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McSpanky
Jan 16, 2005






Beefeater1980 posted:

Re Murtry, the way it was presented in the books was that he was initially presented as a sympathetic character - the first thing you see him doing is caring for his team and telling them not to snipe at each other. Then it sets up a narrative arc that looks like it will be “extremists on Ilum successfully murder their way to power because the Good Guys won’t use the same extreme measures, and the Rocinante crew has to deal with it”. This plot is then undermined immediately by Murtry straight up merking the lead conspirator in front of everyone on a hunch, and you realise oh poo poo, he’s actually a fascist who just needed an excuse, and now he’s in charge.

That's how I read Murtry too, just based on the show. He's the type of person who would just be an rear end in a top hat boss in normal everyday life, but the extreme circumstances of the planetfall disaster putting him in charge and the Belters giving him an enemy to focus on gives him a perfect opportunity to let his inner brownshirt/dictator off the leash. All the while, telling himself he's making the hard choices for the greater good, just like his little speech at the end there.

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Boris Galerkin
Dec 17, 2011

I don't understand why I can't harass people online. Seriously, somebody please explain why I shouldn't be allowed to stalk others on social media!

GuardianOfAsgaard posted:

Amos' contacts and schedule :laffo:



Who is Cap'n and Boss? I mean I'm guessing Holden is Cap'n so who's Boss?

e: It's Naomi? She's the only one not on there and wasn't there a scene in the first season where he turned to her to ask for permission to kill Holden?

Aoi
Sep 12, 2017

Perpetually a Pain.

Boris Galerkin posted:

Who is Cap'n and Boss? I mean I'm guessing Holden is Cap'n so who's Boss?

e: It's Naomi? She's the only one not on there and wasn't there a scene in the first season where he turned to her to ask for permission to kill Holden?

Boss is definitely Naomi. Cap'n is Holden. Peaches is Melba, he calls her that in their conversation in the first episode. My Best Friend is Prax.

Avasarala would be 'Stilleto'.

bloom
Feb 25, 2017

by sebmojo

EimiYoshikawa posted:

Avasarala would be 'Stilleto'.

Very mild book spoiler: She would be Chrissie

Tarquinn
Jul 3, 2007

"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."



Hell Gem
The season was good, looked great, but still felt like a set-up season for the poo poo that is going down next. Except for them killing the only Belter I actually genuinely liked, it kinda feels like actually nothing of importance actually happened. I was actively skipping through some of the Rocinante scenes, not caring about the Belter ship and its crew. 😒

bloom
Feb 25, 2017

by sebmojo

Tarquinn posted:

Except for them killing the only Belter I actually genuinely liked

Check out this sicko who doesn't like Prax.

Tarquinn
Jul 3, 2007

"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."



Hell Gem

bloom posted:

Check out this sicko who doesn't like Prax.

Don’t tell Amos. :ssh:

Clanpot Shake
Aug 10, 2006
shake shake!

Anyone complaining about Murtry should listen to the dollop episode about Jan Pieterszoon Coen. Murtry barely holds a candle to this guy in terms of evildoing and if he had played it up anywhere close to this real life figure people would be complaining about him being a cartoon villain spoilered just in case

Elias_Maluco
Aug 23, 2007
I need to sleep
Inst Murtry the "legend of gin aley"?

I have to say it was my least favorite season so far. Not bad but not so exiting and the writing was subpar compared to the previous seasons. The dialogue was sometimes pretty bad and some characters seems to have become caricatures of themselves (Avassarala specially)

Im still on board for S5 though

I liked the Mars parts a lot, it was my favorite plot

SpookyLizard
Feb 17, 2009
Amos's contacts:

Cap'n - Holden
Boss - Naomi (he's been calling her boss since the pilot on the Cant)
Alex - Alex
Peaches - Melba/Clarissa Mao
My Best Friend - Prax
Tonight - Presumably the nearest brothel.
Doc - Doctor preacher lady anna voldovovovov or whatever her name is

StashAugustine
Mar 24, 2013

Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

McSpanky posted:

That's how I read Murtry too, just based on the show. He's the type of person who would just be an rear end in a top hat boss in normal everyday life, but the extreme circumstances of the planetfall disaster putting him in charge and the Belters giving him an enemy to focus on gives him a perfect opportunity to let his inner brownshirt/dictator off the leash. All the while, telling himself he's making the hard choices for the greater good, just like his little speech at the end there.

I'm pretty sure its heavily implied that he's done this kind of stuff before for the company

Fidel Cuckstro
Jul 2, 2007

My only real complaint was a lot of the complications around New Terra at around episodes 7-8 started to feel like stuff to just drag out the season to the required number of episodes. The blindness and slugs didn't really seem to have any greater importance to anything, nor did they have any thematic value aside from "this is a dangerous alien planet" which was kind of already covered. The Rocinante tow stuff at least had some merit as highlighting the logic of settlers.

Fidel Cuckstro
Jul 2, 2007

If people can't figure out that Murtry is just a straight amalgam of the kind of actual guys empires sent out to manage colonial holdings...

StashAugustine
Mar 24, 2013

Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

If anything hes smarter and more self controlled than most.

Fidel Cuckstro
Jul 2, 2007

StashAugustine posted:

If anything hes smarter and more self controlled than most.

Yep.

It's cool the season tells the audience multiple times pretty explicitly that colonizing New Terra is exactly the same as Americans colonizing The West and people are I guess missing the point.

Norton the First
Dec 4, 2018

by Fluffdaddy

Fidel Cuckstro posted:

If people can't figure out that Murtry is just a straight amalgam of the kind of actual guys empires sent out to manage colonial holdings...

Kinda pointless in this case, though. If this planet is at ~1g and there are a couple hundred Belters there already, you can take your fancy charter and go anywhere the Belters are not to start mining the lithium, because the Earth is pretty loving big, and they don't actually need the Belter's cooperation to extract the resources.

Phenotype
Jul 24, 2007

You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance.



Norton the First posted:

Kinda pointless in this case, though. If this planet is at ~1g and there are a couple hundred Belters there already, you can take your fancy charter and go anywhere the Belters are not to start mining the lithium, because the Earth is pretty loving big, and they don't actually need the Belter's cooperation to extract the resources.

That's part of what makes the corporation's position so egregious in my mind -- it's an entire drat planet, we're not talking about the mineral rights of a single chunk of land. On this entire planet, you can't find another spot for a drilling rig? Or are you just that butthurt about having to share an entire planet's worth of lithium with another group of miners? gently caress off with that. Maybe you don't get to make all the money when there's a group of literally homeless refugees living there.

ZorajitZorajit
Sep 15, 2013

No static at all...
I'd like to see more elaboration on the problematic colonialist element of this season. And I'd like to better understand the critique of it, because right now I feel like I'm pretty white and goony about the question. Which is to say, no one is being genocided on Ilus so why not move in. But I've seen discussion from First Nations individuals on Twitter that the whole show is propping up colonialist narratives about how good it is to 'claim new territory.'

Fidel Cuckstro
Jul 2, 2007

Norton the First posted:

Kinda pointless in this case, though. If this planet is at ~1g and there are a couple hundred Belters there already, you can take your fancy charter and go anywhere the Belters are not to start mining the lithium, because the Earth is pretty loving big, and they don't actually need the Belter's cooperation to extract the resources.

Buddy wait until you hear about.........the new world.

Fidel Cuckstro
Jul 2, 2007

ZorajitZorajit posted:

I'd like to see more elaboration on the problematic colonialist element of this season. And I'd like to better understand the critique of it, because right now I feel like I'm pretty white and goony about the question. Which is to say, no one is being genocided on Ilus so why not move in. But I've seen discussion from First Nations individuals on Twitter that the whole show is propping up colonialist narratives about how good it is to 'claim new territory.'

We don't know if anything is being genocided because nobody really cares about anything on the planet aside from the value they can extract and ship off. Who knows if there are little lithium based aliens getting murked by the million so the settlers can ship some back home. The scientist lady outright says 'well yeah life here could have been built up from a bunch of different elements than what happened on earth, I guess we don't really know!"

But I disagree it's not propping up colonialist narratives unless you have a bird brain which, well, IDK I guess there's a lot of that so maybe it is!!

StashAugustine
Mar 24, 2013

Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

ZorajitZorajit posted:

I'd like to see more elaboration on the problematic colonialist element of this season. And I'd like to better understand the critique of it, because right now I feel like I'm pretty white and goony about the question. Which is to say, no one is being genocided on Ilus so why not move in. But I've seen discussion from First Nations individuals on Twitter that the whole show is propping up colonialist narratives about how good it is to 'claim new territory.'

I think the argument is that any sort of narrative about exploring a new frontier is necessarily thematically tied to the history of the "frontier". But as presented in the story there's not really much to blame the fictional settlers for, and the show is pretty open about criticizing the actual historical process of colonialism

DropsySufferer
Nov 9, 2008

Impractical practicality
Summing it up this season was mostly a colony story and a Bobbie story. Could have done one or two episodes on each instead of the whole season. Wasted a lot of time especially the colony.

Mars wasn’t as bad because we finally got to see mars and what the people there are now dealing with.

As said weakest season of the Expanse but sill good. I will take a mediocre season of The Expanse over anything else any time and be grateful.

Everyone
Sep 6, 2019

by sebmojo

Fidel Cuckstro posted:

We don't know if anything is being genocided because nobody really cares about anything on the planet aside from the value they can extract and ship off. Who knows if there are little lithium based aliens getting murked by the million so the settlers can ship some back home. The scientist lady outright says 'well yeah life here could have been built up from a bunch of different elements than what happened on earth, I guess we don't really know!"

But I disagree it's not propping up colonialist narratives unless you have a bird brain which, well, IDK I guess there's a lot of that so maybe it is!!

In terms of "colonialist narratives" in this case the Belters are the "First Nations" and the corporate folks are the European invaders. The Americas had no humans until some of them came across the Asia land bridge and worked their way south (or were brought there via Ancient Alien space ships and went north).

Maybe it'll turn out that there are tribes of lithium rock people on Ilium, but nothing has shown up so far. For that matter all indications are that the 1300 worlds are devoid of native intelligent life. Again that's so far.

Everyone fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Dec 23, 2019

TMMadman
Sep 9, 2003

by Fluffdaddy

Fidel Cuckstro posted:

We don't know if anything is being genocided because nobody really cares about anything on the planet aside from the value they can extract and ship off. Who knows if there are little lithium based aliens getting murked by the million so the settlers can ship some back home. The scientist lady outright says 'well yeah life here could have been built up from a bunch of different elements than what happened on earth, I guess we don't really know!"

But I disagree it's not propping up colonialist narratives unless you have a bird brain which, well, IDK I guess there's a lot of that so maybe it is!!

Wasn't there some mention or implication made after the ring worlds were opened that there was no other intelligent life out there? Maybe by proto-Miller? Or maybe it was just no other space faring life.

I also ask because it would also give another reason why Mars started to collapse so quickly. After all, if there was no other intelligent space faring life then there would be less need for a Martian military. If there was other life out there I would have expected Mars to ramp up its military in order to protect both itself and its colonies against potential threats. Sure, they wouldn't have the terraforming project as a great unifying force, but they could replace that with the military and protection as their unifier.

Fidel Cuckstro
Jul 2, 2007

Everyone posted:

In terms of "colonialist narratives" in this case the Belters are the "Native Americans" and the corporate folks are the European invaders. The Americas had no humans until some of them came across the Asia land bridge and worked their way south (or were brought there via Ancient Alien space ships and went north).

Maybe it'll turn out that there are tribes of lithium rock people on Ilium, but nothing has shown up so far. For that matter all indications are that the 1300 worlds are devoid of native intelligent life. Again that's so far.

It doesn't matter whether there are or aren't, because the point is nobody cares. All that matters is extraction. Profit motive. The noise is terrible Mr. Ellsworth, like fate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyPypl6Lxgo

edit- It rules that I tried to search for that quote and instead all the wikiquote sites transcribed all the lines up to that one.

Fidel Cuckstro fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Dec 23, 2019

Everyone
Sep 6, 2019

by sebmojo

TMMadman posted:

Wasn't there some mention or implication made after the ring worlds were opened that there was no other intelligent life out there? Maybe by proto-Miller? Or maybe it was just no other space faring life.

I also ask because it would also give another reason why Mars started to collapse so quickly. After all, if there was no other intelligent space faring life then there would be less need for a Martian military. If there was other life out there I would have expected Mars to ramp up its military in order to protect both itself and its colonies against potential threats. Sure, they wouldn't have the terraforming project as a great unifying force, but they could replace that with the military and protection as their unifier.

I'm extremely glad there's no "humans in funny suits" aliens in the offing. Proto-molecule stuff aside, in the Expanse, the greatest threat to humanity is always humanity.

Cojawfee
May 31, 2006
I think the US is dumb for not using Celsius
I agree that Murtry is the company man sent by the owner of the railroad or the factory to solve the problem of "I'm not making enough money because poors are in the way". No one at the top cares what he does because what he does only affects poor people. In this case, a poor person is anyone with less money than the company. The crew of the Roci aren't as poor, so they are given the time of day, but Murtry isn't above dealing with them the same way. Much like how Hearst's men are willing to speak to Mrs. Ellsworth, but she isn't rich enough for Hearst not to gently caress up her whole operation just to be petty.

ZorajitZorajit
Sep 15, 2013

No static at all...

Everyone posted:

I'm extremely glad there's no "humans in funny suits" aliens in the offing. Proto-molecule stuff aside, in the Expanse, the greatest threat to humanity is always humanity.

For the purposes of The Expanse's themes and storytelling it makes sense for there to be no forehead aliens. But I do wonder how the series will ultimately square it's fairly grounded conceptualization of space travel and futurism with the apparently-actually-magic of the Unkown Aggressors that wiped out the protomolecule civilization (who, yeah, are similarly so far beyond our comprehension but at least we can form analogues for their tech.)

Fidel Cuckstro
Jul 2, 2007

Cojawfee posted:

I agree that Murtry is the company man sent by the owner of the railroad or the factory to solve the problem of "I'm not making enough money because poors are in the way". No one at the top cares what he does because what he does only affects poor people. In this case, a poor person is anyone with less money than the company. The crew of the Roci aren't as poor, so they are given the time of day, but Murtry isn't above dealing with them the same way. Much like how Hearst's men are willing to speak to Mrs. Ellsworth, but she isn't rich enough for Hearst not to gently caress up her whole operation just to be petty.

Exactly- Murtry's skill is just making the calculation. What's the cost of killing X people. If X<Y where Y is the profit of taking what those people had (or getting them out of the way to take what you wanted to take), you do it. That was IMO well set up in his conversation before the landing shuttle crashed- if the math says pay them off to leave fine. If the math says kill children, fine too.

Holden and team are a wrinkle only because they're connected government types- so X' is larger than X for the belters.

AnEdgelord
Dec 12, 2016
One thing that The Expanse understands is that any species capable of interstellar travel is so far beyond our current understanding of technology that they would have more in common with Lovecraftian gods than what is imagined in Star Trek, Star Wars or (especially) Stargate.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

AnEdgelord posted:

One thing that The Expanse understands is that any species capable of interstellar travel is so far beyond our current understanding of technology that they would have more in common with Lovecraftian gods than what is imagined in Star Trek, Star Wars or (especially) Stargate.

Yeah, I'm so loving sick of scifi with aliens that might as well be humans. Not just in terms of looks, but evens simply being some sort of species that has something we can recognise as a society and communicate with. Oh these aliens look alien, they're a bus-sized shell with dozens of tentacles sticking out, but they build cities, they have spaceships, they have politics and a class structure and a government. We can relate to them, they're very very different but they're still understandable.

I love that expanse has aliens so advanced and so beyond anything we can understand that, like you said, they might as well be lovecraft poo poo. The settlers didn't arrive on Illus and find the ruins of cities. No "oh, this must have be something like an alien marketplace or square, here's what were obviously huge apartment blocks but look how WEIRD their apartments were!" nah, totally alien unknowable poo poo.

Sandwich Anarchist
Sep 12, 2008
I'm starting to be certain that the builders were incorporeal

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

Sandwich Anarchist posted:

I'm starting to be certain that the builders were incorporeal

They have like hallways and poo poo inside their facilities, but maybe that's just for maintenance bots or something. They might have become something like the "Endless" in endless space, entirely virtual, livin' in the cloud.

double nine
Aug 8, 2013

Sandwich Anarchist posted:

I'm starting to be certain that the builders were incorporeal

Slashrat
Jun 6, 2011

YOSPOS
It's funny to consider that even now that humanity in The Expanse is an interstellar society, it's only by being a parasite on the remnants of an older and far more advanced lifeform. Human society is likely doomed to always remain so too rather than eventually replicating protomolecule tech, just like a vine growing over a derelict structure can never hope to become the structure itself; but just become so thick that the structure underneath is hidden from view.

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


ZorajitZorajit posted:

I'd like to see more elaboration on the problematic colonialist element of this season. And I'd like to better understand the critique of it, because right now I feel like I'm pretty white and goony about the question. Which is to say, no one is being genocided on Ilus so why not move in. But I've seen discussion from First Nations individuals on Twitter that the whole show is propping up colonialist narratives about how good it is to 'claim new territory.'

It's Twitter.

They are doing a colonialism is bad story but it's the RCE colonialists vs the Belter "natives". There is no intelligent native life on Ilus.

There are also people who make this same sort of dumb point about Mars exploration and think it's clever. Claiming the idea of colonizing Mars is the same as colonizing the Americas just shows you don't understand how words work, not that you've come up with some brilliant narrative about history.

Nail Rat
Dec 29, 2000

You maniacs! You blew it up! God damn you! God damn you all to hell!!
Who else would buy a Belter Creole dictionary? Because I really wish it existed already.

Nail Rat
Dec 29, 2000

You maniacs! You blew it up! God damn you! God damn you all to hell!!

Sandwich Anarchist posted:

I'm starting to be certain that the builders were incorporeal

They're a species that sublimed. They're still around they just don't give a gently caress.

Everyone
Sep 6, 2019

by sebmojo

Fidel Cuckstro posted:

It doesn't matter whether there are or aren't, because the point is nobody cares. All that matters is extraction. Profit motive. The noise is terrible Mr. Ellsworth, like fate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyPypl6Lxgo

edit- It rules that I tried to search for that quote and instead all the wikiquote sites transcribed all the lines up to that one.

Okay, you posted a cool scene from a cool show, but I'm not sure what it has to do with this. The "profit motive" for the Belters is survival. They have to get money to buy stuff to be able to permanently live on "New Terra." They want themselves, their children and future generations to be able to be free of the threat of being cowed into submission to Earth/Mars by being starved of food, water and oxygen. So, yeah, pulling enough stuff out of the ground to buy what they need to do all that is absolutely and understandably paramount to them.

As for Mutry and his ilk, there's your "profit motive." They want to evict/kill the Belters and piggy-back on their set-up because that's cheaper than finding another planet (or just scouting and setting up another mining operation on that planet).

Grand Fromage posted:

It's Twitter.

They are doing a colonialism is bad story but it's the RCE colonialists vs the Belter "natives". There is no intelligent native life on Ilus.

There are also people who make this same sort of dumb point about Mars exploration and think it's clever. Claiming the idea of colonizing Mars is the same as colonizing the Americas just shows you don't understand how words work, not that you've come up with some brilliant narrative about history.

Well, I guess it is if you choose define the ancestors of the First Nations' people coming to the Americas in prehistoric times to settle it as "colonizing." Because that's the closest analogue to humans permanently settling on Mars - or on these new worlds.

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Cojawfee
May 31, 2006
I think the US is dumb for not using Celsius

Everyone posted:

Okay, you posted a cool scene from a cool show, but I'm not sure what it has to do with this. The "profit motive" for the Belters is survival. They have to get money to buy stuff to be able to permanently live on "New Terra." They want themselves, their children and future generations to be able to be free of the threat of being cowed into submission to Earth/Mars by being starved of food, water and oxygen. So, yeah, pulling enough stuff out of the ground to buy what they need to do all that is absolutely and understandably paramount to them.

As for Mutry and his ilk, there's your "profit motive." They want to evict/kill the Belters and piggy-back on their set-up because that's cheaper than finding another planet (or just scouting and setting up another mining operation on that planet).

Ellsworth represents the belters. Honest people who have a rightful (as rightful as you can get I suppose) claim to the land who just want to mine some resources to get money to make a decent living. Wolcott represents Murtry who was sent by someone who lives far away and doesn't give two shits about the people who are already there. He does whatever he wants and gets away with it because he's connected to powerful people. Murtry is there to tell the belters that someone far away has claimed the land for themselves and they should just go away or be run over.

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