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Woah there's a B5 thread! And it's 85 pages!
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Apr 4, 2019 03:28
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 04:31 |
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I'm really getting a Quark and Rom vibe from Londo and Vir. Sure, Quark didn't go full evil war criminal but of the two of them Quark was the very traditional one obsessed with achieving "success" as defined by their culture, while Rom and Vir were misfits who were seen as failures and nontraditional by their own cultures, but as ethical and cool people by outsiders. Both are poo poo on by their high-status bosses who see them as naive idiots, but both are actually loved in their own way. Both are low status "naive voice of reason" types acting counter to their high-status counterparts. Both end up becoming reformist leaders of their entire societies.
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Apr 4, 2019 16:31
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I'm watching B5 for the first time now, and yeah there's similarities, but I also love DS9 and think it's pretty unfair (and pointless) to fan war about who "ripped off" who. Both shows are good. I ran a scifi rpg with some friends having never read or seen The Expanse, it turned out my worldbuilding and a ton of plot elements were ridiculously similar to the point that anyone could have said it was very obvious I had cribbed most everything from The Expanse. But there's just a ton of stuff that's going to end up seeming and playing out in similar ways when you've got similar starting points and general ideas. Also even if DS9 was like "yeah paramount started us off with a bunch of notes and ideas we cribbed from B5" I wouldn't think anything less of the show. All IP should be stolen. It's lovely when money's involved, but both shows managed to get on TV. B5's absolutely the more cult underdog, but it had to be to do the type of storytelling TV just wasn't ready for in the 90's.
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Apr 4, 2019 19:33
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 Ah Captain Sisko, I'm simply here to ask you a question: "What do you want?"
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Apr 5, 2019 16:18
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Even though I don't think it was ever mentioned on the show, it's seemingly common fan lore that Babylon 4 had engines mounted so that it could move. I figure this comes out of the original plan of B4 later becoming Babylon Prime and being able to roam around (jesus, that'd be a monster starship to be tooling around in that setting!) but did anyone (JMS, art guys, rando internet nerd) ever offer a reason why Earth Alliance would bother mounting engines on a giant space habitat? You'd need at the very least station-keeping thrusters and things like that. Some lovely little engines to move the station in case of a disaster or emergency just seem like a fairly obvious thing to add to the design.
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Apr 26, 2019 22:21
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So I'm mid way through season 4, Mimbari civil war is happening. There's already been all this inter-caste poo poo but do we ever see the worker caste? They're always going on about 3 casts but it seems only the worker and religious have a seat at any tables or are represented. Mimbar needs a fuckin' proletariat revolution.
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Apr 29, 2019 19:48
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What's like the demographics of the mimbari? It can't be an even 3-way split between the castes, you can't have 1 worker supporting 1 soldier and 1 priest.
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Apr 29, 2019 22:08
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The Mimbari are, as a whole, a deeply backward, genocidal, ultra-conservative imperialistic power barely held in check by the politicial machinations of people like Delen. Also Delen's little lacky is a kinda lovely dude. I get the sense he doesn't do anything out of any sort of convictions, just a sense of blind duty and his incel love for Delen.
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May 1, 2019 01:00
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Neddy Seagoon posted:You would be 100% correct about Lennier. There was a scene where some dude at the space airport was chatting with him and he was all fussy and annoyed by it. I guess telling the dude he didn't want to talk would break some holy pact of politeness, he instead made up a story about how he has some horrible contagious disease and was going home to die from it. The friendly but a bit overbearing dude gave his condolences and left him alone. He rolled his eyes and said to him self that he'll just do some extra prayer ritual or what ever to make up for that white lie. His whole life is about maximizing karma points or what ever, he's like Doug from The Good Place who figured out the point system and is living a 100% selfless life to maximize his points, but not because he's an actual good dude who cares about the world, simply because he's gotta maximize his good place points. Leneer sees the entire world as something he just has to endure and roll his eyes at over the hope he'll what.. get enough soul points for the universe to reward him with Delen? I could see the guy going full incel mass-shooter the moment he knows that ship has sailed or his religion's just some myths and moral guidance.
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May 1, 2019 01:38
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The actress who plays "Number One" on Mars has the weirdest voice. Is she doing an accent? Is she deaf? Is it just really weird delivery?
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May 1, 2019 19:53
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Torrannor posted:You can't just call them backward without any qualifiers, because they're certainly not technologically backward. Their society is. They apparently have a vast collection of "protectorates" which they simply "protect" out of the goodness and honour of their hearts and totally don't gain economic benefits from these lesser races.
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May 1, 2019 20:10
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Torrannor posted:We have virtually no information about the "protectorates". They could be exploitative in nature, or benevolent. The Mimbari were described several times as notably isolationist, which doesn't really square with being imperialist. So was ancient China, but they sure loved their local tributaries, which they saw as a natural and a benevolent arrangement. The military caste was also going on about how they need to go back to "practical" wars fought for concrete gains rather than moral reasons.
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May 1, 2019 23:45
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Fixing a motorcycle and riding around the station Lennier seems a bit different from chip on his shoulder cuck incel Lennier. And I'm not throwing around the word cuck, he litterally had to stand there while John shouted "woohoo" with her and pretend it was a great honour. Anyways, looking forward to season 5, I heard it's the weakest season from some folks and I'm sad it will be the last.
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May 2, 2019 01:00
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Our efforts should be to lose the rest of Dr Who in the same place.
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Aug 6, 2019 18:48
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"Just following orders" and "I signed an oath to obey the legal government, who ever that might be" are absolutely not excuses and people using them to support fascism absolutely should have been run out of the military. Sometimes there's times for burying the hatchet, sometimes you need a good purge. "But but we need experienced officers!" is what got a ton of nazi's off the hook and back to work in post-war germany. gently caress centrist "neutral" loyalty to the state.
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Aug 27, 2019 19:12
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Yeah I watched the same podcast thing too. I love DS9 but had never watched their show until someone from B5 was on, odd. Always thought Lyta was just what ever, a minor main character who was fine I guess. But after the interview I'm a big fan of hers. She seems extremely cool and passionate about the work she's done and boy has she done a LOT of work. Just an all around interesting person!
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Jan 6, 2021 19:51
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VinylonUnderground posted:I think people also need to discuss how B5 gives comprehensive insight into the mind of an incel terrorist. Very prescient and much more timely now than in the '90s. Lennier or Marcus??
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Feb 8, 2021 06:19
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There's a shocking amount of like hard right people super into scifi even shows that seem absolutely explicitly anti-fascism and anti-authoritarian. They often don't see them selves as fascists, specially more old school "classical liberals" or what ever. When Babylon 5 takes a stand against the coup on earth they remember how it felt during the Obama years when freedom was under attack. With a bit of media manipulation and some false flag bombings extremists could take over any time and create a brutal soviet style dictatorship and put middle america in gulags which is what the left wants. Ministry of truth is just like these SJW language-police that want to ban certain words (like racial slurs) or use 1984 style new-speak like "pronouns" thinking it will some how make society better. The cowardly short sighted League refusing to heed their warnings about the shadows and unite in military action is just like how so much of the world won't take the muslim menace seriously and didn't support the US in their invasion of Iraq and greater war on terror but the noble US fought to keep the whole planet safe. Brave men making hard choices and being willing to die or do unpopular things in a very clear good vs evil battle is exactly how they like to imagine them selves. Or there's the fact that a lot of people don't really watch shows with a political lens. They like the spaceships and epic struggles of good vs evil. They know they are personally good and the people they don't like are evil so they can relate. Sure they'll roll their eyes here and there when the show "gets political" but everyone knows hollywood is controlled by the libs so obviously they were forced to put some of that social justice crap in there. Mostly they just don't think too deeply about any of this stuff, it's just entertainment.
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Feb 12, 2021 01:25
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Goblin Craft posted:Who's defending? It's all trash. Good, I'm glad to see you using the rhetoric we discussed at the last Night Watch meeting. You did well trying to create the illusion that there's any meaningful difference between the so called "alt-right" and the "right", but it's important to also bring up that the left is also filled with dangerous violent terrorists like antifa and BLM. We'll be discussing more advanced rhetorical techniques at the next meeting to be sure to attend.
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Feb 12, 2021 19:42
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I once saw JMS and another piece of media in the closet and they were making references and one of the references looked at me.
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Oct 4, 2021 21:15
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Small White Dragon posted:He's under a fair bit of makeup but I was amused to realize that Bruce Boxleitner is playing the President of the Planetary Union on the Orville. Yeah it was nice seeing him, even under all the makeup he felt very charismatic and presidential.
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Jul 23, 2022 01:08
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So is the new TV series dead and he's just making a comic or audiobook or something?
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Aug 31, 2022 03:38
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 04:31 |
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Yeah this has always been an odd trope I've seen in a lot of scifi and fantasy. Where the super advanced/evolved/wise race ends up being some sort of caste based nightmare dictatorship. But its often passed off as this deeply harmonious society that doesn't even need democracy because there's just so much harmony you see.
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Feb 14, 2024 01:39
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