crippled man will have a harder time getting into a proper relationship, especially if he has deeply seated emotional issues due to his injury.

Normal men with deep seated emotional issues also have a harder time getting into a proper relationship. This is not an argument at all. Normal men do not go looking for exotic shit to fuck. Except maybe in Japan. LOL

Didn't you notice that Sully's self-esteemed and sense of belonging only returned when he began participating in the avatar program? It's no big surprise he completely ignored the people on base beyond his most closest colleagues. He even compared his real life to a dream in the movie, thinking his life in the Na'Vi village to be more real.

So, to be united with his love, he starts a war between her people and his? Sully is noble indeed.

Let him fall in love with the indigene culture and customs, Zook. I have no problem with that. Falling in love with the alien, I have.

That's because you're an asshole who thinks love is just about hormones and sex, and that sexual attraction to any creature sentien yet not human (even if it's actually indistinguishable from a human, which is particularly stupid) signifies deviancy.

It is. Dictionary definition of deviancy is "departing from usual or accepted standards, esp. in social or sexual behavior." Trying to troll me on this is going to be an exercise in futility.

So, you'd be okay with loving a statue, a chimp or a gorilla. Okay.

Did I say that? Oh, look! I haven't!

[/quote]

You ignored part of my argument and used the rest as my whole argument. I assumed since you did not have any issue with the part you ignored you were okay with fucking manlike statues, chimps and gorillas, and wondered about it aloud.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

This is kind of an odd tangent, but what exactly is wrong with having sex with an uplifted gorilla, or a living statue, or a Na'vi, so long as they're intelligent, articulate, and free enough to give proper consent? Maybe it's gross and icky-poos, but does it harm anything? People can get over a lot when they have romantic feelings for someone; this isn't news. Yes, it's definitely odd, but you're talking about it as if it's bad.

And what especially is wrong with sexual feelings for a nonhuman that looks like a human? How is that even deviant, considering how sexualised human-like aliens and humanoids tend to be in fiction? Is everyone who had the hots for Legolas a "deviant"?

[arun2110]

Plants don't have nervous systems. Nervous systems turn up in the clade that includes cnidarians (jellyfish) and all other animals except for sponges and placozoans.

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. ^_^)

Anyway, you didn't actually answer my question. IS there anything sadder than an armchair genocidal warmonger?

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.

Please note that I have not read your story. The small snippets that were posted in this thread gave me no desire to. I consider myself a casual fan of the film who agrees with a lot of the logic holes that you point out. It seems that it's not merely a venting fic as had been my impression.

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

However, despite the fact that I do not find the Na'Vi, as they say, "fuckable," I find the idea of Sully falling in love with one to be much less "perverted" and "freakish" than the idea of writing about an induced extinction event for fun. I'm not trying to be judgmental, it's just...odd to me.

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'm trying to come up with an analogy...I guess it's sort of like writing a "Darker and Edgier" fanfic for The Lord of the Rings where Sauron is MUCH too smart to fall for that "putting his essence in the ring" trick and destroys Gondor, thus significantly aiding the economy of the Orcs. I don't care how much moral ambiguity you put into it, it comes off a bit sour grapes-ish.

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.

[PeZook]

It means, Zook, your fancy ship is a pipedream. The canon of sublight fractional-cee velocity ship is crap. But beyond that, to have a transit time of six years with a max velocity of 0.7c and cover 4.36 ly is mathematically impossible, Zook. See, 0.7 c *6 -> 4.2ly. And that's if 0.7c is the average velocity and not max velocity. Take in the year or so to accelerate and decelerate and well, your calculation comes up even worse. So, in the absence of proof to the contrary that you

You still haven't said why all of this matters in the slightest. Again: what's your problem? Is it that building such a high performance ship is hard? Requires extraordinary technology? Because if that's so, I agree. I just don't think that's a blow agains the movie at all, since it's not a Science Channel special.

Could be, Zook. Just as farfetched as my theory and canon.

Yeah, sure. Whatever.

Security, Zook.

How does an orbiting shuttle aid security? They obviously had other means of surveillance in orbit, since Quaritch presented orbital photographs at the base. The shuttle has no weapons of any kind. Again, it's completely useless.

The reasons why I do not think Unobtanium is a luxury item are the scale of operations on Pandora and Earth, and the immense distances involved. We're talking billions upon billions invested in equipment, people, ships, etc. To demonstrate the complexities involved I'll expand on a few of them.
[snipped pointless explanation of complexities involved]

Jesus christ, I know it's a complicated operation, okay? I'm just pointing out since people are willing to start wars for expensive luxury items, it doesn't necessarily follow that an expensive substance has strategic importance to the point of justifying genocide.

Get it? Unobtainium is obviously expensive and useful, since it's a room-temperature superconductor. The question is if it's important enough to cause all your doom-and-gloom predictions of war famine and destruction if it's cut off, and the movie doesn't give that impression at all, even when this argument could and should've been brought up (Selfridge's talk with Grace)

Why do you keep profaning? Is it because you have nothing to argue with?

No, just because I have a low opinion of you.

Anyways, not exactly true. There's this little guy in Germany who came to power owing partly to the failure of the German economy during the Great Depression. Adolf Hitler.

The Great Depression didn't lead to WWII, idiot. There were a hundred other countries that didn't get an insane power hungry despot at the helm despite suffering just as bad in the Great Depression. It was WWI caused the situation that allowed Hitler to gain power.

Even if we assume it was as you say historicaly, the situation was pretty extreme, and you still haven't shown any evidence that indicates lack of unobtainium would cause a similar crisis.

People do not have to die only because of war, Zook. People may not starve to death in the western world, but do you think there aren't any starving to death right now in Africa because the rich nations have reduced their handouts?

...and this obviously justifies deliberately murdering innocents if only it means the recession stops? Should we start kicking people off their land now? Do you think other nations would approve if the US went on a conquering rampage to stave off depression?

Pot calling the kettle black? You haven't been the paragon of gentlemanly conduct here, Zook.

People are allowed to insult each other here. I don't have a problem with insults, I have a problem with you pretending as if you didn't know what I meant by "kamikaze" in this context.

Which is why they needed to keep the war limited. Insulting my intelligence is not going to work. I'm very secure on that front. Try something else if you want to keep on trolling for a flame war.

What? What guarantees did they have the RDA wouldn't come over again and just finish them off? And then do it again with the very next tribe? Did you forget the Indian Genocide? That was a series of "limited wars", too. Why does it matter if the enemy destroys your people in twenty years instead of two?

The Na'Vi could either destroy the RDA's presence on the planet, or face constant defeats in detail. There was no other choice, even ignoring the political reality (and it was that the Na'Vi wanted to fight, and would've fought anyway, and Jake couldn't stop them if he wanted to)

It was one tree, Zook. And some collateral casualties. It wasn't nuking Tehran. There's no comparison between the two. It wasn't even bombing the WTC.

What? It was the centre of their society. Their home, their capital settlement, housing their entire tribe. If anything, it's worse than just nuking Tehran.

Also, you're a disgusting, sleazy bastard. Nothing during that attack was "collateral damage", Quaritch shot fucking incendiaries into a structure full of civilians.

Nazis who did that sort of thing were hanged in Nurenberg, you know.

I have kept saying limited war, Zook. But you don't even know what limited and total war are. Your deplorable level of education should be your problem. Not mine.

Nothing about that war was "limited", jackass. The RDA targetted a civilian structure and razed it to the fucking ground because they were annoyed.

Less mass * same power -> more acceleration. Simple relation, Zook. So, without a second reentry vehicle weighing it down, your interstellar ship is going to accelerate and decelerate faster for the same thrust, which means it can reach max velocity earlier and start breaking later, which equates to reduced transit time.

Can't you read? I just wrote the shuttles don't come home with the ships. This entire tangent is completely irrelevant.

Also, with more than a decade between order placement and fulfillment, I would think that a few weeks delay because of unloading isn't going to hurt your market capitalization or your profit none.

Since the ships spend a year refuelling, I sincerely doubt significantly cutting their refuelling fleet would only result in a "few week's delays", especially since the shuttles are also used for ferrying unobtainium to orbit.

This is your argument? My initial question was, would you be attracted to a chimp or a gorilla if they were also uplifted into sentience like the uplifted dog you found so loathsome. But since we're on the subject of giving plastic surgery to aliens - how else are you going to get a human looking non-blue Na'vi without pointy ears and tail - will it be okay to fuck a gorilla or a chimp if we do the same operation on them as well?

Yes, if the creature had humanlike intelligence, was sexually compatible and looked similar to a human, there'd be nothing wrong with having consensual sex with it. Hell, no, scratch that: if the chimp or gorilla would have human-like intelligence there'd be nothing morally wrong with having consensual sex with them even if they didn't look like a human, though there'd be obvious technical problems with the process.

Drawing of a human woman, Zook. Drawing of a dog or a chimp or a gorilla - be they uplifted or mundane - or Na'vi is deviant. BTW, I do not consider people who are into S&M, hirsute or any of the other stuff, deviant. I would kill someone with an incest fetish, though.

You fail at logic. If it's deviant to be sexually aroused by anything other than humans, including aliens indistinguishable from humans, then being aroused by pictures of women is also deviant behavior, since in both cases the human is aroused sexually by something else than a human.

Normal men with deep seated emotional issues also have a harder time getting into a proper relationship. This is not an argument at all.

Yes, it is an argument. You argued that he should've pursued a relationship with a human, no matter how difficult, rather than a relationship with a Na'Vi woman who he felt comfortable with, because he should've stayed with his own kind.

I pointed out that he felt more comfortable in the presence of Neytirri because he was fully physically capable in his avatar body, and developed a bond with her he didn't have with anybody else on base. He had an emotional bond with her, the Na'Vi look mostly human, their secondary sexual characteristics are practicallt 100% human, they express emotions the same way. There is nothing wrong, perverted or strange in their relationship at all, save the fact it's interspecies.

Or not, since he gets uploaded at the end of the movie.

Normal men do not go looking for exotic shit to fuck. Except maybe in Japan. LOL

Actually, they do it all the time.

So, to be united with his love, he starts a war between her people and his? Sully is noble indeed.

He doesn't start the war, he just helps the Na'Vi win it because he thinks the RDA are massive assholes. Did you watch a different movie?

It is. Dictionary definition of deviancy is "departing from usual or accepted standards, esp. in social or sexual behavior." Trying to troll me on this is going to be an exercise in futility.

Fine, if we're going to argue semantics, then you're correct. Now you can concede there's nothing morally wrong with Sully falling in love with a Na'Vi, and we can both go home.

You ignored part of my argument and used the rest as my whole argument. I assumed since you did not have any issue with the part you ignored you were okay with fucking manlike statues, chimps and gorillas, and wondered about it aloud.

I didn't ignore a single sentence of your post, fuckface. I just didn't post two extra pictures below the dog, since I assumed the thrust of my argument was clear enough. Obviously, you're too much of a semantics-obsessed nitpicking motherfucker to give you the benefit of the doubt.

[arun2110]

This is kind of an odd tangent, but what exactly is wrong with having sex with an uplifted gorilla, or a living statue, or a Na'vi, so long as they're intelligent, articulate, and free enough to give proper consent? Maybe it's gross and icky-poos, but does it harm anything? People can get over a lot when they have romantic feelings for someone; this isn't news. Yes, it's definitely odd, but you're talking about it as if it's bad.

And what especially is wrong with sexual feelings for a nonhuman that looks like a human? How is that even deviant, considering how sexualised human-like aliens and humanoids tend to be in fiction? Is everyone who had the hots for Legolas a "deviant"?

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

[arun2110]

Zook,
Read your post. Though it is tempting to retort with a flame of my own, I'm not in the habit of indulging stupid little boys with big egos and potty mouths. Now, I suppose this could be taken as flame bait, but be advised. I'm going to ignore your posts henceforth.
Arun

[Ghost Rider]

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.

[Samuel]

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.

[Zixinus]

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.

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?

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.

“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?

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.

[Anguirus]

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.)

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?

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.

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.

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).

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."

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.

[Zor]

Ah, you're one of those who called me a racist. Know what that means, kiddo? At worst, I was being a xenophobe. But I prefer to think of myself as a straight guy attracted to chicks. And everything with a boob doesn't qualify as a chick.

Tell me, lets say that you come across a sapient creature that looks and sounds like a exactly like a ravishlingly beatiful woman in whatever manner you find praticularly attractive that wants to do you, with said creature having the notable diference of having a biology in which her cellular structure is composed of Non Nucleated cells, several diferences in the arangement, some diferences in her internal organs and had copper based blood, giving her a light green coloration skin. Said creature would be MUCH further away from you than a sheep. So would you do it. No one has ever complained about Arwen and Aragorn getting it on in the Lord of the Rings or (at least for the reasons you mentioned) the Twi'lek slave girls in Star Wars in such a matter.

Hell, people get aroused by stuff thats not human things already and routinely, its called Porn (ink on paper, assemblies of pixels and so forth) and its a multi-billion dollar industry which produces it. And no, you can't even claim that porn always involves real people being recorded. The only diferences between a Na'vi and a Twi'lek in terms of physical attractiveness are a handful of minor details of trivial nature that, as a default don't conflict with the general nature of what people find attractive.

Zor

[PeZook]

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?

What makes you think Sully had enough time to discuss advanced tactics with the steppe warriors? Their entire way of warfare was probably very simple, if we take the analogy to American Indians far enough. Check out the events in the movie: at first, Sully is planning to assault the RDA compound, so he's organizing his warriors for that. Then he learns Quaritch is going to bomb the Soul Tree and only has a few hours to organize a defence, and he has no experience plannning or executing a large-scale battle like that, especially with a grand total of four radios to share between them and the bow as his most advanced weapon.

So it's not a stretch that he concentrated on the aerial part (since it was, well, crucial), possibly giving some pointers to the horse-clans, but there was no time to train them in flanking maneuvers, scouting, command and control etc.

Besides, remember how Neytirri reacted when Sully ordered her to fall back? She just ignored the order and decided to die gloriously in battle. That's probably an attitude displayed by the rest of them, because they're an army of warriors, not soldiers. An army of warriors can be pretty effective, sure, but only when led by extraordinary people. Adding insult to injury, while the Omaticaya fought the RDA already and had some idea what they could do, no other clan did: they literally had no idea just how deadly guns are. It's easy to dismiss a threat when it's so radically beyond your paradigm that you literally can't conceive of it, it happened many times in history - even as early as 1991.