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Sanguinia posted:I wish I could edit thread titles so I could add "The Most Rapid Boob Changes I've Observed." PM a mod?
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May 4, 2021 02:32
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SlothfulCobra posted:She's wearing pants. It's basically the same uniform as the soldiers of the Valley of the Wind are wearing. I do kinda wonder why her legs are so rigidly back instead of swaying like they're being pushed by the wind currents, but it doesn't read as horny at all. I didn't see it as being deliberately horny either, just kinda funny, kinda eye-rolly, and unnecessary in the context of what type of film it is. In that bit near the end she is wearing pants, definitely. Right at the beginning, though, I'm not so sure, and I'll tag it NWS just to be on the safe side.    ...i mean come onaaanyway for content: I always like when sci-fi authors try to get across a totally alien way of thinking, perceiving the world, or existing. Iain M Banks has, rightfully, already been brought up in this thread, and one particular passage I remember reading and it making me go "whoah" was in I think Excession. It was a few pages long and he was describing the concept the AI Minds had to be mindful of called "the Off Switch". What does a sentient artificial intelligence with vast amounts of processing power do for lesiure? Why, they construct mind-bogglingly complex multi-dimensional VR-scapes in their own minds and lose themselves in there for varying amounts of time. The problem is, when you can create a whole multiverse-sized virtual world that is more real, more compelling to exist in than the real thing could ever be, why would you ever leave? So you have to also create an Off Switch, and you have to place it in a prominent place in your virtual world where it's always easy to use, or you'll stay forever and never wake up. Just the way he wrote that entire bit was awesome. Some good example of interesting descriptions of aliens' POV are Peter F Hamilton when describing the Ly-cilph in his Confederation trilogy, or MorningLightMountain in the Commonwealth Saga. Arthur C Clark has numerous examples of well-concieved aliens though I'll admit my memory of any specifics here is failing me as it's been so long since I read any of his stuff, as has Vernor Vinge with his Dog-like pack-creatures, the Tines. I'm a sucker for outside-the-box weirdness when it comes to describing things that are truly alien, and it must be far more difficult to do than it seems because of how rarely I see it done well.
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May 4, 2021 17:10
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What was the one where the younger members of the species are fully sentient and aware but have latent mindcontrol powers over their elders who do everything for them? I thought that was neat
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May 4, 2021 18:53
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In Fallout New Vegas there's always a short bit that I love when talking to Benny's right hand man, Swank. In New Vegas, Mr. House recruits the tribes squatting in the ruins to run his casinos and he gives each of them a flavor of Vegas to run with. Swank, Benny and the Chairmen go for the smooth talking hip cats routine of the Rat Pack and they change their language from the rougher Wasteland slang to match their new aesthetic. Swank keeps it up marvelously, playing to the cool side, right until you ask him about the Mob inspired Omertas and his disgust for them is so strong he drops the act entirely to tell you they're a shifty pack of scumbags. It's a nice bit of worldbuilding calling back to the origins of the Chairmen before they were allegedly "Civilized."
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May 5, 2021 01:47
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Cactus posted:I didn't see it as being deliberately horny either, just kinda funny, kinda eye-rolly, and unnecessary in the context of what type of film it is. Cactus posted:aaanyway for content:
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May 5, 2021 01:57
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Arcsquad12 posted:In Fallout New Vegas there's always a short bit that I love when talking to Benny's right hand man, Swank. In New Vegas, Mr. House recruits the tribes squatting in the ruins to run his casinos and he gives each of them a flavor of Vegas to run with. Swank, Benny and the Chairmen go for the smooth talking hip cats routine of the Rat Pack and they change their language from the rougher Wasteland slang to match their new aesthetic. I think my biggest regret when I finally played New Vegas was that I couldn't recruit the one Omerta who wasn't a complete bastard from his exile in the Vault Hotel to run the gang once I killed their leaders. Handing it over to the PoS you get leverage on after hearing how he abused the #1 Hooker Lady was depressing. That and there was no special dialogue option to tell Benny "The Game Was Rigged From The Start," if you successfully steal his gun and later use it to kill him. They thought to include it as an achievement challenge but not to give you the most obvious line in the world in the process?!
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May 5, 2021 05:11
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Arcsquad12 posted:In Fallout New Vegas there's always a short bit that I love when talking to Benny's right hand man, Swank. In New Vegas, Mr. House recruits the tribes squatting in the ruins to run his casinos and he gives each of them a flavor of Vegas to run with. Swank, Benny and the Chairmen go for the smooth talking hip cats routine of the Rat Pack and they change their language from the rougher Wasteland slang to match their new aesthetic. I think there's a bit where you can talk to Caesar about the White Glove Society, and how he thinks they're fascinating for going from a cannibal gang to mysterious, well-dressed gourmets, deliberately taking on the antithesis of their former persona, and believes they'll eventually have to face their past and come to a synthesis. (hence the one guy who really wants to eat other rich people, bringing up the issue of what happens when a cannibal becomes a gourmet)
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May 5, 2021 07:54
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Sanguinia posted:I think my biggest regret when I finally played New Vegas was that I couldn't recruit the one Omerta who wasn't a complete bastard from his exile in the Vault Hotel to run the gang once I killed their leaders. Handing it over to the PoS you get leverage on after hearing how he abused the #1 Hooker Lady was depressing. That's why you lure the PoS into the meeting with the two higher-ups, talk them into blowing him away, then take the two of them out. Bam, mission accomplished, even if the game dialogue isn't quite ready to acknowledge just how it goes down, and goes on as if the PoS was still alive.
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May 6, 2021 10:31
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I think there's a bit where you can talk to Caesar about the White Glove Society, and how he thinks they're fascinating for going from a cannibal gang to mysterious, well-dressed gourmets, deliberately taking on the antithesis of their former persona, and believes they'll eventually have to face their past and come to a synthesis. (hence the one guy who really wants to eat other rich people, bringing up the issue of what happens when a cannibal becomes a gourmet) Actually, this reminds me that my BIGGEST regret was not being able to challenge Caesar on some of the Legion's most horrific elements when you're talking things out with him during his attempt to recruit you. At a bare minimum not being able to demand answers from him about why he treats women like poo poo WHEN YOU ARE A WOMAN is absolute nonsense. If you want me to even consider throwing in my lot with the Legion you better give me the opportunity to believe I'm not going to be a chained brood-mare the second I fall asleep in a Legion camp. The fact that there's a reason in some lore book is immaterial. Oh, and THAT reminds me how I found that letter at the NCR Ranger camp the Legion sacked saying they took one woman alive and how I really hoped I'd be able to find her and rescue her, and then I find out on a wiki that only a male who sides with the Legion can meet her and your only option when you do is to murder her. The game is a masterpiece but it really does have a handful of things that really bug me. I wish it had had like another 9 months of development time, imagine what they could have done...
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May 7, 2021 05:16
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Here's a thing that made an impression on me. So basically in the world of Girl Genius, most of the world is teeming with the leavings of errant mad scientists, roaming across the empty areas between towns, posing a danger to travelers, but they also become a valuable resource to harvest parts and supplies from.   It's sort of been forgotten about in the comic in later days as the main characters have been able to take secure transit basically everywhere they go for a long while now, between defended train lines and airships, but the idea of roaming robots in the wilderness that you have to hunt down for their parts really captivates me.
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May 21, 2021 15:51
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Wow, I completely and absolutely forgot about Girl Genius. I had (and maybe still have) the original physical comics. I lost track of it, then heard it went to a webcomic version or something? Huh, wonder if it's worth trying to get back in to
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May 21, 2021 16:30
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wow that artist cannot draw faces at all. it’s almost impressive how bad they are. very weird since the rest of the art seems decent at worst
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May 21, 2021 16:39
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Partly the colorist for that part wasn't great, partly that's just his style. Phil Foglio art stands out.
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May 21, 2021 21:10
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Arthur C Clarke's 'The Light of Other Days'. About creating wormholes, but realizing that they could turn them into watching any point of time in the past. The moment when the inventor stands up and declares to the room with only the other inventor there 'Hah, look you bastards of the future, I INVENTED THIS' or words to that effect. The next line was something like 'The billions of billions of watchers watched on in silence'. I could be over remembering the impact of this, but man it was cool. Then how society changed. If anyone can see everyone's past, there was no point lying, no need for clothes as you could watch that person when in the shower, etc. Rama Series Most of it in general. But one sticks out is the reason for the different heights for the frozen ocean borders, one much much taller than the other. Revealed books later. Farscape How Scorpius is one of the best written bad guys ever imo, and how he will align with anyone to get his main mission. Also how Crichton' mentally breaks down a few time in the series, something the hero usually never does. Homeworld 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrW4jkQdmjI All of it really. But you never saw your own race in the original Homeworld 1 game videos, only that you were vaguely humanoid. The only footage I can remember is when you capture a Taidan pilot, who is human. I played the poo poo out of the game back then, was on forums and such, and someone pointed this out, that you could have been an alien race. Aliens good guys, humans bad. Blew my mind back then. They retconned that in HW2 and made them humans then, boo. Transmetropolitan How TV and society will just become full on porn and violence. Seasame Street has full on sex, gore laden cartoons, that there are no taboos or such on them. happyhippy fucked around with this message at 00:19 on May 22, 2021 |
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May 22, 2021 00:07
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At least the Vaygr are still alien. And they have the best looking ships and the best theme music.
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May 22, 2021 00:12
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Arcsquad12 posted:At least the Vaygr are still alien. And they have the best looking ships and the best theme music. Makaan's pretty clearly a dude
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May 22, 2021 00:17
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Arcsquad12 posted:At least the Vaygr are still alien. And they have the best looking ships and the best theme music. You see Makaan's face in one of the cutscenes. The Vagyr are definitely human too. It's the Turanic Raiders who are described, at least in Cataclysm's manual, as being vaguely aquatic reptilian, and how their cockpits were filled with this weird teal-coloured fluid that would spray everywhere in space when they were punctured. I do, however, kind of of appreciate the implied idea with everyone being more or less human in the Homeworld universe that galactic civilization originated on like one or two planets and one race has been spacefaring for so long that it's managed to fracture into multiple disparate empires that have been around for thousands of years themselves now and are as alien to one another as they are to the actual aliens out there in the universe as well.
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May 22, 2021 00:23
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nine-gear crow posted:You see Makaan's face in one of the cutscenes. The Vagyr are definitely human too. It's the Turanic Raiders who are described, at least in Cataclysm's manual, as being vaguely aquatic reptilian, and how their cockpits were filled with this weird teal-coloured fluid that would spray everywhere in space when they were punctured. RBA Starblade posted:Makaan's pretty clearly a dude Makaan may be a dude but he could also be Taiidani. The Vaygr are space mongols pushing through the remnants of the Taiidan empire so they could be more of a conglomerate of species, Taiidani included. The concept art for the Vaygr implies they were meant to be more alien at some point. 
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May 22, 2021 01:00
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Since the galaxy Homeworld takes place in is a real one (the Whirlpool Galaxy), I always assumed that it took place so far in the future that humanity had traveled there from the Milky Way, established a civilization (the Progenitors) that fell and fractured into every empire we see in the Homeworld series, and it's just been so long that nobody remembers any of this any more. IIRC, even what we see of the Bentusi in Cataclysm looks human.
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May 22, 2021 02:45
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Polaron posted:even what we see of the Bentusi in Cataclysm looks human. They will not be bound.
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May 22, 2021 02:53
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The worldbuilding in Homeworld 2 was a hot mess, but Homeworld 1 left everything about the galaxy very vague anyways. There's not a lot of works that have the guts to just do the whole story about aliens with no humans in sight.
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May 22, 2021 03:40
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SlothfulCobra posted:It's sort of been forgotten about in the comic in later days as the main characters have been able to take secure transit basically everywhere they go for a long while now, between defended train lines and airships, but the idea of roaming robots in the wilderness that you have to hunt down for their parts really captivates me. Makes me think of Horizon Zero Dawn
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May 22, 2021 03:54
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There's definitely signs even in HW1 that the various factions we see are just children playing in the graveyards of giants. Look at the Junkyard Dog inside of the wrecked dyson sphere: a ship a little bigger than an assault frigate capable of effortlessly disabling heavy cruisers and taking more punishment than the Mothership. You also run into the ghost ship, which can subvert anything larger than a corvette and that you never really defeat, just disable long enough to get away. Also, I'm pretty sure you see Karan Sjet in the very first game and she's recognizably human. It's all moot anyway thanks to Deserts of Kharak, of course, but still.
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May 22, 2021 03:55
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Sanguinia posted:Makes me think of Horizon Zero Dawn I feel like it loses something when you're just breaking down sheet metal into pointy bits. They never actually use any of the mechanisms to do things.
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May 22, 2021 06:01
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SlothfulCobra posted:I feel like it loses something when you're just breaking down sheet metal into pointy bits. They never actually use any of the mechanisms to do things. Ehhh, that's not TOTALLY true. Aloy uses other parts for weapon and armor upgrades as well as trap mechanism and custom trick arrows. More importantly merchants buy more advanced components that you don't use yourself, which I feel implies that people are making some use out of them beyond just breaking them down for arrowheads and coins.
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May 22, 2021 09:20
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Polaron posted:Also, I'm pretty sure you see Karan Sjet in the very first game and she's recognizably human. It's all moot anyway thanks to Deserts of Kharak, of course, but still. You do, at the start and at the end:   They reworked the intro/end to make her definite human in the remastered ones. happyhippy fucked around with this message at 18:16 on May 22, 2021 |
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May 22, 2021 18:13
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"They're made of meat" was such a good enjoyable short script and a funny way to think about what it truly means to be alien. Makes a good short film someone did too. The other is I read an astounding number of short sci-fi stories and one was the planet has brutal super long winters so the people were engineered/evolved to go involuntarily into cocoons of goo that kept them in stasis when it got cold and theyd wake up for another brief "summer" between the thousand year winters that would radically alter the landscape so long term construction and continuity of place impossible. Just an interesting way to prevent people having records or civilization markers and how that impacts society and the passing of knowledge.
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May 22, 2021 18:28
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I got thinking about this today but how would people raised in space develop a sense of direction? Are there any bits of sci-fi that talk about this concept?
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May 23, 2021 02:13
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When I saw Avatar in theaters in 2009, I thought that the spaceship was really cool, but when I dug deeper I was really surprised. Picture showing how the ship is propelled when arriving at and leaving Pandora. The Venture Star from Avatar. It's not immediately obvious, but the engines are at the FRONT of the ship, so the engines PULL the rest of the ship forward (whereas traditionally engines are at the BACK of the ship and PUSH the rest of it forward). This is ingenious because the ship can cut a huge amount of mass, as it's easier to build something to withstand tension forces than to withstand comprehesion forces. The engines are used to decelerate when arriving at Pandora, and when leaving Pandora to accelerate back towards Earth, so it only needs enough engine fuel for half of the ship. The ship will be propelled by a laser battery in the SoL system for the other half of the trip.  Picture showing how the ship is propelled when leaving from and returning to Earth. The mirror/sail looking thing at the BACK of the Venture Star is NOT a solar sail. The solar sail isn't shown in the movie, but it is deployed IN FRONT OF THE ENGINES when the Venture Star is leaving Earth. A laser beam in the Sol system PUSHES the solar sail to accelerate the ship from Earth to Pandora, or to decelerate it when it is returning from Pandora to Earth. The mirror shield at the BACK of the ship is to protect the crew and cargo compartments incase the laser hits it. This also has some rather dark implications. One common complaint about the movie is "why do the RDA have unlimited power? Aren't they just a corporation? Won't they all be arrested when they are sent back to Earth? How is there going to be a second movie where the RDA come back if they're all in jail?". Well... the Venture Star takes 6 years to travel from Earth to Pandora, travelling at 70% the speed of light. If the ship is being pushed by a laser... then that means the RDA pretty much has a DEATH STAR LASER... which means they can pretty much hold earth hostage with it and annihilate anyone who disobeys them. The RDA isn't a corporation beholden to anybody. They are effectively a one world order everyone else on Earth answers to. No wonder they're coming back in the sequel. This probably also explains why no laser has been built in the Pandora system yet. Because if it existed, well... there wouldn't really be a plot because then the RDA could just laser every Na'vi settlement on Pandora unopposed. Not that it excuses the RDA for being stupid during the movie, such as flying their bomber low enough for the flying creatures to be able to reach and destroy their bomber, or not just firing relativistic kill vehicles/rods from the gods from orbit.
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May 23, 2021 02:16
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Arcsquad12 posted:I got thinking about this today but how would people raised in space develop a sense of direction? Are there any bits of sci-fi that talk about this concept? The ear helps us with balance, there are the semi-circular canals of your inner ears. These canals are lined with tiny hairs and filled with liquid. When you move, the fluid bends the hairs, and they tell your brain what's happening. With gravity I would assume we learn '2D' movements (as our up and down directions are sort of fixed) as babies exploring and so learning what's 'natural'. In space, maybe babies will find it easier to do '3D' movements, up and down are now totally relative to everything else. So they will learn to just move intuitively, and be natural for them. There's just going to be more head injuries in the beginning as lil' Buzz faceplants on every surface in the ship. So any sense of direction will be 'wherever I am facing at right now'. Then again Im talking bollocks. Its 3am
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May 23, 2021 03:26
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The end of Blade Runner when Deckard finds the paper unicorn.
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May 23, 2021 20:17
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It's too bad they won't let the Blade Runner release changes end. Then again, who does.
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May 23, 2021 21:05
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Arcsquad12 posted:It's too bad they won't let the Blade Runner release changes end. Random trivia: The crane shot during that alternate ending of Bladerunner was just footage recylced from the beginning of The Shining. I feel like Ridley Scott called in a favor or something. Maybe like that time NASA called in the favor to fake the moon landing with Kubrick. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQsa8rtmHpM sigma 6 fucked around with this message at 01:26 on May 24, 2021 |
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May 24, 2021 00:27
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4rgswnjpZg The whole Endless setting is full of cool as hell poo poo (hello Kapaku), but the first 10s or so of this are some of my favorite storytelling from a scifi and has been stuck in my brain for years. To give a little more context as to what the gently caress this all means - everything about the Endless series is about playing in the graveyard of giants. At some point in the medium-distant past, the whole galaxy was ruled by the hubristic "Endless," and by the start of whatever story you're in, they've utterly beefed it, usually attributed to a civil war between the Concrete and Virtual Endless (basically between "we want to be gods of the physical realm" and "gently caress you we want to spend all our resources uploading ourselves into supercomputers"). The Cravers are one of the repeat factions of the series - genetically engineered supersoldiers created by the Virtuals. Part of what makes them valuable is that they are, innately, hyperconsumptive. Sure they'll win a lot of battles, but they ALSO will just continuously eat and ravage any environment you leave them in. Their planets are super-productive for a while, but then fall apart as the Cravers tear up everything, making everywhere they touch less valuable and attractive to the Concrete. They're like sentient, sapient, grey goo. So yeah. "We were already hungry when they created us."
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May 24, 2021 16:51
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The Endless Space games also had one of the best factions in 4X game history, the Horatio. The gist of it is that an eccentric Howard Hughes-esque billionaire goes exploring in the uncharted regions of the galaxy, finds some ancient Endless cloning tech, and decides that if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. So decades later a new expansionist empire emerges, populated entirely with identical copies of the most perfect and beautiful thing in creation: Horatio. If I recall, they had bonuses to populating planets quickly, as they are able and eager to rapidly pump out more clones on a holy mission to convert as much of the universe's mass as they can into more of themself. Their penalty was their ships were more expensive, since they were filled with gold filigree and frescoes and statues and poo poo of themselves. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exRFQXX3oeg
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May 26, 2021 14:54
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Horatio is an incredible faction. The center of their strategy is taking minority populations and grinding them up into goo that boosts the power of all Horatio populations (as opposed to the Vodyani who just kidnap people for straight-up food). It's an incredible evil empire and they even made an entire dating sim about being a Horatio.
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May 26, 2021 17:32
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One of the threads in PYF talked about how Endless has both ghost robots and robot ghosts, and even having briefly played Legend I have absolutely no idea what that means.
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May 26, 2021 21:30
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Virtual Endless and the Riftborn, I guess? Whatever, Vaulters 4 lyfe.
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May 27, 2021 16:04
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Strom Cuzewon posted:One of the threads in PYF talked about how Endless has both ghost robots and robot ghosts, and even having briefly played Legend I have absolutely no idea what that means. I played through Dungeon of the Endless so much I almost 100% it, and I still couldn't tell you dick about the lore other than that it's cool as gently caress. It's like everything evocative about WH40k but with the edgelord blissfully smoothed over.
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May 27, 2021 16:39
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The Three Body Problem series: The Swordholder Luo Ji single-handedly holds back the Trisolaran conquest of Earth for over fifty years. Within seconds of his successor being appointed, Earth falls. The storytelling in that series was so different from what I expected/was used to from western Sci-Fi, it hooked me.
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May 31, 2021 14:44
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