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Polaron posted:Here's what's going on: Head in the Clouds has a whole level devoted to letting the rich and powerful murderrape their way through prostitutes, who are all willing because gently caress, it's just a sleeve. The thing is, even by the standards of the Altered Carbon world that's considered really depraved, and Head in the Clouds is all about being Discerning and Discrete. So Rei has figured out a way to recode the prostitutes so that they're in the system as Neo Catholic, which prevents them from being spun up or resleeved, thus keeping the Iridium-level clientele's identities a secret. Which is tied into Proposal 653, which was designed to allow murder victims to be spun back up regardless of religious coding. They weren't marketing Real Death to the Iridium-level clients. Even they thought it was just a sleeve and that the hookers would be brought back. Remember, Bancroft was an Iridium-level client and while he got off on killing hookers he always made sure to buy them an upgraded sleeve if it happened and when he finds out he accidentally hosed a hooker so hard her stack shattered he actually feels legitimately horrible. And Bancroft isn’t the only person who has a vested interest in Rei’s security. If she goes down, a lot of very powerful people go down with her. That is another reason she kills her employees for real. ATP_Power posted:A few questions I have for book readers.Are there any downsides to synth bodies? Given the nature of the setting, a more Ghost in the Shell type of situation where biological sleeves would be more of an anachronistic tendency among those in Riker and Kovac's lines of work seems more plausible. Synth bodies are lovely and not all that much cheaper than flesh. I don’t know why it is so, but it is. Synths aren’t critical to the plot of the books and I think they could have been dropped to avoid questions like this without losing much.
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# ? Feb 7, 2018 08:12 |
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# ? Mar 28, 2024 10:38 |
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Synth bodies also require regular maintenance.
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# ? Feb 7, 2018 08:14 |
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Rinkles posted:Rei dying n-teen times failing to down Ortega was like really dumb of her. I guess it was arrogance, but you'd think she'd learn after the first couple of failures. Yeah that part of it was just dumb. “Do you realize how much money you made me waste” lol shut up.
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# ? Feb 7, 2018 08:16 |
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Neddy Seagoon posted:Synth bodies also require regular maintenance. I expected --Rei-- to at least have some Kristin-style cyborg enhancements
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# ? Feb 7, 2018 08:17 |
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Rinkles posted:So he subsisted on what wealth he had? (utilities like electricity presumably aren't free) Maybe it’s like the One Times Square situation: a big empty building on prime real estate that pays the bills by being plastered with advertising.
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# ? Feb 7, 2018 08:28 |
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Jesus christ what the gently caress were they thinking with turning the latter half of the season into insane sister hour? So much promise with the premise, and this is what they went with? I want more poo poo like the very first part of the first episode.
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# ? Feb 7, 2018 09:09 |
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Fututor Magnus posted:i think the stacks in the show are far better than the book alternative you describe. a small cylinder would resemble every other boring sci-fi prop design, boring and minimalistically designed. the stacks on the show befit the actual orgin of the tech, since it looks like something with an inherently alien design, nothing like how a human designed sci-fi thingmajig would be. has the look of a powerful alien computer / storage device. Stack technology is entirely a human creation in the books, and the mundanity of the design is on purpose; Sleeving isn't some scary new technology, it's treated like it's as old and commonplace as the telephone. The strangeness/wonder comes from that; "Here in your hand is a tiny little mundane cylinder, containing an entire human life." The TV version is unnecessarily awkward and actually inferior for no decent reason. Having them implanted at one year old is also an unnecessary complication, because it destandardizes the technology; You have to actively bring your one-year-old kid to have invasive surgery done rather than a quick-and-simple injection at birth. Also there's a pretty obvious failure to the design; can you honestly see a disk as broad as your palm fitting inside the body of an infant, letalone at the nape of the neck?
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# ? Feb 7, 2018 09:23 |
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Neddy Seagoon posted:Stack technology is entirely a human creation in the books, and the mundanity of the design is on purpose; Sleeving isn't some scary new technology, it's treated like it's as old and commonplace as the telephone. The strangeness/wonder comes from that; "Here in your hand is a tiny little mundane cylinder, containing an entire human life." Oh man, the scene in Book 2 at Semetaire’s Soul Market, though...
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# ? Feb 7, 2018 09:38 |
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Episode 10 has the highest rating out of all the episodes on IMDB. lmao
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# ? Feb 7, 2018 09:43 |
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navyjack posted:Oh man, the scene in Book 2 at Semetaire’s Soul Market, though... I love that bit too . For those that haven't read it, the Soul Markets are just massive wall-to-wall massive piles of Stacks from people dead in an ongoing global war. Scavengers and opportunists sift through them, buying by weight and volume, to try and find the Stacks of people with skills they can sell on to buyers (ie; Soldiers).
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# ? Feb 7, 2018 09:59 |
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Eh, I enjoyed the show. Best line: "Do you remember when I nearly got fired for saying I could see your areolas through your shirt?"
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# ? Feb 7, 2018 13:58 |
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Kegslayer posted:It's still funny watch people demand that Kovacs has to be white though. Literally nobody did this, they just said that complaining about "whitewashing" a character who is explicitly and repeatedly described as a white man is loving dumb.
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# ? Feb 7, 2018 14:46 |
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Does the book get into the implications of the backups at all? There's a clear logical transfer between the consciousness of the sleeve and the stack or something like needlecasting, but I would think a lot of people would have trouble buying the argument that even a perfect copy of you from twelve hours ago still counts as you.
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# ? Feb 7, 2018 15:00 |
I'm surprised they don't have some kind of version control system, git for people basically.
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# ? Feb 7, 2018 15:33 |
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I'm just a really big fan of what the show has done with the relationship between Kovacs and Poe so far. And drat if this doesn't look like a million bucks, looks like the most expensive thing Netflix has produced yet.
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# ? Feb 7, 2018 15:33 |
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vseslav.botkin posted:Does the book get into the implications of the backups at all? There's a clear logical transfer between the consciousness of the sleeve and the stack or something like needlecasting, but I would think a lot of people would have trouble buying the argument that even a perfect copy of you from twelve hours ago still counts as you. Your post is basically the non-sectarian version of the Neo-Catholic view on re-sleeving or being spun up into a VR post-mortem. So yeah, there are likely people with this view. But they are probably even more in the minority than the Neo-Catholics.
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# ? Feb 7, 2018 16:10 |
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Proteus Jones posted:Your post is basically the non-sectarian version of the Neo-Catholic view on re-sleeving or being spun up into a VR post-mortem. The book does touch on it a little towards the end; Kovacs remarks that Bancroft needed to have some serious stones to fry his own stack, knowing that even though he would come back from a backup he as he was now would still be dead and gone. Le Saboteur posted:I'm just a really big fan of what the show has done with the relationship between Kovacs and Poe so far. And drat if this doesn't look like a million bucks, looks like the most expensive thing Netflix has produced yet. A lot of the changes to the basic parts of the book are really really dumb, and a few are outright-bad, but I do like some of the new stuff. Poe's interactions with Kovacs are quite fun, and I like Ortega dealing with her devout Catholic mother hassling her as a means to discuss that topic a bit more. Neddy Seagoon fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Feb 7, 2018 |
# ? Feb 7, 2018 16:18 |
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Neddy Seagoon posted:Speaking of that stupid tower, could they have gotten any less subtle about Meths "looking down on people"? IDK. I figure in the real world super rich people would def do something that on the nose if they could.
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# ? Feb 7, 2018 16:26 |
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I enjoyed Poe but his character felt a bit tonally out of place.Le Saboteur posted:And drat if this doesn't look like a million bucks, looks like the most expensive thing Netflix has produced yet. It did, but after all the Hollywood-grade stuff, some of the Envoy flashback scenes felt like a SYFY original (with writing to match).
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# ? Feb 7, 2018 17:00 |
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Deadulus posted:IDK. I figure in the real world super rich people would def do something that on the nose if they could. The problem is being on top of a building isn't actually isolated. It's just being on top of a huge-rear end building staffed by thousands of people working every day. Being on a private island out in the bay tells you much more about the Bancrofts being in their own isolated world, observing the city (and mankind at large) from the outside.
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# ? Feb 7, 2018 17:00 |
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Rinkles posted:I enjoyed Poe but his character felt a bit tonally out of place. They only look like that because they're clearly shot in the forests around Vancouver which most SyFy productions also use.
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# ? Feb 7, 2018 17:03 |
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Neddy Seagoon posted:The problem is being on top of a building isn't actually isolated. It's just being on top of a huge-rear end building staffed by thousands of people working every day. Being on a private island out in the bay tells you much more about the Bancrofts being in their own isolated world, observing the city (and mankind at large) from the outside. Who says the middle 100 floors aren't inaccessible void/storage/factories crewed only by machines. The skyscraper gains a bit different meaning if you always fly to the tip in a flying car and/or teleport your soul.
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# ? Feb 7, 2018 17:51 |
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Neddy Seagoon posted:The problem is being on top of a building isn't actually isolated. It's just being on top of a huge-rear end building staffed by thousands of people working every day. Being on a private island out in the bay tells you much more about the Bancrofts being in their own isolated world, observing the city (and mankind at large) from the outside. But they aren’t looking to remove themselves from the world. They are above the world, but still of it. All that they survey is theirs to do with as they see fit. It’s not about isolation from the plebs, it’s about raising themselves to heights unobtainable for the regular person. They are future gods ruling over the Earth from future Olympus.
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# ? Feb 7, 2018 19:47 |
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I watched this over two days and my fiance caught part of it but didn't seem to care too much. Last night I got home and she was on the 4the episode and she's totally hooked so now I'm rewatching with her. There's lots of little things I missed the first time, mostly just how crazy the set designs are. Oh and Martha Higareda is just the best. She has a great "I am so done with this bullshit" face.
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# ? Feb 7, 2018 19:53 |
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Neddy Seagoon posted:Stack technology is entirely a human creation in the books, and the mundanity of the design is on purpose; Sleeving isn't some scary new technology, it's treated like it's as old and commonplace as the telephone. The strangeness/wonder comes from that; "Here in your hand is a tiny little mundane cylinder, containing an entire human life." TV is a visual medium, which has different strengths and requirements compared to literature. The stacks are utterly integral to the setting and the story. To have something this central be a barely recognisable generic little thimble would simply be outright bad showmaking. You'd have to spend yet more time zooming in on them, showing them for longer, to give the viewer sufficient time to realise that yes, that is in fact a stack. Which is a things that will come up again and again very often. And that's not even getting into the various occurrences where stacks are intentionally destroyed. It's easy to show a shattered, impaled, or otherwise destroyed semi-large disc. To do the same thing with a small compact cylinder is simply not nearly as visually clear. The key point here is that the show does not just need to communicate what people in-universe think of stacks. It also needs to communicate to the viewer what they are. And to us they're absolutely amazing things, immortality in a can. And the design reflects that. From the very moment they're first shown, the design tells the viewer "Here, these things are unique, strange, and important. Keep an eye on those.". Any time somebody handles a stack in the show, the viewer knows immediately what it is, and can tell the significance of it. And that's an appropriate trade-off, as the show still has other means of showing how commonplace sleeving has become, such as neonazi-abuela. For a properly comparison, think of the Lord of the Rings movies and the scene where Elrond reforges the sword Anduril for Aragaorn. But this time instead of looking like this: It looks like this, because the prop guy couldn't be arsed: That would also be just plain bad filmmaking. If an object is somehow integral to your film or show, you give it a memorable and unique appearance.
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# ? Feb 7, 2018 23:27 |
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I had read a review or two about the show that complained that the show took it's technology and came to the conclusion that immortality was bad. Having watched it, to me it seems that the show was pretty clear that the issue was rich assholes becoming too powerful and that power leading to corruption. Even good people are corrupted, because the limitless power is just too much. The show even goes out of it's way to give a voice to several people who are in favor of death, and to varying degrees shows how that's not the answer to the problem. As to the problem some people are having with the ending, do the books explain why Rei spins up Takeshi as the solution to Mark Antony's Adventure of the Sealed Room? Making Rei Kovacs' sister at least explains why a Meth would seek out the last remaining super terrorist veteran of a notorious resistance movement with Maoist shading. From what you guys are saying about the character in the books, I'm not sure why she chooses Kovacs to be the patsy investigator to seal up the loose ends of her plan.
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# ? Feb 7, 2018 23:34 |
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Gyges posted:I had read a review or two about the show that complained that the show took it's technology and came to the conclusion that immortality was bad. Having watched it, to me it seems that the show was pretty clear that the issue was rich assholes becoming too powerful and that power leading to corruption. Even good people are corrupted, because the limitless power is just too much. The show even goes out of it's way to give a voice to several people who are in favor of death, and to varying degrees shows how that's not the answer to the problem. Book spoilers: Not sure she's the one who specifies Tak. I think Bancroft finds him of his own accord. I might be wrong. Importantly, Tak is less of a big deal in the books. The Envoy's are the elite strike forces of the protectorate, and rogue Envoys that can be hired by the super-rich are a dime a dozen.
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# ? Feb 8, 2018 00:12 |
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Strom Cuzewon posted:Book spoilers: Not sure she's the one who specifies Tak. I think Bancroft finds him of his own accord. I might be wrong. Yeah, I get that. I was thinking more his non-Envoy CV of working with some rebels, a little terrorism, and general assholery. Surely there's some dudes available who are actual detectives or otherwise top notch investigators that one of the richest guys in the galaxy could turn to before an elite soldier.
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# ? Feb 8, 2018 00:21 |
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Gyges posted:Yeah, I get that. I was thinking more his non-Envoy CV of working with some rebels, a little terrorism, and general assholery. Surely there's some dudes available who are actual detectives or otherwise top notch investigators that one of the richest guys in the galaxy could turn to before an elite soldier. Envoys are far more than elite soldiers. As far as why Kovacs, he was in ice and could be needlecast to Earth for immediate decanting. Plus, Bancroft being able to hold a pardon over his head moved him to the top of the list.
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# ? Feb 8, 2018 01:09 |
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Does the book go into more detail about being put on ice? People remain conscious during its duration, right?
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# ? Feb 8, 2018 01:31 |
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Rinkles posted:Does the book go into more detail about being put on ice? People remain conscious during its duration, right? They do go into a *little* more detail, and no, they do not remain conscious.
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# ? Feb 8, 2018 01:34 |
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thetechnoloser posted:They do go into a *little* more detail, and no, they do not remain conscious. -----Rei's-- frenzied reaction to the prospect of being put back on ice made me think it was particularly unpleasant.
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# ? Feb 8, 2018 01:44 |
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Strom Cuzewon posted:Book spoilers: Not sure she's the one who specifies Tak. I think Bancroft finds him of his own accord. I might be wrong. Takeshi and Reileen are not related in the book, their prior relationship is that they worked together on another world, probably to stamp out a rebellion or install a new government. The main role of Envoys is not really super-soldiering, but what Takeshi calls "regime engineering." They are master manipulators, lacking in compassion, and have intuition-bordering-on-ESP. I think Kovacs even reflects on the fact that this incidentally makes them supreme detectives. I don't think it's said explicitly, but it makes sense that hiring a jailed ex-Envoy from hundreds of light years away would appeal to Bancroft's vanity in a way that hiring a local gumshoe would not.
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# ? Feb 8, 2018 01:58 |
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That makes more sense as to why Takeshi.
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# ? Feb 8, 2018 02:03 |
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Gets very silly towards the end, but I generally enjoyed it apart from that god-awful slog of a flashback episode. Best bit: Evil Max Headroom and his VHS tapes (or were they Betamax?)
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# ? Feb 8, 2018 02:03 |
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My number one complaint about the show: Harlan’s World shouldn’t look like British Columbia.
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# ? Feb 8, 2018 02:09 |
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Rinkles posted:-----Rei's-- frenzied reaction to the prospect of being put back on ice made me think it was particularly unpleasant. You aren't conscious, you're just stored data. Helpless and knowing you won't get spun back up until someone wants to do so. At-large, here's some of the stuff the book does, just to get people caught up on what some of us refer to as being changed; Kovacs isn't the last of a dead breed of super-terrorists. He's ex-military. Envoys aren't a gone breed of Quellist super-soldiers either, they're the UN Protectorate's Big Stick to keep the worlds in line. They do not tolerate rebellion in the slightest, and if Envoys are coming through the needlecast you are hosed. Real-Death'ed, across the board, hosed. He's not special, he's just available. As for the Envoys themselves, the series has a fair bit of how they operate right; They're the answer to the question of how you deal with soldiers being on a foreign world, in a strange body, trying to get them combat-ready ASAP. The terrain's wrong, the gravity's weird, and they're expected to deal with opposition that have grown up with both natively. The solution to that is, naturally, to train the mind. Envoys get put through psychological torture and hell to mentally break and rebuild them to expect nothing at all. Just to observe and take in everything around them, calmly and objectively, letting it all just filter together into a large picture (it's also why they make good investigators). They can also focus their senses better than normal people (A lot of what you see Kovacs do, however, is from his Sleeve on Earth having a neurological enhancement called Neurachem). Put them on a world, and eventually you'd never know they weren't born there; They'll know all the local slang, the local gangs, how to walk like a native, etc. They're master manipulators (ideal for regime-creation/changing), happily and readily capable of violence, and are banned from serving in any political role on a Protectorate world if/when they leave the service. Most Ex-Envoys tend to go right into crime due to their skillsets. Kovacs left the Envoys of his own accord after an assault went well and truly FUBAR on a world called Innenin. His whole platoon got wiped out by a computer virus called Rawlings being broadcast through their comms gear and driving them all face-clawing insane. Kovacs got very lucky and had a broken comm rig at the time, and part of the book is every now and then he's mentally talking to his best friend who died there. Sometimes he's alive and well, other times he sees Jimmy DeSoto as he was post-infection; trying and succeeding to claw his own eyes out. The reason he gets shot up on Harlan's World at the start was he'd robbed a research facility and the local law doesn't take kindly to that . Meths aren't a deified/feared group holding supreme either, they're just generally old, powerful and annoying on Earth. Like Republicans. All they do is keep to themselves and live their lives like everyone else, the difference is they tend to have accumulated a shitload of wealth and power. The Quellist stuff happened, and about that long ago, but Tak wasn't there. Quellism in the books is just something scattered into pop-culture; People use her quotes to sound impressive, probably wear shirts of Quellcrist's face like Che Guevara, that kinda thing. She was leading an insurrection against the government of Harlan's World, Tak's homeworld, for the atrocious conditions commoners were forced to work in the Harlan family who owned the planet. It also pre-dated Envoys, or it would've been over very quickly. The girl at the start of the series getting her stack blown out creates a major problem towards the end Rei getting Kovacs to close the investigation ASAP is motivated by her needlecasting in Sarah like Bancroft did for Kovacs. Either he closes the investigation (doesn't matter how, just get Bancroft to believe it), or Sarah spends time in VR testing out Rei's lovely new torture programs. Strom Cuzewon posted:Book spoilers: Not sure she's the one who specifies Tak. I think Bancroft finds him of his own accord. I might be wrong. Rei put him on the shortlist iirc. Platystemon posted:My number one complaint about the show: Harlans World shouldnt look like British Columbia. Agreed. I fully accept it's probably a budgeting thing, but Harlan's World should look more like Thailand.
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# ? Feb 8, 2018 02:27 |
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiDpaM2r72A Envoys are basically everything Marcus Brody is touted to be, but also SEAL Team Six.
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# ? Feb 8, 2018 02:52 |
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Neddy Seagoon posted:Agreed. I fully accept it's probably a budgeting thing, but Harlan's World should look more like Thailand. And have orbital alien laser turrets occasionally lighting up the sky.
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# ? Feb 8, 2018 03:06 |
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# ? Mar 28, 2024 10:38 |
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Minor side-note, but is it just me or does it sound like the actors are actively having to force the phrase "The Elder Race" out. Not once have they managed to make it flow naturally in dialogue so far.Perestroika posted:TV is a visual medium, which has different strengths and requirements compared to literature. The stacks are utterly integral to the setting and the story. To have something this central be a barely recognisable generic little thimble would simply be outright bad showmaking. You'd have to spend yet more time zooming in on them, showing them for longer, to give the viewer sufficient time to realise that yes, that is in fact a stack. Which is a things that will come up again and again very often. And that's not even getting into the various occurrences where stacks are intentionally destroyed. It's easy to show a shattered, impaled, or otherwise destroyed semi-large disc. To do the same thing with a small compact cylinder is simply not nearly as visually clear. Your example is a key and, importantly, unique thing. What you're saying is every sword in the movies should be unique works of art just because they're onscreen right down to that of a mere footsoldier's. And a medium to explain Stacks to the audience is very easy; The opening credits (Along with that scene post-decanting in prison). Westworld also has to convey that the people you see in-town are artificial despite appearances and manages to do so by showing them getting assembled piece-by-piece. There are also ample opportunities in the book to draw from of yanking the things out of corpses, let alone in the series. And again, you're missing the big key flaw in the series version compared to the original; It loses it's commonality by being something that requires attending surgery post-birth and doesn't actually fit inside an infant.
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# ? Feb 8, 2018 03:21 |