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Ceebees posted:If you don't mind living on the same Hierarchy Walker as Harlan Ellison and Justin Timberlake, the reformed Oubliette is probably the most relatable faction. I'm a little leery of having my consciousness digitised. I am concerned as to whether my own continuity of consciousness will continue (c.f. some copy). Going Quiet might mean the end for this subjective existence, even though overall the Oubliette doesn't seem like the worst place.
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Sep 3, 2014 09:48
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Yeah I'd personally be zoku all the way. It's the most humanistic fashion in the way we currently view humanity. Though it is, of course, also highly strange in its own ways.
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Sep 3, 2014 19:36
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Let's face it, most of the people on this forum would be Zoku. Half of us are disappearing up our own asses in games as it is.
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Sep 3, 2014 20:11
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I dunno that I'd want bits of my consciousness pared away. The Zoku are clearly better than the Sobornost though.
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Sep 6, 2014 15:35
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Peztopiary posted:I dunno that I'd want bits of my consciousness pared away. The Zoku are clearly better than the Sobornost though. It's alright, early Sobornost were ethical. They'd just run A Clockwork Orange poo poo on children for a year then upload them. At least the kids would be ready.
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Sep 6, 2014 16:59
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The upload camp in that flashback weren't sobornost-run and the flashback ends with sobornost attacking it. Sumanguru's claim to fame was waging a guerrilla war against gogol trade in Africa.
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Sep 6, 2014 17:43
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So has anyone else actually gone and checked out old Arsene Lupin stories? I've been doing this for he last couple days and let me say it's a good time. Also surprised to learn that Josephine Pellegrini and Isidore Beautrelet are actually the names of some of Lupin's antagonists/opponents.
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Sep 20, 2014 17:15
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Neurosis posted:I'm a little leery of having my consciousness digitised. I am concerned as to whether my own continuity of consciousness will continue (c.f. some copy). Going Quiet might mean the end for this subjective existence, even though overall the Oubliette doesn't seem like the worst place. That's actually sort of one of the fundamental ways the Sobornost went off the rails: due to Unforeseen Problems the Founders had to be digitized in a much more impromptu fashion (except Josephine, who clung on by her fingertips until it became sufficiently obvious she wasn't going to pull it off), and now hey, it can't have been THAT bad for US and the meat is gonna die anyway, may as well be lazy assholes and not worry about continuity of consciousness.
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Sep 22, 2014 00:14
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The Zoku and Sobornost were basically two sides of the slavery coin. The Sobornost used the dead as their slaves, for 'the greater good'. Sure, you're immortal, but you're likely to be nothing more than a downloaded mind running searches or piloting missiles for your masters. Founders were literal gods and you existed at their pleasure. TCA:The Zoku's slaves seemed to be their 'leaders'. The higher your level, the more you were entangled, and the more others' volitions had control of you. A slave to the masses. Barbicane reveled in his freedom after Jean crashed the jewels, and was going to rebuild things his way. Really, it seems like the best place to live was either with the Oortians or the Martians under Isadore. Even Sirr wasn't so bad compared to the two big powers. Being a lowbie Zoku might be decent. But given the choices, I'd be a fruity space elf singing to my icy house to grow a breakfast nook 10 billion kilometers from the sun.
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Sep 25, 2014 07:45
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When is it explained what Fedorovism means?
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Sep 25, 2014 16:43
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Dietrich posted:When is it explained what Fedorovism means? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Fyodorovich_Fyodorov
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Sep 25, 2014 16:57
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Ah there it is. I remembered coming across it during my first read though but I wanted a refresher for #2.
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Sep 25, 2014 17:04
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Maybe I didn't read things right, but I think the gogols, generally, are just copies of the Founders. By and large I thought the Sobornost just left the uploaded minds live/relive their lives forever. Wasn't that the whole point of their ideology?
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Sep 25, 2014 23:41
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Sil posted:Maybe I didn't read things right, but I think the gogols, generally, are just copies of the Founders. By and large I thought the Sobornost just left the uploaded minds live/relive their lives forever. Wasn't that the whole point of their ideology? Nope nope. They make (at least) one copy of you to live forever in cyber heaven, but they also make as many copies as they see fit to use as tools, which to them is justified because the Task is paramount. Of course the Founders are generally used in positions of authority, and 99% of people probably don't have too much new to offer as tools, but that last 1% is a lot more people than the seven Founders and overall probably have a lot more to offer. Why did they want the chocolatier's gogol? It wasn't because they were in a special rush to immortalize him in particular: it was because they thought he'd have unique neural pathways they could use. They'd have taken him apart (torturously, no doubt) to figure out what made him tick, and then if the results were good, they would probably have incorporated shreds of his mind into all sorts of special-purpose Frankenstein gogols. McNerd fucked around with this message at 00:59 on Sep 26, 2014 |
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Sep 26, 2014 00:55
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Just finished CA, couldn't really stop after it started toward the end, so here I am at 3AM doing a brain dump. The series as a whole is damned good, great even. The third book didn't quite knock me over like I was hoping, but I still enjoyed it greatly. It's funny how the first two were so engrossing and amazing because of their environments and ideas, and I think what i enjoyed most about the last installment were the characters. Just a couple thoughts: Mieli, I think Hannu paced out her arc wrong. She should have given up on Sydan longer ago. All the evidence was there from the get go. Also, I think it wasn't necessary for Zinda to explicitly state she was created as a love interest for Mieli. It was just too much ping-ponging back and forth. I want Sydan. I'm going to indulge this Zinda thing. No wait Zinda is fake! No wait Sydan is fake! I want Zinda because she dropped her jewels! Zinda's motivations should/could have been left ambiguous and it would have given a sharper edge to Mieli's ultimate fate, at least in my opinion. Josephine,I loved how much she got fleshed out over the course of this book. She's a great character and I wanted more of her. She's the ultimate femme fatale. She doesn't just seduce people into servitude, she forges them with clear sight of their destiny to serving her. The End, Like someone else said, AD's motivations were amazingly cool and a great plot point. The only thing that was kinda weird for me was the exponential hike of the stakes when Jean realizes that the kaminari jewel has been stored in a parallel dimension. Once you introduce something like that, why do we even give a gently caress about anything anymore? If you can journey to other dimensions, what is the fate of any dimension to anyone? Eh. Up to that point I was very tantalized about the ultimate ending, especially after Isidore's fantastically intriguing info dump from the kaminari memories from the Spike, but it just frames everything in a very petty way. Presumably Mieli touches the tri-force and it grants her heart's wish, and she basically severs all ties to her native reality/Oort to create a zoku paradise splinter existence. I'm not even sure why that happened, since I thought the kaminari unlocked the planck locks of *A* universe to allow someone's will to reshape it and access the firmament of existence, not just create something else/totally different, though I guess rewriting the fabric of reality gives you that power? Dunno! I just expected more reshaping to be done to the solar system we knew of. Instead the zoku are whisked away, and the guberniyas are left in a tattered star system to annihilate each other. Which begs the question of why there are these territory disputes when there's a whole god damned galaxy to expand into. I guess it's that hominid brain template biting them in the rear end, an essentially human mind can't be happy without something else to poo poo on.. I think Hannu valiantly attempted to portray the Sobornost and Zoku as equally detestable factions, but he must have misjudged his fanbase, because I would light a baby on fire to join the zoku forever. IF the Sobornost do actually have a paradise vir where all their uploads get to live carefree lives and only their copies are used as tools, then it casts them in a different light, and maybe could have been used as a plot point to some of their motivations, i.e. "Do you know how hard it is to run an enormous vir for 24 billion gogols at the highest achievable fidelity settings and stop everyone from initiating permanent global war/orgies!?" I also wish he touched more on Josephine's fear of continuity interruption, because i'm also of a mind that who we are is sadly imprisoned in this flesh and collection of neurons and no digitization process, no matter the thoroughness or quality, would be able to pluck *you* from reality to the digital realm, but maybe I'm talking like a vinyl junkie.
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Oct 25, 2014 08:44
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While i can agree that falling for a doll programmed to love you is kind of creepy, i did at least appreciate the irony in that the thing that ultimately broke Mieli free of the Pelligrini's manipulations was to accept the Zoku's manipulations. Really more of a lateral move, there.
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Oct 25, 2014 13:54
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But she's not a doll, she's a person. This is why I generally took less issue with it than many in the thread. It's not quite the same thing as mind control rape in comic books or the classic love potion tale, though most people are treating it as such. And not just because it was done by a third party. I see it more as a shallow exploration of the software/people line that is getting very blurry in this setting. In the end Mieli chose someone who genuinely loved her over the memory of someone who didn't.
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Oct 25, 2014 15:08
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Nevvy Z posted:But she's not a doll, she's a person. This is why I generally took less issue with it than many in the thread. It's not quite the same thing as mind control rape in comic books or the classic love potion tale, though most people are treating it as such. And not just because it was done by a third party. I see it more as a shallow exploration of the software/people line that is getting very blurry in this setting. I think it's intended as a sci-fi take on the old romance trope of "we were born to be together, it's fate." If the zoku members actually believe the zoku looks out for their best interests then it's no creepier than believing "God made us for each other." There's the fact that it's so terribly one-sided at the start, because Mieli doesn't accept her "fate" while the zoku girl does, but I guess that's only a temporary misunderstanding. That being said, I'd have enjoyed it better if Rajaniemi had taken this as an opportunity to deconstruct that trope, because it really does showcase some reasons I think it's a sad and limiting worldview and that love is so much richer when there's some drat free will involved. But that would have put him ahead of the curve, and I guess not everyone can be ahead of the curve all the time. If we want to talk about mind control rape though let's talk about the pelligrini taking over Mieli's body to have sex with someone while she's unconscious. It's not like bodies are even hard to come by around here. McNerd fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Oct 25, 2014 |
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Oct 25, 2014 15:39
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