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uber_stoat posted:you should read the short story The Churn that stars Amos as the protagonist if you want to see what kinda bad poo poo goes down in the low places of the world. NPR Journalizard posted:Lol at people equating material possessions with being worthwhile. I would have imagined in a world like the Expanse things like fashion and creativity would become more important status symbols, but it seems like people on Basic don't really get into that kind of stuff and they keep just idolizing the few people with jobs and the resources they get from that. And so the vast majority of people don't have access to satisfying status symbols. It'll gently caress a people up, whether you share that a value or not.
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Mar 19, 2017 03:54
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Bates posted:Well think of stay-at-home moms/dads who post incessantly on social media about their latest batch of muffins, home improvement project or garden renovation. In terms of status that's their capital, so to speak. Then there's retirees who are perfectly happy to just do whatever and people who spend their money on basically taking time off to go travelling, write a book or fulfill other dreams. I think it takes a dim view of the human condition to assume people need a paycheck to be interested in doing things. Of course not everyone would thrive without work but many don't thrive with it either. Holden's parents are on Basic aren't they? They needed to game the system with Holden to afford their lifestyle, but it suggests that Basic isn't as dire as all that if you make a new purpose for yourself.
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Mar 19, 2017 18:27
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Lord Hydronium posted:Yes, they already established it was by Kim Stanley Robinson. His editor eventually convinced him that it probably wouldn't go over so well in the audiobook.
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Mar 20, 2017 19:41
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Professor Shark posted:Are you guys arguing spoiler tags or just no spoilers at all? I'm down with using tags Spoiler tags are good. Hinting at stuff outside of tags makes you an rear end in a top hat. That much is clear to me at least. Are people actually arguing that someone posting, "wow, this is better than the book, where they did [x]" is partially ruining the thread for them? Because I post like that on occasion, and I wouldn't want to ruin anyone's enjoyment of this pretty awesome show. Is referencing the books at all bookposting? Personally I'm open to not doing things that bother other people, but it's not entirely clear what that is, and it'd be kind of futile for me to do something if most others aren't on board (which it sounds like they're not).
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Mar 22, 2017 18:28
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Phi230 posted:1. They say Draper is going to Earth explicitly in the show, as of like an episode or two ago. What is spoiled from the books is there is a specific scene where Bobbie has that revelation. It's an important character moment for her, part of her understanding that everything she'd assumed is doused in ridiculous propaganda. Bobbie having that specific revelation is not a spoiler because it indicates she goes to Earth, it's a spoiler because it's a specific thing that changes her character when she goes to Earth, and it arguably loses something of its impact without the full context. I wasn't going to mention anything at the time, but it was a kind of lovely spoiler. Milky Moor posted:There are people who think trailers are spoilers. If someone's emotionally freaking out about something, sure, that's undignified. If that's the kind of thing you make fun of, go ahead. But if folks are just talking about preferences, why get worked up about it yourself? No point in deliberately being a dick after someone says "please don't be a dick".
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Mar 23, 2017 01:45
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Fister Roboto posted:OK, so how would someone who hasn't read the books glean all that from what was actually posted? More book stuff: The poster said "Book Draper and several other characters realize that training at 1g and living at 1g are very different things." That is not something show Bobbie understands at all. She's clearly been shown to be super gung-ho about invading and kicking rear end. If you think for half a second about the implications of her suddenly realizing that Mars can't invade Earth, that's obviously a big deal for her character. Even if the implications weren't obvious to people reading now, when it comes up next episode people are going to go "oh yeah, I already knew that" and not really get how much of a revelation that was. Like, that's not the end of the world, but people were jumping on the guy who called it out like he was being absurd without realizing what he was bothered by. Honestly, I was mainly trying to clarify and hopefully call off the dogpile, rather than crusading against the original guy myself.
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Mar 23, 2017 04:07
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Baronjutter posted:The ending seemed a bit abrupt. I feel really bad any time innocent people are killed As a protagonist, Holden is mainly just a good mass for more interesting characters to orbit around, but I find myself pretty invested in his frequently tragic attempts to do good stuff in a hosed up world.
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Mar 23, 2017 06:24
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Baronjutter posted:I couldn't think of any reason that poo poo needed to roll like that. He might be right, but he's still being a jerk about it. As a side note, I liked how Star Trek (but more practical) the bridge of that survey ship felt. NmareBfly posted:I didn't like Prax's two lines of dialog about Ganymede having a magnetosphere and people going there to gestate because of it. As a concept and part of the setting it's one of my favorite bits, but it felt clumsily handled dialog-wise. It's a snippet of exposition explained to people in-world who already 100% know it and have known it all their lives, so it didn't land well for me. I agree it's a really neat detail.
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Mar 24, 2017 01:38
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Smiling Jack posted:and this right here is where the thread takes a hard turn into stupidity (Assuming you're calling out 'gently caress the oppressors, everything is justified' reasoning as stupid.)
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Mar 28, 2017 04:57
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emanresu tnuocca posted:To me it feels like the setting is a rather overt metaphor is for the actual colonialist era with Earth being old europe, Mars being the united states and the belters being the indigenous population in all the exploited colonies. And there you have the basic premise of the Expanse. Add to that all the historical precedents you can think of for flavor. Mars is pretty vividly Israel, 19th Century America, and the USSR all at the same time in different ways. The Belt is the modern Third World, various native peoples, and workers in an industrial era factory town. And so on. A lot of things fit incredibly well because it's a well constructed world, history is long, and humans are great at seeing patterns. *Living in massive space stations or hollowed out asteroids makes more sense to me than living at the bottom of a gravity well, but I guess the long term issues with launching and landing stuff on a planet/moon weren't as pressing as the initial investment cost of making a space habitat were to the people in the Expanse. And in fairness they do talk about people living in "the Lagranges" around Earth, but I don't think they go into any detail about what's there.
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Mar 29, 2017 22:33
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Well. So much for my "Basic isn't that bad" theory. Turns out Earth is explicitly a dystopian hellhole. Honestly, it seems like Ceres (at least Miller's neighborhood) and Tycho actually have things better. Prax and Amos are a really interesting pair to watch. I loved their conversation through the bushes in the wall- both how it was framed, and the interesting and terrifying things Prax was saying. Ecosystems separate from Earth's are fragile. Actually, pretty much every scene in this episode was interesting and fun to watch. Erinwright, Avasarala, Bobbie, Prax, Amos, and even Alex all had great moments. The tablet Avasarala gave Bobbie said "Caliban Project" at the top. (Very minor book information) Book 2 is called Caliban's War, but I don't think the word "Caliban" actually shows up in the book anywhere, which has confused a few people in the past. It's interesting that it's more explicit here in the show.
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Mar 30, 2017 06:04
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The Protomolecule may have killed a small city and sent a world-destroying rock towards Earth, apparently under no one's direction (but maybe Mars did it? (as far as people in the universe know)), but it did so by directly altering its inertia or some crazy poo poo like that. No one knew that was possible, and now they kind of want to figure out how to do it. Okay, maybe don't just smear it all over an asteroid and let it go hog wild, but there are some mechanisms in there that are definitely worth looking at. Is it incredibly dangerous? Yes. Does it have incredible potential? Also yes. A lot of reasonable people are going to say, "gently caress that, it's too dangerous," and they're right to do so. But some people will definitely think the risk is worth it considering how obviously game changing the benefits would be. Is that possibly a bad idea? Sure. But it's definitely a plausible reaction. And some otherwise prudent people are probably on board specifically because they're afraid of someone else being reckless and gaining an edge. You can call the situation foolish if you want, but it's totally plausible to the point of being basically inevitable, given the premise. Addressing other things people have said in no particular order: People have said the UN are assholes... but are they really? Erinwright does not represent the UN. He's doing his own thing as far as we know. Mao also doesn't represent Earth, he's a capitalist who's above petty nationality. The Secretary General himself has been kind of an empty suit, but not malicious, and everyone else has been basically just doing their jobs. On the whole it feels like the UN reacts. It deals with stuff as it impacts them. It has a hard time coming up with and implementing an agenda. With regards to the unrealistically huge population- I believe the idea is that Basic predated the population controls by a lot. There was a long time when people had no jobs, were given an income, and... so they had kids. Lots and lots of kids. Humans being humans it reached (or even passed) the breaking point before people finally did something about it. At least that's my mental story to explain the slums. There aren't resources to help these people. It's not like today where we just don't bother to distribute it equitably, there are just too many people in the Expanse to adequately support. Whether that's plausible or not, I believe that's the intended premise. We're not supposed to look at Avasarala and think she's some sort of Randian who thinks the poors should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. It's obvious that they can't, and she has said as much. They just don't have opportunities for them all on Earth. But she believes they're doing all they can to help them at the same time... which must mean there's not a lot they can do considering how bad things are.
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Apr 1, 2017 23:33
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R-Type posted:From the show-watcher's only perspective, who the gently caress is Caliban and why should I care about his war. I know they titled a book from the series, but why name a episode that if it's not explained? The show at least put "CALIBAN PROJECT" on that pad Avasarala showed Bobbie. The word "Caliban" never appeared in the text of "Caliban's War." The literate masses were left to google "Caliban" and reach their own conclusions. (Or have familiarity with The Tempest and reach their on conclusions.)
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Apr 29, 2017 23:17
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Number Ten Cocks posted:None of the book titles appear inside any of the books. Everyone should have to google Cibola unless you know some pretty obscure or specialized poo poo, and maybe the same for Abbadon, but the rest are at least fair. Caliban is the third most obscure, I'm not going to claim everyone should have read the Tempest or remember every character.
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Apr 29, 2017 23:44
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Number Ten Cocks posted:Going back to this, how many goons got real mad that no one named Dulcinea appears in the very first show episode? Eiba fucked around with this message at 18:59 on May 1, 2017 |
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May 1, 2017 18:57
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Baronjutter posted:Most asteroids are more like piles of loose gravel barely holding together, and at best a pretty brittle conglomerates of a sort of solid chunk of rock that could never ever be "spun up", they'd fly apart if gravel or crack in half if rock. Sorry scify show, once again it's O'Neill Cylinders or bust. It's asteroid habitats or bust, is my understanding. I'd be interested in reading something that actually examined the feasibility of either habitat type.
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May 22, 2017 01:16
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Ceres is in every way a special case. It's a dwarf planet and spinning it is, on the face of it, absurd. I was talking about those small solid chunks of rock and metal that are out there. Grand Fromage posted:oh god what have you done  Don't get me wrong, I think O'Neill cylinders are really cool. I've got a gundam avatar for goodness sake. It just seems like rough old spinning rocks are what tend to be talked about in the newer stuff I've read (Kim Stanley Robinson and so on), and I assumed there was a reason for that.
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May 22, 2017 19:23
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