The Expanse, Season 2: Stay away from the agua.

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > The Expanse, Season 2: Stay away from the agua.

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Man, they got a six foot tall Maori boxer and people still complain that they didn't cast her like they imagined her in the books? Jesus.

grilldos posted:

One of my issues with the show is how few of the Martians, specifically all of the ones we just met, don't have a southern drawl. It's a defining characteristic of Martians, and yes, it's this weird over-utilized point of pride for them.

Mars is a whole planet. The Mariner Valley is just one region, and even then not everyone there has an exaggerated drawl like Alex. It's like asking why there aren't more Texan accents in this group of American marines.

It would be cute to see more Martians with drawls, but it'd be silly if they overused it.

a few DRUNK BONERS posted:

So why were the people on that station firing gel guns? What was the point?

That's quite a mystery isn't it!

We also have no idea what the deal was with those psycho dudes scientists strapped into a computer. Considering we only just had a minute conversation with the head scientists before he got Miller'd, there's still a lot that was going on in that station we don't understand.

Real Edit:

grilldos posted:

You will surely find out, and there were some hints as to why, but not done nearly as well enough as in the books.

Fake Edit: I swear I like this show a lot, but these first two episodes have some serious flaws.

Man, I don't get this. I love the books to death, but so far the show's been better in pretty much every way so far.

Eiba fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Feb 3, 2017

# ¿ Feb 3, 2017 21:16

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 15:29

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

grilldos posted:

To be fair, I am going off of the world built by the books here, which very much makes a thing out of the accent being the norm. The show is an entirely different beast, granted.

No they don't. One or two odd characters have the accents in the book, and it's an accent associated with Mars, but it's not exactly common. Bobbie doesn't have the accent, nor does anyone in that short story that takes place on Mars.

quote:

If we want to really dive into it, we can.

Wow, I'm sorry, I guess i don't really want to get into it that much.

I wish I could respond to this in some way, as it seems like a heck of an effort post, but honestly you're using language that I really don't understand. I don't get what you're saying beyond, "it didn't really work [for me]".

I don't keep track of who the director is, and I barely know what blocking even is.

The lasagna scene was well done, warm, and really entertaining, in the same way as the Donkey Balls episode was. Honestly it was even nicer as they weren't under a ton of pressure and we just got to see these people relax.

Thoth seemed like a small operation, yeah, but I assumed that meant it was a small operation in the TV show. It was a huge abandoned station with a few scientists being creepy in a room. Considering I know what's going on from the books, I think it actually makes sense for it to be a much smaller, creepier operation. The books strained my credulity by making it a huge thing.

Dresden was belting out his lines as fast and hastily as possible, true... but that's because he needed to get everything out as fast as possible. People were pointing guns at him and his work was being interrupted. He was alternately worried for his life and annoyed that his incredibly important project was being interrupted.

For what it's worth I think we should probably agree to disagree. You seem... pretty passionately disappointed by these episodes that I personally enjoyed the heck out of. That's okay. I hope my previous boggling incomprehension didn't come off as too passive aggressive or anything.

AlternateAccount posted:

I assume that they are some kind of "less lethal" suppression rounds designed to just incapacitate? But I don't remember seeing anyone that would need that except the cracked-out people in the chairs. And what exactly were THEY doing?
Big station though, maybe there's a bunch of protomolecule zombies elsewhere?

Miller did say that they were the type of weapon you'd find in a prison so we can assume they're basically nonlethal weapons, yeah.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2017 01:15

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

flosofl posted:

To be fair, the point of criticism is not necessarily to hate on a thing. And in this point I think grilldos is trying to counter the gushing of "PERFECT EPISODE" with some valid arguments. And let's be honest, while I think it was a good episode and I enjoyed it, it was far from a perfect episode.

For honest criticism, I think the hope is that the show runners DO pay attention to it and use it constructively to improve and address the shortcomings.

I don't think there was any rush of "perfect episode!" here though.

He even said he was responding to praise it got elsewhere.

As someone who enjoyed the episode (personal taste) it seemed... kind of excessive. Especially since my impression of the thread is that it was oddly down on it. Though I suppose I can understand where he's coming from. People disagreeing with your opinion sticks in your head more (hence me remembering mainly criticism in this thread, when it was probably more balanced) and eventually you gotta say something.

Edit: What a lame first post on the page. Sorry. I should probably resist posting about posting more.

Eiba fucked around with this message at 06:10 on Feb 4, 2017

# ¿ Feb 4, 2017 06:08

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Combat Pretzel posted:

Next episode sneek peak, haven't seen it posted. Kind of spoilerish I'd say.

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

I actually like this. It seems like a whole scene, with full context, rather than your normal teaser of random episode bits taken out of context.

It's also a really good scene by itself.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2017 02:40

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Just a friendly reminder that the book thread exists and is a lovely place, if a bit quiet at the moment.

I'm sure no one would mind if you speculate or muse about the future of the TV adaptation in there too.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 03:53

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

emanresu tnuocca posted:

Yeah that was absurd, it almost felt like an intentional joke with how awful it was.

And you even see the starfield moving sideways opposite of the direction the station's spin, what could possibly make someone fall downwards in that situation.

I feel like I'm missing something. Why wouldn't the star field be moving in that direction? They must be at the flat end of the rotational cylinder, like looking out the side of a wheel. Wouldn't it look like that?

The guy would fall down for the same reason everyone else is standing on the floor, the station's rotation.

The only silly thing in my mind was why they had an airlock in the wall rather than in the floor like on Ceres. And also he got blown backwards pretty dramatically by the relatively small amount of air in that airlock.

Edit:

WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

He should have been flung along the trajectory the stars in the background are going.

Oooh, you think they were looking down. Nah, they were looking out the side. For whatever reason.

Edit2: I really appreciate how they get acceleration/gravity right in this show, without making a big deal about it. But it's cool when it's emphasized, like the scene with Amos opening the safe in the airlock, how you see the ship in a traditional sideways orientation and zoom in on Amos who's sideways relative to that.

Honestly it's made any other sci-fi ship design feel silly with how the decks are all oriented perpendicular to the direction the ship goes. Even if you have artificial gravity, surely it'd make more sense to have your gravity compensate for acceleration at the same time, rather than making it work in two directions (or a weird angle) every time you move.

Eiba fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Feb 6, 2017

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 15:58

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

emanresu tnuocca posted:

The station's spin doesn't generate some gravitational field, the centripetal force just pushes people towards the axis of rotation, it's just the normal force of the hull really. It will have no effect upon anyone outside the station.

So you can imagine that the hull is actually moving sideways at a decent clip, but always arcing "up" because it's round and moving in a circle. If you "fall" out of the spinning cylinder, you're going to stop moving in an arc, but you will, in Newtonian fashion, keep moving sideways in a straight line. From the perspective of the people watching you on the station, who are being pulled up and away by the rotation, it will appear that you're falling (more or less) straight down below their feet until the rotation of the station turns them away.

Spin gravity is cool and fun to think about!

Edit: Trust us, the spin gravity was depicted absolutely perfectly in that scene. The weird bit was what pushed him out of the airlock. He probably should have just fallen to the floor and suffocated, but for dramatic effect he got pushed out by the escaping air.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 16:26

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

emanresu tnuocca posted:

What's pushing him anyway? shouldn't he just remain in the airlock and suffocate?

Yeah, that's the real goof.

They make it look like the air pushes him. Maybe there are powerful vents that blow air into the airlock specifically to flush it? They probably just wanted their cool spin gravity drop and honestly, I thought it was really cool so I'm not complaining too much.

Imagine they're in a tall building and there's a vacuum outside. That's basically what happened in the show. Somehow he stumbled outside and fell out the side when the airlock depressurized. It's a bit silly, but not a huge deal. The part that looks silly- him falling in space- is totally accurate.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 16:34

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Toast Museum posted:

The bigger goof is that docking acts like an on switch for gravity, even though the Roci is already matching the motion of the ring in order to dock with it.

I have to go back and check, but I don't think they're pointed the right way for the apparent gravity to be in the direction of the ship's floors, either.

So they do normally hang off of docks by their nose, so that much is right.

I don't remember any external shots when they're docking, but what might be happening is that they're slowly drifting sideways relative to the station, and when the latch on to it it starts pulling them in a circle making them feel gravity.

Imagine this image, if the green arrow (and the rotation of the circle) went the other way:

AlternateAccount posted:

Agreed, but there's some speculation on how the floors are arranged. I guess in the books it's more clear that the floors are more vertically arranged like a big tall office building? Doesn't seem like the rocinante works that way, but maybe it does.

It 100% does. Remember the scene with Amos in the airlock this episode where they zoom in on him "sideways" relative to the ship? Nothing would make sense if it wasn't a tall office building ship.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 17:13

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Oh. Yeah. That scene's totally wrong.

The interior scene could happen if they drifted in on the tangent and were grabbed, but that's clearly not what happened. (And would be a silly way to dock anyway, as it would really stress whatever's grabbing them.)

Still, it's one wrong scene in a show that at least tries, so there's that.

Edit: Actually, I'm not sure what is going on in that scene. There are no thrusters firing to keep the Rocinante lined up with the docking clamps. If the clamps are spinning with the station as they appear, the Rocinante would need to be constantly under thrust to match their arc. They wouldn't be able to just drift next to the clamps like that. You can see little jets for every other movement, but not maintaining their relative position to the dock clamps that should be on a curved (and therefore accelerating) trajectory.

Eiba fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Feb 6, 2017

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 18:55

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Combat Pretzel posted:

I'd wager that a space ship can afford purely tangential motion in combination with rotation around its axis for a short moment, to get caught by the docking clamp, instead of meticulously following the circular path of the ring. So long the alignment stays correct (via rotation). Like this the thrusters don't need to fire all the time. --edit: If some sperg would stabilize the footage and draw paths, I wouldn't be surprised that this is what happens on the top down view.

Wait, I don't fully understand this, but if they don't need thrusters except to orient a bit... doesn't that mean that the scene with Miller is right? He should be moving around a bit for all the minor corrections, but still essentially floating until the clamps latch on.

Kesper North posted:

I love this effect, but the particles should appear to counter-rotate opposite the ship's spin :sperg:

Wait, holy poo poo, when Alex yanks back on the stick they do. Must not have been rotating before. LOVE IT

Not spin, that's regular acceleration. It all falls when he guns the engine because there's no difference between gravity and accelerating. (Unless you mean something else.)

It's all really cool!

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 19:16

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Combat Pretzel posted:

Yeah, he should be moving across the room during the corrections, especially when the Roci enters an ongoing rotational motion (once you start spinning, it keeps going in space), because air drag wouldn't be enough to keep him in place while the ship rotates, unless his room happens to be at the center of rotation. Once the clamp latches to the ship, it'd force the ship into the circular path and create all the centripetal/-fugal forces for gravity.

Ooh. So the real error could be the way it's cut. Assuming they did all the maneuvering before cutting to Miller, he could more or less have ended up in that position while they were drifting into position for the final clamping. In fact he could have ended up with all his stuff floating around like that as the result of minor accelerations messing with him. I guess he and his shoes should have been drifting a bit more, but otherwise the scene is just cut wrong by putting that final acceleration between two shots of Miller just floating.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 19:35

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

flosofl posted:

Found a good interview with Chatham on io9 that went up today.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/last-nights-expanse-was-more-proof-that-its-the-best-sc-1792172927

EDIT: OH poo poo. There's spoiler about The Churn in there, so read at your own risk! Sorry thread, I completely glossed over that for some reason. If the thread wants me to remove the link, I will.

I like the bit where Holden's actor points out that Amos has a lot of lines that would otherwise be zingers, but for Amos he's just asking. That kind of simple, honest "just asking" attitude is really well done, and makes Amos way more interesting than your average tough guy..

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 06:16

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Introducing Avasarala early was fantastic and she's been constantly wonderful to have around.

Introducing Bobbie early... hasn't paid off quite so well. Honestly my favorite part of her story in the show so far is her CO. He seems reasonable. Like a reasonable adult in a room full of children, you can kind of sympathize with him.

I don't think they're getting Bobbie wrong, exactly, but this isn't a particularly interesting part of her story. I appreciate the jingoistic Martian perspective as giving us a window into how that culture views things... but there's only so far that angry shouting can go. It would help if they were ever not angry. Her team even seems constantly angry with each other, and I don't think I've heard them say anything that wasn't in a shout.

That's basically my only issue with this season so far. I love how good the last episode was, even though it was basically all just people wandering around and talking on Tycho.

Fister Roboto posted:

I think Diogo is my favorite non-book character. It's going to be really sad when his luck finally runs out and he actually gets killed.

Isn't he from the book? I remember a Belter kid Miller was hanging with during and after Thoth station. Was that not this guy?

Wherever he's from, I agree that he's been pretty good, all things considered. A good window into the belt and a good youthful enthusiastic naive contrast to Miller's old weary pragmatism.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 08:26

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Platystemon posted:

I�ve read the books so perhaps I�m biased, but I think he�s not great in general.

Like, he puts on this gruff voice when he�s talking tough with the OPA faction leaders, which is one thing, but then he uses it with Holden & co. like it�s his normal speaking voice (at least when he�s angry). It just sounds silly.

I've read the books and he seems a perfect match.

But I read the books after season one, so I might have my own biases. I was imagining Johnson as that actor the whole time.

Also, I loved him in the Wire so I'm doubly biased.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2017 01:16

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

fyodor posted:

Part of the problem ok entirely the problem is the actor playing Bobbie is loving terrible at her job.

Really? You don't think it's at all the scripting and directing that has her do nothing but yell and backtalk her superior whenever he's being reasonable? It's all on the actor here?

Like, who could make that likable or interesting?

fyodor posted:

Fair enough. Perhaps I have a bias because she seems miscast for a rough and tumble space marine. Another thought is maybe I'm dumb.

Personally, I have no trouble buying her as a rough and tumble space marine. She's actually totally sold me on that. The issue for me is that rough and tumble space marines are kind of boring and annoying!

# ¿ Feb 11, 2017 07:10

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

NowonSA posted:

Well, yeah, I was hoping to avoid bringing more book spoiler stuff into here and it seems I invited it in. No biggie though. What I meant was the characters don't really sweat a long travel time to get to a job or just to where they want to go the way almost all modern people do. The only modern comparison I can think of is long deployments on military or shipping naval ships, and the closest obvious modern situation is serving for months at a time on a nuclear submarine that's constantly submerged. A lot of people just aren't built to handle that, and I'm sure plenty on Earth aren't in the Expanse, but huge swaths of humanity just treat it as normal.

Obviously the books specify how much travel time is involved because they're books, you have plenty of room for that world building detail stuff.

There might not be many modern parallels, but there are plenty of historical ones. The world was a huge place in the age of sail, but that's the era where the modern global economy began, and "huge swathes" of humanity just got on with what they had to do to make the system work. Living on a piece of technology in a void may be alien to humanity, but we've managed before when it was wood and canvas in the expanse of the sea, and I'm sure we'll manage when it's metal and plastic in the vacuum of space.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2017 07:56

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Tarquinn posted:

Got a quick book/future plot question: Hi, and thanks for moving over this spoiler. It is my understanding that the whole alien/proto molecule angle gets resolved more or less quickly, or at least the story focuses much more on the UN/Martian conflict in the future. Is that correct? No need to give a comprehensive answer, just a quick, yes or no is sufficient. Many thanks in advance!

Not a yes or no, but keeping it vague: there's a couple books worth of material before it really becomes a background detail, but (incredibly vague plot spoiler) the focus is always on the conflict between human groups the whole time.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2017 10:44

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

etalian posted:

probably doesn't help that none of the new martian characters seem to have any chemistry with each other.

Yeah, this is really my biggest issue. Shouty marines, while not my favorite subject, would be a lot more tolerable to watch if they seemed like they got along and were actually comrades who cared for each other, rather than people who just hated everything, including each other.

flosofl posted:

Bobbie - I really hate Earth. A lot. And I'm strong.
The Lieutenant - I sure am war-weary. Really, you kids just don't understand war.
The Rich Bitch - I'm rich but I'm regular folk. I'm also xenophobic to the point of seriously threatening my ELITE squad's cohesion.
Earth Immigrant - I may be from Earth, but Mars is my home. Stop picking on me.
Some Guy: Really, I'm an integral member. But I'll just faaaade into the background.

While I don't like the Martian marines bit, this complaint seems silly. You're basically taking issue with the fact that they have easy to process introductory traits. So far they've introduced five people, made them do stuff so that you can remember who's who... and that's it. What more were they supposed to do with this pile of new characters who only get a few scenes every episode?

I mean, they could have had less lovely hostile introductions, sure, but of course they're just going to have really basic character traits at this point.

Also, isn't that "some guy" a Belter? I forget if he said so, but I was assuming as much based on his build and accent.

WAR CRIME SYNDICAT posted:

Book stuff: What he posted was a lovely hint. By posting this without spoilers you've confirmed it. I agree he shouldn't have put things that way, but you made them worse by not spoiling this.

Eiba fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Feb 11, 2017

# ¿ Feb 11, 2017 19:02

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Gotta say, seeing the gold Angel Moroni flying towards an asteroid to save the day is... a really interesting image!

I was also struck early on when Miller was being shouted at by the Mormon, in his clean cut Mormon suit and tie, when the OPA guard with the face tattoo leaned into the frame... just how utterly out of place these people are.

And it makes sense. They might conceivably have the resources and the motivation. And it's not "lol, mormons, how silly." The Mormon mission is being presented as a legitimately beautiful thing. Fred Johnson had a few lines emphasizing that.

But Jesus, they look so out of place out here.

I love it.

Also, Miller and that kid are a great pair.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2017 07:42

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

MiddleOne posted:

From how it was displayed I just assumed it started accelerating.

The diagram was really interesting.

(I'm spoiling this 'cause I'm a dirty book reader erring on the side of caution, but I'm only pointing out what we saw in the show already without offering any explanation) The orbital path of Eros changed at a pretty sharp angle. It's veered inward, and doesn't appear to be on a circular orbit anymore. That would indeed take a (pretty massive) acceleration, but we were watching the whole time from Miller's perspective... and he wasn't jerked or slammed into anything. There were no signs of acceleration.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2017 09:41

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Big Mean Jerk posted:

This is just me making assumptions, but I don't think actual Good Samaritan doctors would purposely break a quarantine and hack an airlock. They had to be Protogen.

It seemed plausible to me. They mostly figured out what was actually going on- that an entire city had been wiped out as some kind of sick experiment. As far as they knew, no one else knew anything, and so it was worth risking their lives (and incidentally everyone else's lives) to get the information out there. They weren't going to do things by the book, because the people who wrote the book were responsible for this, and they weren't going to stand for it.

Their perspective made sense. Holden's actions made sense. A good person killed good people because of a hosed up situation.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 10:31

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

So my biggest question now is... why hasn't the thread title been changed to "The Mormons are going to be pissed" yet?

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 23:39

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

NowonSA posted:

I wouldn't mind them throwing a curveball and moving parts of the end of book 2 up so they happen earlier, that could be pretty effective.

Yeah, it depends on how they worded what they said about it, but if it was just "we won't cover all of book 2," they could still easily have the finale of book 2 (or elements of it) this season and shift some other stuff until later, and that would qualify as "not all of book 2".

# ¿ Feb 18, 2017 07:04

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Phanatic posted:

If you can move Eros to a significantly different orbit than building a ship like the Nauvoo would not be anywhere near as big a deal as the show makes it seem. It'd be trivial by comparison.

Even if you had different time consideration?

I don't know the math well enough to have an intuitive grasp, but if you put a giant magic Epstein rocket on Eros for, say, a few decades, surely you could do something with it?

They've mentioned that the most ridiculous thing humanity has yet done in space is spinning up Ceres to provide about -0.3 g on the surface (and that Tycho did that, as well as spinning up other asteroids), has anyone ever figured the energy for that out, and how it might compare to this scale of thing?

Edit:

Phi230 posted:

Guys.

Guys.

Calm down and enjoy the ride or else you all will loving have an aneurysm soon. Like maybe tomorrow.

Let go of your preconceived notions or biases or expectations and let Space Jesus take the wheel.

I wouldn't worry about it. I think we all understand that the Expanse is pretty special for caring about physics as much as it does, and I doubt anyone is seriously outraged or anything that it's doing something that's patently silly if you do out the numbers. It's pretty easy to suspend disbelief for a dramatic moment like this, even in a setting that prides itself on getting this stuff "right." And with that in mind it's still fun to see people doing out the math to see what the real implications would be.

Eiba fucked around with this message at 07:35 on Feb 21, 2017

# ¿ Feb 21, 2017 07:30

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Baronjutter posted:

I want everyone to settle down and work together and overthrow capitalism and live a life of peace and luxury harvesting the limitless resources of space.

The Expanse is basically there.

For like 90% of humanity living comfortable lives on Basic, Capitalism is a thing of the past.

It may not be socially desirable, and there may be limitations, but if you live on Earth limitless space resources mean you never have to worry about food, housing, or healthcare ever again. It's a socialist utopia!

So, the masses might overdo it on the drugs and ennui a bit, but they're still free of the evils of capitalism!

Of course the extraction of space resources is still managed in a fairly capitalist way, and as it turns out humans are cheaper than robots for a lot of drudgery out there, but that's just a tiny minority out there. Hardly a social evil on the level of exploitation today, relatively speaking.

But for real, one of my favorite parts of the Expanse is that there really has been so much progress, it's not some dismal dystopian future where everything went wrong, but despite all the advances everything still seems really fundamentally hosed. If you look at the world a few hundred years ago and compare it to today it seems like a fairly plausible historical arc.

Nihonniboku posted:

No.

This has been discussed before. The book thread is mostly dead, and has only been talking about the latest book that most fans read when it came out 3 months ago and have since mostly stopped going to the thread.

If you do begin talking about the show there, it won't take long for someone to start complaining that they haven't seen the show yet and that they don't want any show spoilers there either.

Sorry, all of this is wrong.

There's way less discussion there, which is fine, but it's mainly been about stuff that's happening in the TV show now, like Eros, and upcoming stuff like Ganymede, and some general setting questions. Not much discussion about the latest book, honestly.

And no one's going to complain about discussing differences between the show and books there. That's absurd.

I don't know what ~the rules~ are or should be, but basic consideration would suggest book readers should discuss book/show differences in the book thread, unless they're deliberately contextualizing things for show watchers.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2017 02:22

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Nihonniboku posted:

People are already being considerate by using spoiler tags. That's why they exist.

People have been pretty good about tagging stuff, and that's great.

I'm not actually proposing we ban booktalk or anything, though I do think we'd probably be better off if more people used the book thread, I was just pointing out that you were wrong in basic ways about the book thread.

People can do what they want and there's a lot of ways to be considerate, but discouraging people from using the book thread is dumb.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2017 03:26

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

ATP_Power posted:

It's not deeply explored in the books, but I think that the kind of Basic system depicted in The Expanse is one that supports a capitalistic society, not abolishes it. A having a UBI doesn't mean that you're a socialist utopia.

You're right, in that the economy is clearly capitalistic. I was being fairly facetious, and also using "socialist" in the American sense of "having basic social programs run by the government". The UN has a really robust social safety net, in addition to absurd mega-corporations that can build military-class fleets without anyone noticing. So you know, pluses and minuses.

Platystemon posted:

Mars seems more socialist, but then there’s that one Martian marine whose family owns all the terraformers, so who knows?

Mars is likely a planned economy, rather than a free market economy, but rather than social welfare the goal of the government control is to terraform Mars.

If there are markets and individual ownership of resources, it's probably in the context of a state-controlled economy.

(I may be using any or all of these terms wrong, but I hope it's clear what I mean.)

Number Ten Cocks posted:

The rich Martian is a show invention. But in the later books they mention several Martian ships names after Ayn Rand or her works so I dunno.

Books Mars seems capitalist but with smarter and harder working self selected population harnessed to a unifying social goal, so you don't have the welfare masses of Earth and relatively greater equality and middle class.

It's definitely hugely meritocratic, with a lot of emphasis on achievement, but not individual enrichment. They only value remarkable individuals who contribute to The Cause.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2017 06:34

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

MiddleOne posted:

Makes me wonder why they even bothered introducing them before the Eros plotline was wrapped up. Maybe some actor screen-time contract shenanigans?

Bobbie is a fan favorite from the books. Like Avasarala they probably wanted to introduce her early to excite the fans and generally put more of a known good thing in the show. I know I was excited when I heard season two would open with Bobbie.

Unfortunately she's not automatically great in any context, and "sitting on a ship while angry" is not the most entertaining premise.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2017 08:51

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Fister Roboto posted:

Same, but also the size of Jupiter in the sky. It should "only" be about 7 times bigger than the Moon from Earth (napkin math), not take up the whole drat sky.

Well, I'm no camera expert, but when I take a picture of the moon it's like a tiny dot, but the way you always see it on TV and in pictures it's way bigger, and kind of meshes with the way it feels when you look at it with your naked eye.

Might they be using a similar camera trick to make Jupiter look way bigger to give a feel for how weirdly big it'd look?

(I know the real reason is that it looks cool as heck being that big, and no one but nerds will know the difference.)

# ¿ Mar 3, 2017 06:14

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Grand Fromage posted:

Giant Jupiter is rad who cares. I think Io and Europa are close enough it'd be enormous so that's close enough to reality for me.

I mean, this is obviously true, but like other science stuff it's fun to see smart folks in this thread figure out what it'd really look/act like.

See: the fun derail about the energy it'd take to knock Eros into the sun, with the conclusion being it wouldn't work at all, but it was loving awesome anyway.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2017 06:26

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

I think... I think Dawes is a good guy.

He's an antagonist, but I don't think he's been wrong about anything.

The only real criticism of him is that he's power hungry or something, but he seems to pretty responsible and community oriented with his power, so that's not so bad? He's right about Johnson having a more barter/property based kind of logic, while Dawes is working with the whole gift economy mentality of the Belt. I think that Belter mentality of sharing what you can, and ostracizing hoarders is... probably a pretty solid basis for a non-exploitative economy. Johnson doesn't really seem to get that aspect of things intuitively.

Dawes has a more adversarial view of the system than Johnson or Holden, but he's not a dumb belligerent nationalist. He agreed about returning the nukes, even those are really tempting to hold on to as a symbol of power. He realized, no matter how it feels, they're kind of useless in achieving their goals.

So I think I'm actually on Dawes side here. Is there anything terrible about him I'm forgetting?

counterfeitsaint posted:

As a non book reader (for now, I'll probably read them after this season) I totally agree with you. However, I've gone out of my way not to mention it, because I have no doubt some asshat will come into the thread and post like an entire chapter from one of the later books behind a spoilers tag in response, which has happened several times already in this thread.

As a book reader I cringe whenever this happens. Someone asks a question like, "what's going on with this crazy mystery?" and a book reader takes them literally and posts the answer behind spoilers.

Like, I get that it's fun to explain things, but still, not every question that you know the answer to needs to be answered.

Plus, I like to see show watcher speculate and offer their own opinions and it sucks if you feel discouraged because you see the real answer has already been posted in spoilers.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2017 07:16

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

404notfound posted:

There are two things that characterize the Belters: being essentially indentured servants to Earth and Mars since they were "other" enough to be called Belters, and the good-of-the-community, measure-twice-cut-once mentality of putting environmental considerations before all else. These two have condensed into a multitude of factions that all call themselves OPA, all hating the Inners to varying degrees--which obviously doesn't help the perception of them.

Johnson is trying to legitimize the OPA, using the nukes as a bargaining chip to try and get a seat at the table when it comes to negotiations with Earth and Mars. Dawes wants to unite the Belters as well, but under the banner of independence, without needing to be all buddy-buddy with the Inners.

Dawes is the bad guy from the viewer's point of view, because he's working against what Holden and Johnson (who serves as Holden's patron) are standing for. But that's what makes him compelling--the best villains are right.

Yeah, this seems right. I would say though that Johnson and Holden are Inners who are basically good people who are sympathetic to the Belt... and so they vastly over estimate how kind the Inners in general are.

It'd be nice if we were all on the same side, but will an Earth corporation ever not exploit whatever resources it can? And will people on Earth ever care enough to rein them in? Will Martian interests ever make concessions to the needs of their terraforming project? The Belt is full of poor vulnerable people who will not be benevolently looked after by the majority of the Inners. It needs to represent its own interests as a matter of basic security for the people living there.

Dawes is right and Johnson is naive.

Edit:

Platystemon posted:

Dawes is being disingenuous on the nuke issue.

Holden wants nuclear disarmament because nukes are bad.

Dawes wants to deny power to his rival.

Really? Because there was an alternative people were calling for- dividing the nukes among the factions and letting each one choose.

If Dawes just wanted the most personal power he'd champion that option to get grateful faction leaders behind him.

But he realized that that option is really dumb because any group could ruin everything for everyone by starting a war.

I think he legitimately realized that there was no good way to use the nukes and agreed with the plan to return them for goodwill as the only moderately beneficial course of action.

Eiba fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Mar 10, 2017

# ¿ Mar 10, 2017 07:42

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Even if he wasn't just holding out for a bigger bribe, he was still accepting them in the first place before everything broke. Since he's not a child or an Earther, he knows exactly how hosed up and serious accepting a bribe like that is. He did it anyway. He caused those children to suffer. It was really lovely. A low point for a character who had a great arc.

The larger point is still valid, people don't get as up in arms about flawed characters who are men. Any individual case is a matter of preference. In aggregate it's something of a trend.

In bizarre frothing vehemence, that one guy making GBS threads up this thread stands out as having seriously messed up issues with women.

I mean, I don't like generic marines. I don't agree or sympathize with Bobbie's worldview. At times I was wishing Bobbie scenes would end sooner. I still respect that she's a pretty fair representation of a traumatized person.

I hope that folks in this topic understand that that one guy has issues and we don't need to mimic his intensity as we disagree about this kind of stuff.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2017 08:20

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

enraged_camel posted:

Uh, she became traumatized literally in this most recent episode. We had six episodes before that, in which she was quite mentally healthy. So let's not try to argue that her hosed up attitudes and worldviews are a result of trauma. If anything, it will probably be this very trauma that knocks some sense into her, since she realized that the UN soldiers were in fact not charging them, and there was something hosed up going on.

I wasn't implying her worldview was the result of trauma. I was saying her worldview was, and is, something I'm not on board with, but I can still see what's going on with her this episode. My goal was to contrast with that guy who thought (quite insanely) that she was being waifu bait or something.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2017 12:06

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

ZorajitZorajit posted:

I may be reading more social critique into what I remember of our conversation about it. I think his biggest concern was that the inclusion of belter creole was nerd-bait, junkfood worldbuilding, and that having characters speak in a made up language that is (deliberately or not) "silly" sounding (again, it literally sounds like silly words and baby talk) made the show harder to approach. I've got a background in English and little language studies so conversations like this are easy bait for me. He's a PHD-Candidate Chemist, so we don't always see eye-to-eye when it comes to artistic direction. But I'm also trying not to defend the show, even though I like it. Though I suppose it's fair that it's equally fallacious to think "Someone criticized a thing I like, they must be right about it and I'm being a neckbeard to say otherwise."

People judge each other by the way they speak. It's hard to convince anyone you're smart when you don't speak standard English. Any variation is going to be subject to this. Any non-standard English is going to come off as "silly" or not serious at first.

The point is, and the show emphasizes this, that that's a fallacy on the part of the listener. It doesn't say anything about the intelligence of the speaker, even though we all naturally assume it does on some level.

Basically, Belter Creole is actually cool and good and your friend is missing the point.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2017 19:21

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Wow, that was crazy. I like how many times I was surprised this episode.

Snuffman posted:

Yeah, the show totally did Prax's intro and the "severing ties with Fred" better than the books.

Yeah, in contrast to Bobbie, and in line with Avasarala, show Prax is pretty great. They really sold how hosed up his situation is.

And Drummer is up there with Dawes and Diogo for background characters in the book that the show just took and ran with in a fantastic direction.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2017 06:01

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Grand Fromage posted:

Guys the campaign they played was the broad strokes for like 3/4 of the first book. That's it. They changed the story massively to make it fit into a novel and it has zero to do with anything happening now.

I think people were joking, but I suppose it's probably good to clarify this in any case before it goes too far.

I'm having a hard time seeing parallels between Prax and Miller, but I guess that's because I have a sense of who Prax is and (not going to spoil tag this) he's not Miller 2.0 at all. But I can see how his initial premise has something of a similar shade to what Miller ended up doing.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2017 05:06

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

I want to laugh at the people who incorrectly call out physics mistakes, but it actually just makes me sad that people watched that scene and thought "she should have exploded" or "she was moving wrong" instead of just being horrified by what was actually happening. It was a really hosed up, really good scene.

The show doesn't always get it right, but people seem quick to call it out for not looking the way they think it should, when the show often takes pains to make things accurate, even at the cost of looking the way people expect. (Most of the time. See the size of Jupiter as a counterexample that I'm personally very willing to forgive.)

# ¿ Mar 17, 2017 19:08

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 15:29

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

I guess it could be more dystopian than I'm picturing, but I always imagined Earth as legitimately having its poo poo together with regards for caring for people's material needs. Like, living on basic isn't dreadful because it's a physical hardship. That seemed too crassly dark for the sake of it. I always thought it was physically comfortable, but psychologically difficult to handle. They make a big todo about how there's no purpose, but I always figured another issue is that there's no status. You can't demonstrate your worth to your neighbors, you can't feel proud of your accomplishments, because everything material you have to work with is exactly what everyone else has.

I felt the strength of the Expanse was depicting a society that has legitimately advanced a great deal, but nevertheless has problems that are as severe as societies always have. Race, gender, sexuality, even Earth nationalities seem to be irrelevant, or close to it. But now there's prejudice based on the gravity you grew up in. They've cured cancer, but unleashed the alien protomolecule.

There's poo poo on earth- there are cracks people can still fall through, and anyone looking to engage with the market- to do something "real" with their lives- has an incredibly lovely almost impossible path in front of them. But no one's living in slums. No one's dying of preventable diseases. No one's going hungry. It's a world with problems of it's own, having left our problems behind.

Though I might have just imagined that 'cause I think it's neat and Basic may be more explicitly lovely than I remember.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2017 01:30

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > The Expanse, Season 2: Stay away from the agua.

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