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They are capable of learning new things.
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Mar 26, 2024 15:41
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Yeah. Even in the conversation about Red Riding Hood, Mike Evans tells them this is why his group is so important, they are there to do these things for them or help them to learn. Either way they still abandon him after saying "We're afraid of you". I think it comes as a huge shock to them and they take a while before they start contacting ETO agents again.
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Mar 26, 2024 17:03
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On Saul: I had the impression while watching that he was largely picked as a "lol so random" choice, given the UN Chief's speech just before that spontaneity and unpredictability were selling points of the Wallfacer concept.
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Mar 26, 2024 17:09
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BastardySkull posted:Yeah. Even in the conversation about Red Riding Hood, Mike Evans tells them this is why his group is so important, they are there to do these things for them or help them to learn. Either way they still abandon him after saying "We're afraid of you". I think it comes as a huge shock to them and they take a while before they start contacting ETO agents again. They really hosed the timing on that didn't they? If they had just gotten over it a bit quicker there entire base of operations and next generation of believers wouldn't of been sliced and diced.
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Mar 26, 2024 17:10
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Tayter Swift posted:On Saul: I had the impression while watching that he was largely picked as a "lol so random" choice, given the UN Chief's speech just before that spontaneity and unpredictability were selling points of the Wallfacer concept. It seems like a lot of people got this impression, and the show danced around it so much that I think they would have been better off just having multiple people say "We picked you because the San-Ti are trying to kill you."
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Mar 26, 2024 17:10
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So, Wallfacers are straight out of Granny Weatherwax's big book on how to stop an alien invasion. Love it. Don't think about the game.
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Mar 26, 2024 17:22
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Wii Spawn Camper posted:Never heard of the books, watching this now. Super interesting premise and very well done, but (ep 5 spoilers) the thing with the ship and nano fibers was really dumb, it looked cool but what was the point? To prevent them from destroying evidence? How’d they know the fibers wouldn’t chop it up? Curious if it made more sense in the book or maybe I missed something? It’s like they saw Ghost Ship and wanted to dial it up to 11. Surprised I haven't seen more mention of Ghost Ship (2002) in regard to that scene. Whether the scene is from the book or not, it's wildly similar in concept and execution.
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Mar 26, 2024 17:29
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Did they explain how Tatiana was able to kill Jack like that? Having read the first book, I figured she was the visual avatar for the Sophons that the sword lady turned out to be, but it seems she's just another true believer. If that's a later book thing to be explain, you can say that.
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Mar 26, 2024 19:35
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Lampsacus posted:Hey! If I'm a fan of the books+dramatisations of 3bd, What is some good hard sci fi to read? I asked this question somewhere else and the resounding suggestion was ‘Children of Time’ by Adrian Tchaikovsky, which I’ve loving hated so far and I’m 90% through the book. Suffice to say, I’m also looking for recommendations!
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Mar 26, 2024 20:11
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GigaPeon posted:Did they explain how Tatiana was able to kill Jack like that? Having read the first book, I figured she was the visual avatar for the Sophons that the sword lady turned out to be, but it seems she's just another true believer. If that's a later book thing to be explain, you can say that. She stabbed him in the neck and then the Sophon erased her from the footage, I don’t think it’s more complicated than that. No idea why Jack didn’t punch her in the face and run. Not sure if there’s a book explanation but that’s how the show portrays it, which doesn’t make sense because there’d be loads of other physical evidence.
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Mar 26, 2024 20:40
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General Dog posted:Surprised I haven't seen more mention of Ghost Ship (2002) in regard to that scene. Whether the scene is from the book or not, it's wildly similar in concept and execution. I’m very glad it wasn’t just me who thought of that, it’s a pretty unique scene
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Mar 26, 2024 20:40
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Wii Spawn Camper posted:She stabbed him in the neck and then the Sophon erased her from the footage, I don’t think it’s more complicated than that. No idea why Jack didn’t punch her in the face and run. Not sure if there’s a book explanation but that’s how the show portrays it, which doesn’t make sense because there’d be loads of other physical evidence. Yeah the Sophon also blocked the view from the street showing the room as empty. I guess I was more surprised the the force of the attack was enough to break the window. Also, I forgot, were there kids on the Judgement Day in the book?
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Mar 26, 2024 20:44
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Wii Spawn Camper posted:She stabbed him in the neck and then the Sophon erased her from the footage, I don’t think it’s more complicated than that. No idea why Jack didn’t punch her in the face and run. Not sure if there’s a book explanation but that’s how the show portrays it, which doesn’t make sense because there’d be loads of other physical evidence. No to book explanation. Neither of them are book characters and the book ETO/Sophons doesn't kill people who don't sign up for the newsletter, it just deletes their account and tells them to gently caress off. In fact, Ye Wenjie executes a member for being indiscreet enough to murder a detractor. GigaPeon posted:Also, I forgot, were there kids on the Judgement Day in the book? I don't think so. There are no scenes on board the ship except when Evans first shows it to Ye. The planning session considers the possibility of non-ETO crew, but there is no mention of families. That said, Evans's faction of the ETO are described as coolaid-drinking fanatics who are knowingly courting eradication, so I don't think it's a stretch that they'd have their kids around, even if it was a cynical way to increase the stakes in the show. The little girl in the VR game that said she felt every death and kept pleading with Jin to save her while she was dying horribly is also a show addition.
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Mar 26, 2024 21:46
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Obviously veteran gamer Jack just punching the first guy he comes across as soon as he can vs. never gamed in her life Jin feeling super sad for the NPCs
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Mar 26, 2024 22:02
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Avasculous posted:No to book explanation. Neither of them are book characters and the book ETO/Sophons doesn't kill people who don't sign up for the newsletter, it just deletes their account and tells them to gently caress off. That makes much more sense. I think pretty much all of the actions of that character didn't make much sense to me. For example, I can understand hiding footage of her (or whoever) broke into the house to leave the device behind, but doesn't it make things infinitely more suspicious to scrub her out of video of her lighting someone's cigarette? Especially since she choose to be all creepy and mysterious in the conversation. It's not like Auggie couldn't just describe her to anyone who asked or point her out if she ever saw her again. LIke why not just approach Auggie in broad daylight in a completely safe and familiar environment and say, "Hey, I know you've seeing this countdown. I'm with an organization that knows why it's happening and we'd really like to help you with it. We are glad to meet with you anytime you like in any location you'd like. I'd strongly suggest you do so soon because a lot of people who have seen the countdown have died."
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Mar 26, 2024 22:03
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Tarnop posted:people have asked “if they can do x, why not just do y” and the answer is almost always that X is something the show added or changed without thinking through the consequences
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Mar 26, 2024 22:16
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I can't help but feel any criticism along the lines of "a 10 year old could write this" feels like somebody pointing to some contemporary abstract art in a gallery and saying "a 10 year old could draw this. i could draw this." Then why haven't you and made bank? Do it. Somebody itt write the next 3bp with all its lovely logic and plot holes. : p
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Mar 26, 2024 22:23
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Lampsacus posted:I can't help but feel any criticism along the lines of "a 10 year old could write this" feels like somebody pointing to some contemporary abstract art in a gallery and saying "a 10 year old could draw this. i could draw this." I don't think that's the analogy I would use. There were obviously tons of talented people involved in this production. They also obviously had all they money they needed. My whole thing is a lot of that talent and money was wasted by simple plotting issues with the script. Like it feels like if they just needed to take a few more passes on it. In my mind I compare it a lot to Damon Lindelof's productions post-Lost. I haven't seen Mrs. Davis yet, but Watchmen and The Leftovers are so well scripted that even when those shows got a bit out there they never had me break out of my suspention of disbelief because the character's actions and the plot were always consistant and made sense on their face. confused fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Mar 26, 2024 |
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Mar 26, 2024 22:36
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The way the show has reshuffled things doesn't do the Wallfacer stuff any favours really. It's the setup of the second book, by the time it happens a bunch of other options have been considered and rejected, and then you have the rest of the book to see things play out and for people in-fiction to offer criticism of the plan. Putting it in the last episode of the season, immediately after the failure of the Staircase Project, instead ends up framing it as a kind of "just when they thought all hope was lost, behold, the Wallfacer Project!" which is absolutely not how the book treats it And that's before you get to the problems introduced by the show with regard to the sophons having way more ability to affect the world around them
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Mar 26, 2024 23:10
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confused posted:
Funnily enough, I think that's exactly how it plays out in the book. The main character starts seeing the countdown, can't figure it out, and a sympathetic/friendly colleague clues him in and suggests he pause his project.
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Mar 26, 2024 23:40
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Tarnop posted:Nope. In the book, Mike Evans is talking to them about language and they bring up the subject of synonyms. They tell him that they first thought "think" and "say" were synonyms but have realised from context they're not. He asks them some questions about how they communicate and as he starts to realise what's going on he tells them the story of Red Riding Hood as an experiment to test his hypothesis. So that's basically it, think and say are the same thing to them. Nothing about not understanding metaphors. They can't lie to each other because they would also communicate the fact that they were lying at the same time as the lie itself. The important realisation is the same, that they can no longer trust anything humans have told them, but the extra cruft is all D&D In the show version, I took this mostly that Evans feels guilty for not spending any effort or time raising Vera, his own child, and so he tries to channel that and his parenting instincts into raising the human children on the Judgement Day as well as trying to educate the San Ti in understanding humanity, because he recognizes they have some blind spots to our culture. I liked this better than the book version tbh - I disliked practically everything to do with characters in the book because they all seemed so un-relatable except for Da Shi. e: side note, the show's take on this rubs your nose in all the children being indoctrinated and later sacrificed, from Vera onwards (notice Follower is killed over and over in the game, and is finally revealed to be Vera as a child)
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Mar 26, 2024 23:51
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The more I think about this adaptation the less I like what the writers have done with it. There’s almost no palpable sense of dread when THE STARS START GOING OUT and A REFLECTIVE SHEET UNFOLDS ACROSS THE ENTIRE PLANET AND STARES DIRECTLY AT EVERY INDIVIDUAL. In the books there’s a real sense of crisis, and the world being totally turned upside down. In this it’s like, one guy hung himself near the Thames and there were some riots. I think that’s what I’m missing. The sheer existential dread and horror of it all. In the books it’s positively Lovecraftian. E: like if every screen in the world shows a message from aliens who recently made the universe flicker for everyone in the world, it should be like Threads, not a quite unsettling bit of news you can essentially ignore if you like.
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Mar 27, 2024 00:16
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I like this adaptation. I see why they introduce several characters from books 2 and 3 in this season, although it makes the world feel smaller. There are definitely some changes I disliked, such as the San-Ti not understanding fiction, and Ye's conversation in the graveyard. The big issue was making the sophons seem too powerful, which raises the question of why they aren't simply knocking planes out of the sky. In the first book, we see why the Trisolarans aren't going all-out with sophon attacks. They're pretty sure their fleet can defeat humanity, but also preparing for the possibility that they'll lose, so their plan B is to fight the war fairly and beg for mercy if they have to surrender. In the second book, As Earth develops advanced technology and builds an enormous fleet of space warships, there's a faction that wants to let the Trisolarans settle peacefully on Mars. Chamale fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Mar 27, 2024 |
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Mar 27, 2024 00:27
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I just don’t get why the aliens revealed themselves at all, if they had just sent the sophons and canceled particle physics, our science wouldn’t advance and we would never know the fleet was on the way, bing bang boom in 400 years they eradicate us no problem and they’re sipping drinks in the Bahamas littered with human corpses. I actually like how much the show has made me think, even if the plot doesn’t pass muster when you get into it.
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Mar 27, 2024 00:39
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Avasculous posted:Funnily enough, I think that's exactly how it plays out in the book. The main character starts seeing the countdown, can't figure it out, and a sympathetic/friendly colleague clues him in and suggests he pause his project. See... That makes a lot more sense. It's not like that is super clever plotting, it's just the obvious thing someone would do. I didn't realize he is the same author of The Wondering Earth until yesterday. I haven't read any of the books, but I really enjoyed the movie of The Wondering Earth. That's just as crazy as sci-fi plots go, but I never had any of these issues with that movie.
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Mar 27, 2024 00:43
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Whatever Chamale posted seems to be a much bigger spoiler than someone talking about a Wikipedia article wtf
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Mar 27, 2024 00:50
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Wii Spawn Camper posted:I just don’t get why the aliens revealed themselves at all, if they had just sent the sophons and canceled particle physics, our science wouldn’t advance and we would never know the fleet was on the way, bing bang boom in 400 years they eradicate us no problem and they’re sipping drinks in the Bahamas littered with human corpses. In the book (minor book 1 spoilers) the aliens are confident that knowledge of their existence will magnify existing divisions between human cultures. The book seeds this idea during the Red Coast project, referencing sociological studies that were done after various SETI type programs began that reached a similar conclusion. And don't forget that they know that the pacifist who received the first message has already contacted earth so they know that some number of humans know they exist. Their initial plan, once they receive a response from Ye Wenjie, is to use human separatists to foment anti-science sentiment. Meanwhile, they work on the sophons but that takes them a decade to complete and it's bleeding edge science for them so they don't know if it will work. What they do know is that, should the sophon plan fail, their human separatist plan needs to get underway as early as possible because they've seen both the overall rate and unpredictable nature of human scientific progress
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Mar 27, 2024 01:30
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Tarnop posted:In the book (minor book 1 spoilers) Thanks again for the context. Really appreciate the work you’ve been putting into the thread. The conclusion I’m reaching is that I should just read the books.
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Mar 27, 2024 01:38
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I also get the impression that since one of the first things they heard from us is that we're not capable of solving our own problems, it led them to believe that we're defeatists and that it would be easy to demoralize us if the sophons didn't work. So going mask off is part of the psychological warfare.
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Mar 27, 2024 01:41
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Wii Spawn Camper posted:Thanks again for the context. Really appreciate the work you’ve been putting into the thread. No problem! I think the books are pretty great, so you should definitely give them a try I appreciate the response too. Every time I start a post with "well, in the books *open spoiler tag*" I wonder if this will be the post that gets people to tell me to shut the gently caress up about the books already, so it's nice to know that it's helpful
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Mar 27, 2024 01:45
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Tarnop posted:No problem! I think the books are pretty great, so you should definitely give them a try Lol well the show just leaves me with so many questions that are answered in the books, so I can’t blame you for that. Blame D&D. After living through GoT, I’m not surprised, but i never read those books because they weren’t finished (and still are not). So I’ll probably read these books and then just try to enjoy the spectacle without wondering about all these details.
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Mar 27, 2024 01:52
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I'm just glad I read them as ebooks, it would be a lot harder to answer all these questions without a search function
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Mar 27, 2024 02:35
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Wii Spawn Camper posted:So I’ll probably read these books and then just try to enjoy the spectacle without wondering about all these details. Best way to enjoy the books. I feel that Liu Cixin came up with amazing setpieces and then backtracked to get a story out of them, and I'm OK with that.
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Mar 27, 2024 04:17
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!LATER BOOK SPOILERS! I sure hope the show leaves out Luo Ji/Saul asking for a cottage in the countryside and a hot wife. That's probably what many people are thinking of when they call the books sexist. I'm also curious about what 4-D space and the dual-vector foil attack will look like. A good poster fucked around with this message at 12:46 on Mar 27, 2024 |
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Mar 27, 2024 12:43
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A good poster posted:!LATER BOOK SPOILERS! I mean, they managed to make all the wild poo poo in this book look boring as gently caress so probably nothing to write home about. The game is the nicest this show gets visually and it's basically a Game of Thrones knock off. The stars blinking out, the countdown, etc are all shown in the most dry way possible to endear the least amazement in the viewer.
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Mar 27, 2024 13:05
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Yeah I don’t know how you make the universe flickering into a pedestrian event but they managed it somehow.
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Mar 27, 2024 15:41
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Jakabite posted:Yeah I don’t know how you make the universe flickering into a pedestrian event but they managed it somehow. I can't remember if it happens in the book but the sky getting brighter and then flickering didn't help, as it meant the sky already looked fake before the event, so the entire thing lost any impact.
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Mar 27, 2024 15:48
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PriorMarcus posted:I can't remember if it happens in the book but the sky getting brighter and then flickering didn't help, as it meant the sky already looked fake before the event, so the entire thing lost any impact. Yeah I think this was part of it. It already looked like a planetarium. I get the feeling that D&D fundamentally don’t understand how visual language works.
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Mar 27, 2024 15:59
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They needed to telegraph it way less. Go here at midnight. That's it. Augie feels unsafe so she brings Saul along. Instead, we had to endure this: "Something's going to happen to the sky at midnight." "Huh?" "I dunno, just look at the sky at midnight. Something's going to happen. Something extraordinary maybe." "Um, are you OK?" "I don't know. But it's almost midnight, and I think something will happen in the sky at midnight, so let's look at the sky and see if anything weird happens." "OK, I will look at the sky to see if something happens to it." *Chimes of midnight* Something weird happens to the sky. People look at it. Emotionally ambiguous music plays. That's it.
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Mar 27, 2024 16:02
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Pretty sure the light pollution around Oxford/ wherever they were would have been too much to see many stars. But it's, like, a pop show translation of a concept dense, dry as rocks novel. I'm fine with it.
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Mar 27, 2024 16:06
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