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Epicurius posted:And then Equatorial High Crystal blew apart. Holy poo poo
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# ? Aug 26, 2022 04:15 |
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# ? May 27, 2024 02:40 |
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Epicurius posted:This time it sprayed a cloud of flechettes. Small, so small they could barely be seen with the naked eye, millions of tiny shredding metal hooks. The sound was like a volcano blowing. The flechettes sprayed for five seconds, no more, but at the end of that time every unshielded Ketran was torn apart. The entire crystal might have been dipped in blood. Oof. Forgot this part, a much more brutal image than I remembered.
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# ? Aug 26, 2022 06:02 |
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It has been
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# ? Aug 26, 2022 15:28 |
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the use of flechettes makes me think of the howlers; also howlers considered it all a game, paralleling Toomin being a gamer, but I dunno
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# ? Aug 26, 2022 23:12 |
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Chapter 8quote:“Aguella!” I flapped to her. She was conscious, but barely. There's something sad that Toomin, who, in his games avoids killing, ends up having to kill the first alien he meets. Chapter 9 quote:We emerged almost immediately from Zero-space. Only one of the vessel’s Wise Ones had been aboard at the time of the attack. He appeared via uninet. I had met him very briefly. His current chosen name was Farsight. It was a name appropriate to his role. A Wise One’s name. I mean, this is a whole species of pacifists, and now....
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# ? Aug 27, 2022 03:23 |
I'm further along in the book, and goddamn does it go some weird and wonderful places. Father has to be one of the most interesting concepts I can think of. A world-spanning brain-net that captures lifeforms and hunts for companionship? Amazing stuff.
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# ? Aug 27, 2022 03:28 |
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And here's the core of the Ellimist revealed, an absolute refusal to die no matter how many taboos he needs to break or fears he needs to conquer. You put Toomin in a corner and he will absolutely shank you.
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# ? Aug 27, 2022 03:46 |
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This book is so weird. I never read it as a kid, and reading it now in this thread it barely feels like an Animorphs book. It feels like some weird cross between Ready Player One and Avatar (james cameron, not airbender). I haven't the foggiest idea what's going to happen or where this ends up and that's a feeling I haven't had while reading Animorphs in years.
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# ? Aug 27, 2022 04:23 |
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Animorphs is at its best when it's combining insane sci-fi, gritty war drama, and teenage shenanigans, and this book is a great mix of all three.
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# ? Aug 27, 2022 06:50 |
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I honestly think this might be the best book in the entire series.
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# ? Aug 27, 2022 07:35 |
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Vandar posted:I honestly think this might be the best book in the entire series. I still put Visser about it, but it's already better than I remember, so we'll see if that holds out. Zore posted:And here's the core of the Ellimist revealed, an absolute refusal to die no matter how many taboos he needs to break or fears he needs to conquer. You put Toomin in a corner and he will absolutely shank you. I'd say he has a human level of refusing to die, but we may have met our match.
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# ? Aug 27, 2022 12:13 |
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I always loved this book but reading it again really helps me understand (sort of) why. It gives you this crazy fun beautiful world, this genuinely creative alien world of floating crystals and a society of aliens built around them, in the space of like five or six short chapters, and gives you a classic YA story of this kid who's unexpectedly picked for a deep space mission - and then it loving brutally blows it apart. (The description of the weapon that sounds "like a volcano blowing" I distinctly remember, 20 years later.) It's great misdirection. You assume the story is going to kick into gear once they depart the home planet on a voyage, but nope, you just get T-boned by A Very Animorphs Genocide. And it's so brutal and unexpected that it really puts you right there in Toomin's headspace. You want the exploration ship to break free, you want him to wriggle into that cockpit, you want these nerdy engineers and techs to step up to the plate and somehow save their society, and when Lackofa says that maybe weapons are what they need - drat right they do. Comrade Blyatlov posted:I'm further along in the book, and goddamn does it go some weird and wonderful places. I haven't actually seen/read it, but I always thought this was cribbed from Solaris?
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# ? Aug 27, 2022 14:16 |
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Still catching up little by little. And this?quote:Elfangor was my friend as well as my prince. I’ll believe he broke the rules. I’ll never believe he did wrong.> This set me up to get my heart absolutely broken. EDIT: I'm just broadly enamored with Book 18. Ax's narration. The overall message and themes in the book. I've been moved by it. SonicRulez fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Aug 28, 2022 |
# ? Aug 27, 2022 17:34 |
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Chapter 10quote:I was not in touch. No memms. And no time for instructions beyond those passed on from Lackofa. He shuttled to dock, quickly explained what we’d learned to Farsight, then raced back to instruct me. This whole thing must be so alien for the two of them....claustrophobic pacifists, forced to get inside an alien ship and kill. Chapter 11 quote:It was a game. Like nothing I’d ever played. But it helped to think of it as a game. Don’t think of it as lives, actual lives. It’s only a game. When it’s all over Inidar and I will laugh and … Only Inidar was dead, wasn’t he? And everyone … everyone. People are what they are, and when you're in a crisis situation, one way to handle that is to pretend everything is normal.
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# ? Aug 28, 2022 02:02 |
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Haha, that last line is great. Are there any other authors doing decent space opera these days? I've an itch that needs scratching.
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# ? Aug 28, 2022 02:45 |
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Tree Bucket posted:Are there any other authors doing decent space opera these days? I've an itch that needs scratching. John Scalzi is pretty good, and so is Ann Leckie.
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# ? Aug 28, 2022 02:56 |
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Tree Bucket posted:Haha, that last line is great. Epicurius posted:John Scalzi is pretty good, and so is Ann Leckie. The Expanse books by the author duo who make up James SA Corey (Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) are also really good choices too.
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# ? Aug 28, 2022 03:19 |
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Tree Bucket posted:Haha, that last line is great. Honestly, some of the lore stories and such from Destiny. Several of which were written by Seth Dickinson, who's a goon. some examples: https://www.ishtar-collective.net/categories/books-of-sorrow honestly kind of similar to Ellimist Chronicles, in the form of alien children on a weird rear end world getting unbelievable power https://www.ishtar-collective.net/categories/book-marasenna ...also cut from the same mold, but human children this time https://www.ishtar-collective.net/categories/book-last-days-on-kraken-mare just a neat sci-fi short story about a far-future human colony facing the apocalypse
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# ? Aug 28, 2022 03:45 |
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Very gamers rise up moment from Toomin. But really, pulling "well we don't KNOW they meant US harm" is naive to the point of delusion.
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# ? Aug 28, 2022 03:53 |
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You know I never thought of Books of Sorrow being like Emillist, but by god it is! Footage recovered from archaeological site 2638, wreckage of spacecraft 'Crate': quote:A shameful part of my mind thought, Now, this is a game!
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# ? Aug 28, 2022 10:00 |
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SonicRulez posted:EDIT: I'm just broadly enamored with Book 18. Ax's narration. The overall message and themes in the book. I've been moved by it. I was probably waxing lyrical about it at the time anyway but I still think 18 is probably my favourite book of the main series. Even this scant few chapters into Ellimist, though, and it reconfirms that it's the best of the Chronicles books. I admire what Visser does in tying itself into the main story, but this one is just really, really fascinating and gripping in equal measure.
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# ? Aug 28, 2022 10:56 |
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Only one chapter today, because this is the end of the book section, "First Life" Tomorrow, we start "Second Life" Chapter 12 quote:Too late to take it back. And anyway, I didn’t want to take it back. Squabbling wasn’t going to win the game. While there are still Ketrans alive, I'm adding them to my list of genocides. Like Toomin says, it's the end of his race.
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# ? Aug 29, 2022 01:29 |
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I forgot how smug Menno was even to the end when he was pointing out how he and the Polars were responsible for the complete genocide of his people. Also totally forgot it was because of violent video games being broadcast and not standard Dark Forest stuff.
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# ? Aug 29, 2022 01:44 |
I'm thinking about Kaiba's plan of sending duel monsters cards into space to teach intelligent life how to duel only to end up with Yubel returning corrupted by a space devil. The Ketrans got a bit more genocided than Duel Academy did but it's a similar feeling to that.
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# ? Aug 29, 2022 02:08 |
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Executed for Gaming Crimes. Harsh, but fair. But seriously, when I first read it, it did make me think a bit more about the next game of Civilization I played.
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# ? Aug 29, 2022 03:42 |
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Capfalcon posted:But seriously, when I first read it, it did make me think a bit more about the next game of Civilization I played. This was one of the better episodes of Stargate: Atlantis
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# ? Aug 29, 2022 05:11 |
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Zore posted:I forgot how smug Menno was even to the end when he was pointing out how he and the Polars were responsible for the complete genocide of his people. I feel like Menno made way too much of an assumption there. (Possibly an error by the authors; they don't seem like super techies.) I wouldn't trust anyone even from my own species and culture would be able to decode a real-time stream of data and turn it into some kind of viewable video format, at least not without a lot of training on the software and video file formats involved, on top of all the software engineering and general technological baseline knowledge they would need. An alien species from a completely different biochemical legacy, working purely from a radio stream, converting not into sound but to some video format for a computer system that might not even be based on binary? Not a chance.
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# ? Aug 29, 2022 07:11 |
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Fuschia tude posted:I feel like Menno made way too much of an assumption there. (Possibly an error by the authors; they don't seem like super techies.) I wouldn't trust anyone even from my own species and culture would be able to decode a real-time stream of data and turn it into some kind of viewable video format, at least not without a lot of training on the software and video file formats involved, on top of all the software engineering and general technological baseline knowledge they would need. An alien species from a completely different biochemical legacy, working purely from a radio stream, converting not into sound but to some video format for a computer system that might not even be based on binary? Not a chance. Realistically they're throwing it in for thematic relevance here more than hard science. The story works better if the game that defines and created the 'Ellimist' is also responsible for the destruction of his people, and the book is short enough that we got a bunch of exposition crammed into Menno at the end there. If you want a more Watsonian explanation, they might have sent some physical media literally replaying it on some kind of screen or hologram which is why Menno is so sure of the reason. Presumably as some sort of weird Polar power play.
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# ? Aug 29, 2022 07:29 |
fitting that an entire civilization is destroyed because aliens caught their Twitch broadcasts
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# ? Aug 29, 2022 08:02 |
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Re: format talk, they already had trade relationships with aliens at that point, so maybe they put it in exactingly precise Galactic ISO/IEC 14496-12 just so they could be more smug about it.
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# ? Aug 29, 2022 08:24 |
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Capfalcon posted:Executed for Gaming Crimes. Toomin taking out a space fighter with a spear is big Civ vibes.
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# ? Aug 29, 2022 09:23 |
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Pwnstar posted:Toomin taking out a space fighter with a spear is big Civ vibes. Fantastic!! Great catch. They even call it the "Crate," don't they- applying a dull name for an ordinary container to a cutting edge-weapon of war, just like "tank." Toomin spends the whole first chapter playing Civ, then kills a tank/crate as a spearman...
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# ? Aug 29, 2022 09:51 |
No he got a free unit in a crate
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# ? Aug 29, 2022 09:53 |
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loving lootboxes
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# ? Aug 29, 2022 11:08 |
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Zore posted:I forgot how smug Menno was even to the end when he was pointing out how he and the Polars were responsible for the complete genocide of his people. True gamer attitude Fuschia tude posted:I feel like Menno made way too much of an assumption there. (Possibly an error by the authors; they don't seem like super techies.) I wouldn't trust anyone even from my own species and culture would be able to decode a real-time stream of data and turn it into some kind of viewable video format, at least not without a lot of training on the software and video file formats involved, on top of all the software engineering and general technological baseline knowledge they would need. An alien species from a completely different biochemical legacy, working purely from a radio stream, converting not into sound but to some video format for a computer system that might not even be based on binary? Not a chance. Probably don't want to pull at this thread in a Star Trek esque soft sci-fi YA series where e.g. the aliens all breathe oxygen and can always communicate across species divides very easily. (Come to think of it, are the poor Taxxons the only ones we never get to see speak for themselves?) Tree Bucket posted:Fantastic!! Great catch. Fun (though possibly apocryphal) fact, the "tank" got its name from WWI secrecy around the development, wanting the Germans to think it was just a new design of water tank
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# ? Aug 29, 2022 12:43 |
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Oh hey, it's Pixels but less masturbating to 80s nostalgia.
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# ? Aug 29, 2022 14:22 |
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Cythereal posted:Oh hey, it's Pixels but less masturbating to 80s nostalgia. If Pixels ended with the human race being wiped out except for a bunch of people in an experimental spacecraft, sure.....
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# ? Aug 29, 2022 14:36 |
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Epicurius posted:If Pixels ended with the human race being wiped out except for a bunch of people in an experimental spacecraft, sure..... You never saw the original short film, I see.
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# ? Aug 29, 2022 19:12 |
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Second Life Chapter 13 quote:“Commander, the system appears to have six true planets and nine moons. Two of the moons -both orbiting the second planet - may be habitable. None of the planets.” So, time has passed, and now the mission of the surviving Ketrans have changed into finding a new home. And the Ketrans have changed too. These aren't the idealists of the last section, delighting in the sky, reaching out and taking their first steps off world. They've become hardened, factionalized, with nobody trusting anybody else. Chapter 14 quote:Too late to turn back now without showing unacceptable weakness. No choice but to go forward and count on a divided, faction-riven crew and what Lackofa called the weak force of loyalty. Unfortunately, this planet is more dangerous than they thought.
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# ? Aug 30, 2022 02:50 |
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# ? May 27, 2024 02:40 |
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Awww yeah Father time
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# ? Aug 30, 2022 14:01 |