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ruddiger posted:Where did the black goo come from? Ferrinus posted:I should also remind you that there wasn't just a chamber with "a couple of vases", but instead a big chamber filled with a huge grid of vases recalling the grid of eggs in the Space Jockey ship. Ferrinus posted:If the Alien isn't the goo, but something the goo can create under certain circumstances, then the mystery of the alien's origin does in fact reduce to the mystery of the goo's origin. There is still a spooky question which can be generated by taking various of your earlier posts and doing a find-replace word search. "Part of what makes Prometheus so scary is that the mutagen could be pooling in the dark anywhere..." Like, I mean, if the black goo enhances the Alien creature for you, then more power to you. I feel it doesn't. Ferrinus posted:harvested from or secreted by already-existing ancient xenomorphs, so there's even entirely possible that the xenomorph came first.
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Mar 31, 2021 04:38
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The least knowable thing in the entire Alien franchise, and therefore the most terrifying, is the little fleet of gold helicopters and digging machines they keep packed in the Nostromo’s closet.
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Mar 31, 2021 04:40
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Xenomrph posted:Again, my point is that the movie sidelines the capital-A Alien in favor of the New Hotness (the black goo), and that's my problem with it. The Alien is reduced to a science experiment, a byproduct of the black goo. You're assuming I care what the Alien's actual origin is and whether it's from the goo or not - I don't. I just know that in the realm of the ancient cosmic horror it was framed as in the original movie, learning that it's a decades-old science experiment radically subtracts from that original ancient cosmic horror element. Waving the new puppy in front of me and saying "look at the new dog! Don't you like the new dog!" isn't going to make me less upset about the old dog being kneecapped just so the new puppy can be propped up. Does Faust "reduce" Mephistopheles to "a science experiment"?
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Mar 31, 2021 04:47
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Ferrinus posted:Does Faust "reduce" Mephistopheles to "a science experiment"?
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Mar 31, 2021 04:50
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Xenomrph posted:Speaking as someone who hasn't read Faust, I cannot comment. Neither have I, but I know that the premise is that the scholar Faust calls on the Devil and receives the aid of the demon Mephistopheles, proceeding to make a big mess of everything. I'm not really concerned with the specifics of the story so much as those of a wizard summoning a demon, or a scientist unleashing the power of the atom, or any other story of someone tapping into ancient, dangerous forces with spectacular contemporary results.
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Mar 31, 2021 04:57
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Ferrinus posted:Neither have I, but I know that the premise is that the scholar Faust calls on the Devil and receives the aid of the demon Mephistopheles, proceeding to make a big mess of everything. I'm not really concerned with the specifics of the story so much as those of a wizard summoning a demon, or a scientist unleashing the power of the atom, or any other story of someone tapping into ancient, dangerous forces with spectacular contemporary results. Put into those terms, the problem is that the Alien started out in the first movie as the “ancient, dangerous forces”, and has since been retconned into being the “contemporary results”, and I don’t care for that.
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Mar 31, 2021 05:02
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Xenomrph posted:Put into those terms, the problem is that the Alien started out in the first movie as the “ancient, dangerous forces”, and has since been retconned into being the “contemporary results”, and I don’t care for that. What you're not seeing is that there isn't actually such a distinction - each complements and strengthens the other. Take my two examples: A horned guy who grants wishes... turns out to be an ageless being from a realm of pure evil summoned here by mortal transgression. A big explosion... turns out to be the fundamental energy that binds matter itself into form. These things are actually richer, and of greater narrative import, for the fact of their immediate physical manifestations (in the case of the Alien movies, a quadrupedal bug) being tied to deeper cosmic forces (here, the duality of birth and death). This in fact renders the xenomorph much more Lovecraftian than it used to be (before, it was just on an aesthetic level) and also opens up much more space for how the xenomorph might manifest or be represented and what it really means. With Prometheus and Covenant, the xenomorph is an irrepressible, protean, demonic creature; without them, it's a space alien. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 05:20 on Mar 31, 2021 |
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Mar 31, 2021 05:16
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Again, your interpretation conflates the black goo and Alien as being the same thing, and I don’t feel that’s the case. Like I said, I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree. I get what you’re saying, I just don’t agree with it, I’m sorry. If you think the prequels enhanced the Alien, then that’s great! But for a lot of people they didn’t, and I’m one of them. That doesn’t mean they’re “wrong” or “missed the point”. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Mar 31, 2021 |
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Mar 31, 2021 05:19
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Well, your explanations as to why you don't agree haven't made sense. You've said some sort of mystery gets lost, but as we've seen, the exact same questions can be asked, and might even have the answers that you personally want (i.e. xenomorphs might have come first after all, hailing from Mystery Planet X, and the black goo got harvested from them somehow). The specific eggs found by the Nostromo having only been 20 years old doesn't actually change anything about the themes reflected or questions posed by the xenomorph as a creature, since its ultimate origin remains a black box that indicates some baseline universal hostility to human life.
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Mar 31, 2021 05:25
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there's something far more biologically interesting about the alien creature than Satan's Jizz or whatever the black goo is. i'm a bit surprised there's not really been some sort of swamp-thing esque anatomy lesson / dissection sequence in any of the mainline films yet, aside from bishop poking and prodding a facehugger. (i know the comics and eu stuff get into some of this; Labyrinth in particular is good fun.)
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Mar 31, 2021 05:31
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That’s the thing, the prequels at this stage don’t really say that. Scott’s intent is that David made the capital-A Alien, all specimens are ~20 years old, full stop. That’s the part I have a problem with. Is it actually the case? Maybe not! Personally I don’t think it is the case for multiple reasons. If the next prequel walks it back and, like you suggest, makes the capital-A Alien the source of the black goo and has them exist independently of David, then frankly all will be forgiven in my book. The Alien being the source of the black goo would be interesting, for a lot of the reasons you’ve given for the black goo itself being interesting. alf_pogs posted:there's something far more biologically interesting about the alien creature than Satan's Jizz or whatever the black goo is. Labyrinth is a wonderful example of taking the Alien by itself and making it weird and scary again - it even has its own “black goo”! The dissection scene is great because it’s meant to demystify the Alien and reduce it to biological components and concepts.... and then the rest of the comic happens and throws all of it right out the window. It’s also a great inversion of the “mad scientist” trope since the bad guy gets away with everything. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Mar 31, 2021 |
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Mar 31, 2021 05:36
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All jokes aside, the issue is that your continual recourse to “ancient cosmic horror” isn’t telling us anything. It’s just so ancient and, like, cosmic. Should you ever go into detail about the ancient cosmic spirituality you’ll probably find that dovetails perfectly with this long chain of “begats”, where Ganesha was born of David, son of Peter, who had lain with Shaw and produced six Eggs (and so-forth).
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Mar 31, 2021 05:59
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All the eggs on LV-429 being at most 20 years old, and therefore every xenomorph in the mainline Alien series of movies descending from the experiments of the android David, actually changes nothing about the background radiation of cosmic menace that the existence of something like the xenomorph implies. We know that xenomorph-like things are actually many times older than that thanks to the murals in Prometheus, so the specific bug we currently see on screen being quite young doesn't really alter the tenor of the series. After all, the xenomorph in Alien is only a few days old. It's a unique combination of some alien object of unknown age and provenance (in this case, an egg) and a regular human astronaut (Kane). If the egg, itself, is the combination of an alien object of unknown age and provenance (a black mutagen) and a regular human astronaut (Shaw, seemingly), what's the difference? Is the original xenomorph actually mega lame because it's only been around for a day or three and in fact we see how it's created? No, because we know that it's the exponent of something older and stranger. Mephistopheles was trapped in hell for ~6,000 years before being summoned to earth for a few years starting at some point during the Enlightenment.
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Mar 31, 2021 06:03
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When what I care about is the *specific* bug, then yes, changing it does change the tenor of the series. Again, showing me a new puppy and saying it’s a new replacement for the old dog I like isn’t good enough. I’m getting tired of repeating the same thing and you not understanding it, and I’m trying to be civil and respectful which is why I’ve said repeatedly that we’ll just have to agree to disagree. 
Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Mar 31, 2021 |
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Mar 31, 2021 06:16
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It’s the same dog, OP. The dog looks younger because it’s a prequel.
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Mar 31, 2021 06:20
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The least knowable thing in the entire Alien franchise, and therefore the most terrifying, is the little fleet of gold helicopters and digging machines they keep packed in the Nostromo’s closet. I legit love these things and are kinda curious as to what they really are, but what really blows me away about them is that they were physically built for the film and serve no purpose other than world building. Crazy huge props built for no reason other than set dressing, they're super detailed too. Love it.
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Mar 31, 2021 06:23
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Xenomrph posted:When what I care about is the *specific* bug, then yes, changing it does change the tenor of the series. Again, showing me a new puppy and saying it’s a new replacement for the old dog I like isn’t good enough. It's not actually a change, though, as you did not know where the eggs came from. You imagined that those specific eggs must be thousands of years old. Instead, it turns out they were made twenty years ago using something thousands of years old (maybe). There is no practical or thematic difference here; you're just fetishizing a particularly common but irrelevant-to-proceedings fan theory.
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Mar 31, 2021 06:25
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sigher posted:I legit love these things and are kinda curious as to what they really are, but what really blows me away about them is that they were physically built for the film and serve no purpose other than world building. Crazy huge props built for no reason other than set dressing, they're super detailed too. Love it. I believe I’ve read that the crew of the Nostromo are supposed to be basically long-haulers who attach their ship to the refinery, after others have mined the precious metals and materials, and take it back to earth. Then I think I’ve also read in other places that in addition to being long-haulers the crew are themselves trained and equipped to do some of the mining, hence the diggers and other equipment we see.
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Mar 31, 2021 06:30
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Ferrinus posted:It's not actually a change, though, as you did not know where the eggs came from. quote:You imagined that those specific eggs must be thousands of years old. Instead, it turns out they were made twenty years ago using something thousands of years old (maybe). quote:There is no practical or thematic difference here; you're just fetishizing a particularly common but irrelevant-to-proceedings fan theory.
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Mar 31, 2021 07:50
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Well, then what is the practical or thematic difference? As I have pointed out, you actually do know exactly where the xenomorph came from and how old it is: it is a few days old, and it came from a combination of a mysterious thing and a named guy. With fuller knowledge of the eggs' provenance, it is still true that the xenomorph (a few days old) came from the combination of a a mysterious thing and a named guy. It turns out there was also another named guy and a named woman in the mix. Nevertheless, the actual age and origins remain unknown to you. Earlier, you commented that it would be "delicious" if it turns out David wasn't as original as he thought he was. Maybe you just don't like David, the character, and it's his involvement that's spoiling things?
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Mar 31, 2021 08:08
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I'm pretty sure that Xenomrph doesn't care that David himself created the Xeno because he doesn't find it to be that interesting which is fair. If something other than a robot crafted the Alien, or hell, if it just evolved naturally on an awful hellscape planet filled with weird loving poo poo just like it that wouldn't be that bad of a story either. Either or works for the franchise and people have different tastes as to what they like, leave him be. You really don't have to try and convince him otherwise as to why he shouldn't care about the series he really cares about.
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Mar 31, 2021 08:20
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Ferrinus posted:Well, then what is the practical or thematic difference? quote:As I have pointed out, you actually do know exactly where the xenomorph came from and how old it is: it is a few days old, and it came from a combination of a mysterious thing and a named guy. quote:Earlier, you commented that it would be "delicious" if it turns out David wasn't as original as he thought he was. Maybe you just don't like David, the character, and it's his involvement that's spoiling things?
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Mar 31, 2021 08:39
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Xenomrph posted:Already stated like three times. Having the Alien go from an ancient cosmic horror to a decades old science project is pretty significant. But this is factually wrong! In the first place, you had no guarantee that the xenomorph was an ancient cosmic horror to start. That was just your assumption. Those eggs could have sprouted inside the ship two minutes before Kane first set foot inside because of some weird chemical fluctuation. In the second place, even if the eggs were billions of years old, the xenomorph isn't an ancient cosmic horror. The xenomorph is the immediate, short-term result of some humans loving around - the result of a science project, you might even say, albeit one severely lacking in peer review. The bug-man that chases Ripley around is like a couple days old and doesn't really know what it's doing. Doesn't even realize it's going to be blown out of an airlock! If somehow the xenomorph does count as an ancient cosmic horror even if it resulted from the mixture of an alien substance with a modern-day human... then that means the eggs also count as as ancient cosmic horrors because they resulted from the mixture of an alien substance with a modern-day human, because the alien substance they were made of is - you assume - ancient and cosmic. I'll illustrate: [####ancient cosmos####]-------(contingent events)---->[xenomorph] If (contingent events) only includes a guy sticking his head in an egg, that's okay. But if it also includes a guy pouring oil on a corpse, that's not okay. Maybe the problem is that what happened to Kane was an accident, while David acted with purpose? It diminishes the xenomorph if they can be successfully bred or controlled? But, for instance, if Burke had succeeded in his plot in Aliens, he'd have made a xenomorph on purpose, and it wasn't the uncontrollable perversity and cleverness of the facehugger that stopped him. Everyone knows the xenomorph and all the constituent parts of its lifecycle change with context. The alien that pops out of a dog is different from the alien that pops out of a human. Hell, aliens that pop out of different humans at different times are different! And yet, for some reason, the eggs specifically can't themselves be products of their environment, but need to somehow be ageless, timeless, Platonic forms, wholly untouched by circumstance? The thing is, that can't be true, because some eggs come from queens, and queens come from hosts, and that means every queen is a little bit different, and that means her eggs are going to be unique products of their environment same as she is! So it's just really weird that you'd fixate on the inviolability of the eggs in specific when, even before we put Prometheus and Covenant into the mix, we know we're dealing with a totally fluid, ever-changing, environment-determined phenomenon.
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Mar 31, 2021 09:12
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sigher posted:I'm pretty sure that Xenomrph doesn't care that David himself created the Xeno because he doesn't find it to be that interesting which is fair. If something other than a robot crafted the Alien, or hell, if it just evolved naturally on an awful hellscape planet filled with weird loving poo poo just like it that wouldn't be that bad of a story either. People are getting at them because they seem to have a logical block that people can't really understand. Everyone had this idea that Xenos were tied to some huge space faring creature that died long ago and humans ran into them. But Scott may have changed it (deaths and authors and all that) and said, no, its even worse, humans manufactured their own extinction by playing with the fire of the gods. That's interesting too, and I can easily adjust and roll with the new idea, personally. Especially because it ties even more into mythology (the drat movie is called Prometheus and is entirely about humans discovering fire and burning themselves down with them, ALSO with the double meaning of Frankenstein being subtitled The Modern Prometheus, and David as a creation of Weyland being the one to forward the whole thing). The outright rejection of something that doesn't match a head canon is just weird, so people are just trying to get through the logic of it all. Also, yes, the Xeno or something like it is apparently the endpoint of all life, which is crazier than them just being an alien species.
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Mar 31, 2021 09:49
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Eh, I’m unconvinced. I’m tired of repeating myself, this whole exercise is tedious, we’re going to have to agree to disagree. 
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Mar 31, 2021 10:32
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Darko posted:People are getting at them because they seem to have a logical block that people can't really understand. How many times should Xenomrph repeat themselves with "Well I don't agree" before people just let poo poo go? Their own head canon is valid and they find it more interesting, plus they're coming at it from a point that none of us see this series, as someone who's read all of the comics, novels and everything EU related. With all of that background knowledge having David as the creator of the Alien probably doesn't even make sense in the grand scheme of all of that lore, opinions aside.
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Mar 31, 2021 10:52
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sigher posted:How many times should Xenomrph repeat themselves with "Well I don't agree" before people just let poo poo go? Their own head canon is valid and they find it more interesting, plus they're coming at it from a point that none of us see this series, as someone who's read all of the comics, novels and everything EU related. With all of that background knowledge having David as the creator of the Alien probably doesn't even make sense in the grand scheme of all of that lore, opinions aside. Well, in this case, the franchise canon is the obvious impediment. It’s trivially easy to regard Alien as a standalone film where the word “fossilized” connotes prehistory and leads us to speculate that Jokey The Elephant is among the last of a dying race extinguished eons ago, whose dying words were doomed to be misunderstood and whatever. This is especially easy when Alien 2 makes a bunch of basic errors, like calling the moon a planet. Also, in Alien 3, the entire “Ripley is now immune to xenomorphs” plot point is a blunder; the creature should instinctively capture Ripley and cocoon her, not let her roam free. But Xenomrph doesn’t have any issue with silly “retcons”, as evidenced by his conviction that the events of Alien 1 were deliberately plotted out in advance by nebulous xenomorph-hunting conspirators and not (as shown in the film) merely a random accident. That retcon is incredibly stupid, and based on a line from the non-canon Alien 2 - but allowed. What’s really going on is, as Xenomrph has plainly stated, that he wants Covenant to be canon, except that he wants David The Robot to turn to the camera and say “I officially did not create the alien from the other movie; it is an Ancient Cosmic Horror trope not a Science Experiment trope, and I apologize for having misled you, the viewer.” So, as with his deliberate misreading of Alien, Xenomrph simply doesn’t like the movies and wants to change them, then switching to some postmodern “what is reality???” stuff when questioned. In that case, when every post ends with “it’s just my feelings, let’s agree to disagree....” Well, why bother trying to communicate at all?
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Mar 31, 2021 13:59
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sigher posted:How many times should Xenomrph repeat themselves with "Well I don't agree" before people just let poo poo go? Their own head canon is valid and they find it more interesting, plus they're coming at it from a point that none of us see this series, as someone who's read all of the comics, novels and everything EU related. With all of that background knowledge having David as the creator of the Alien probably doesn't even make sense in the grand scheme of all of that lore, opinions aside. It isn’t even head canon - ‘Alien’ shows the Derelict (and by extension, its cargo) to be ancient. Dallas even points it out in dialogue.
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Mar 31, 2021 14:53
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Xenomrph posted:Eh, I’m unconvinced. Hmm, no, I disagree to disagree. In fact I disagree that we disagree on the terms you state; if you had a concrete reason why a xenomorph created by the combination of alien substances with a human was a "cosmic horror", while a xenomorph egg created by the combination of alien substances and a human was a "science project", you probably would've figured out a way to put it into words by now. You haven't, so there's some weird, deeper issue that I think we're still discovering the shape of. There's a few part of my posts you notably left out of prior quotes: me, with the part you left out italicized posted:With fuller knowledge of the eggs' provenance, it is still true that the xenomorph (a few days old) came from the combination of a a mysterious thing and a named guy. It turns out there was also another named guy and a named woman in the mix. Nevertheless, the actual age and origins remain unknown to you. you posted:This is such a literal and disingenuous interpretation/oversimplification of what I wrote that I can only assume it was intentional. How is it disingenuous? What am I leaving out? My current theory is that the egg resulting from deliberate combination, as opposed to Kane's xenomorph resulting from accidental combination, of human tissues and alien substances, violates a trope common to Alien media: it's fine to experiment, and it's fine for the experiment to create original monsters, but it's never supposed to "work". The xenomorph is always supposed to "win" in some final analysis, and the fact that David seems to have gotten his way, rather than had the experiment blow up in his face like it always otherwise does, seems to diminish or tame the xenomorph in a way counter to its mythos. However, when we understand the xenomorph as the inevitable endpoint of all reproduction, we can see that David merely helped it along, no more "creating" it than I "create" mold by leaving food out too long - even if I leave the food out on purpose. sigher posted:How many times should Xenomrph repeat themselves with "Well I don't agree" before people just let poo poo go? Their own head canon is valid and they find it more interesting, plus they're coming at it from a point that none of us see this series, as someone who's read all of the comics, novels and everything EU related. With all of that background knowledge having David as the creator of the Alien probably doesn't even make sense in the grand scheme of all of that lore, opinions aside. It's definitely reconcilable through such ideas as parallel evolution. Ultimately, the most aggressive reading of Covenant and Scott's words is that David is somehow responsible for the specific cache of eggs on LV-426 that featured in the first two movies. Xenomorphs discovered on a distant world and experimented on in comic #735 logically must have arisen separately, and strongly resemble David's LV-426 strain because, as we now know, the xenomorph is a kind of demon that gets summoned forth by excesses of progenerative energy. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Mar 31, 2021 |
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Mar 31, 2021 17:55
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Lol okay my dude, I have put it into words, and I’m tired of repeating myself In case you haven’t caught on, “no, I don’t care for that” for literally any reason is sufficient. It’s not some personal failing, or a lack of understanding. Thanks for playing! Edit- gently caress it, since I’m a masochist Here’s a hint of what you’re missing: you’re conflating the egg as somehow separate from the adult Alien - they are all one continuous organism. David created the eggs in Covenant, and if he’s the sole progenitor of the Alien species (and by proxy, the eggs on Lv-426, and thus all capital-A Aliens), that makes them a couple decades old and I don’t care for that as it undermines the ancient cosmic horror element implicit in the first movie. It radically narrows the scope by taking the Alien (eggs, whatever) from “potentially anywhere in the dark out in the hostile universe, careful where ye tread because there be monsters” to “only where David has personally been, potentially only LV-426”. That has nothing to do with “organism + a human”, even though the Alien is inherently parasitic. It doesn’t even have anything to do with humans at all, since we know they can breed in other organisms. It has to do with the Alien entity in all the stages of its life cycle, and how long it has existed. Not individual singular Aliens, which might be days old. Again, the Black Goo is not a suitable substitute for the capital A Alien in my book, as I care about the Alien. The black goo might be sourced from the Alien (and i personally believe that it is, in my head canon), but the film doesn’t show that, and that’s what I don’t care for. It truly is that simple. I cannot believe I have to spell that out. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Mar 31, 2021 |
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Mar 31, 2021 18:00
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If you think that the egg -> facehugger + human -> humanlike chestburster -> humanlike drone represents "one continuous organism" - and I agree - then you admit to an essential continuity to the species which persists despite mutation, admixture, recombination, etc, with outside elements. In fact, you should understand that there's no such thing as a "pure" xenomorph, nor can there be - they always, inevitably, necessarily, pass through and acquire traits from and ultimately come to represent non-xenomorphs. Right? In that case, black mutagen + human -> egg -> facehugger + human etc etc etc still represents one continuous organism by your own standards. Did Kane invent the xenomorph? No? In that case, David didn't invent the xenomorph either. Both of these beings just happened to be alchemical reagants in the endless cycle of deconstruction and reconstruction that constitutes xenomorphs as such. In fact, forget the black goo entirely for a second, let's examine the original chain more closely. When I say "egg -> etc. etc." I'm actually skipping steps, leaving out information. Why? Because eggs have always come from people! Pre Aliens: humanlike drone + coccooned human -> humanlike egg Post Aliens: humanlike queen -> humanlike egg -> humanlike facehugger +human -> humanlike chestburster -> humanlike drone or queen Right? At various points in the chain you can replace "humanlike" with "jockeylike" or "doglike" or whatever, and it doesn't have to be consistent across the chain, but there's always hybridization, always experimentation. The only difference is that David managed to create his specific model on purpose, while most iterations happen by accident.
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Mar 31, 2021 18:48
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alf_pogs posted:David Cronenberg's Alien I once had the mispleasure of seeing a double feature of Cronenberg's Shivers and Alien. Shivers was on first. Nobody so much as batted an eye at Alien afterwards - Shivers is that hosed up. So yeah, by all means give that man creative freedom and a budget to do an Alien film.
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Mar 31, 2021 18:49
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I don’t really agree with Xeno here because I have a Rictus like opinion of the prequels, but the I disagree to disagree poo poo is weird. Get over it lmao
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Mar 31, 2021 18:56
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Xenomrph posted:Again, the Black Goo is not a suitable substitute for the capital A Alien in my book, as I care about the Alien. The black goo might be sourced from the Alien (and i personally believe that it is, in my head canon), but the film doesn’t show that, and that’s what I don’t care for. It truly is that simple. “Xenomorphs” do not exist anywhere else in the universe of Alien 1, since they are specifically a mix of humans and crab thingys. Even in the non-canon Alien 2, the “Xenomorph Queen” is Newt’s dad. Half-human. You simply cannot have ‘xenomorphs’ in the timeline before Alien Covenant, unless you propose some earlier Alien contact with humanity (e.g. the extremely canon Aliens Versus | Predator: Requiem). And you cannot have xenomorphs before humanity at all. Based solely on the info in Alien 1, we could imagine a scenario where the crab-thingies had spent eons swapping genes with martian trees to produce a forest of what look almost-exactly like propane barbecues. But that’s obviously not what you’re talking about, because then you would have to accept mushrooms and snakes as valid forms of xenomorph. You are talking specifically about those half-human guys. And that’s trying to have your cake and eat it too. You can’t have the thingy exist since the dawning of the universe and also be a mutated John Hurt.
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Mar 31, 2021 18:57
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Go back and re-read my post, I covered this. Kane did not create THE Alien, he created AN Alien via the Alien’s life cycle. The eggs existed before he did. David is implied to have created THE Alien, he made the initial eggs. That’s the problem. It has nothing to do with the black goo. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Mar 31, 2021 |
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Mar 31, 2021 19:00
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One of the things I had to learn when I started posting here was how to say to myself "you know what, I've said my piece so if others are going to say theirs, I'm not going to continue to respond". If you feel like you're just repeating yourself with no progress being made then it's probably better just to opt out of the argument. Of course, I understand and sympathize with why Xeno may not be able to do that in this case, this being the Alien thread and all.
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Mar 31, 2021 19:02
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Basebf555 posted:One of the things I had to learn when I started posting here was how to say to myself "you know what, I've said my piece so if others are going to say theirs, I'm not going to continue to respond". If you feel like you're just repeating yourself with no progress being made then it's probably better just to opt out of the argument. Believe me, I’m reaching that point. Ferrinus is *so close* to “getting it” and brings up almost-salient points worth responding to or correcting him on that it keeps me going, but it’s getting to the point that either he’s willfully obtuse or he’s trolling (Poe’s Law and all that, but hey I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he just doesn’t “get it”). I’m not pathologically compelled to respond to every post here just because Aliens, good Christ. 
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Mar 31, 2021 19:06
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Xenomrph posted:I’m not pathologically compelled to respond to every post here just because Aliens, good Christ. Yea I hope you didn't take offense at that, I was just saying that I know this happens to be one of your favorite subjects so you're probably more into it than if we were talking about something else.
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Mar 31, 2021 19:08
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What came first, the chicken or the egg? Trick question, it’s designer dogs all the way down.
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Mar 31, 2021 19:14
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Xenomrph posted:Go back and re-read my post, I covered this. The problem with your thinking is that you believe there's such a thing as "the initial eggs". But there are no "the initial eggs". Eggs always come from hybridization with something else, either through the cocooning of a prey creature (Aliens deleted scenes), the facehugging of a prey creature that yields a fertile queen (Aliens), or the mutation of a prey creature via application of the azoth (Covenant). Someone brought up the idea of The Thing's "initial" or "original" or "true" form earlier in the thread - but the entire idea is mistaken, because practically speaking what The Thing actually is is a mutagenic disease. It's hybrids and prey animals and biological subtrates all the way down. The Thing is change itself, not some specific gooey alien that predated all the dogs and dudes and stuff. Similarly, even if Prometheus and Covenant were never released, we can plainly see that there is no such thing as an "initial" egg or an "initial" xenomorph. To become fixated on such an idea only reveals that you're lacking an understanding of the narrative. The only way we can understand an egg, and a facehugger, and an implanted embryo, and a chestburster, and a drone or a queen as all being the same creature is by understanding there to be some hidden, biological essence, some fundamental change-agent, that persists through every iterative phase despite the fact that each phase is not only physically separated from the last but a hybridization of the last with something external and non-xenomorph. As SMG points out, the specific xenomorph we know - the black-ribbed, eyeless, double-thumbed quadrupedal bug - actually can't predate humanity. It wouldn't make any sense.
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Mar 31, 2021 20:10
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