Altered Carbon - 'I never asked for this' - The Something Awful Forums

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > Altered Carbon - 'I never asked for this'

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

The big fat disks as Stacks is needlessly dumb; The book version is a small featureless cylinder about the size of the tip of your pinkie-finger, and the whole point is how simple and mundane functional immortality is made by such a tiny simple thing. Injected at birth at the base of the skull, nigh-indestructible unless you point a gun right at the thing, there's your life backed up. Try not to die.

Also fighting against the use and existence of Sleeving in Altered Carbon is a loving stupid angle to take. It'd be like making a show about fighting against the use and existence of smartphones.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2018 14:19

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 15:45

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

zoux posted:

Oooh wee Time magizines review

I'm not sure she actually watched the show.

Hang on, wait, flag on the play;

quote:

For viewers, the mystery may instead be why Takeshi�s sleeve takes the form of Swedish actor Joel Kinnaman (House of Cards) playing an Asian man living in a white guy�s body. That�s how it�s written in the book, but onscreen it�s especially problematic

She read the book, and she still didn't get the point of it. :cripes:

# ¿ Feb 5, 2018 16:45

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Speaking of that stupid tower, could they have gotten any less subtle about Meths "looking down on people"? :cripes:

In the book, it's just a private island out in the bay. You know, something sensible that still tells you how obscenely rich and cut off from the city at-large the Bancrofts are.

Young Freud posted:

The Wei Clinic guys being all super blase about the torture and organlegging is supposed to be pretty weird, because it's that Meth attitude toward death that's rubbing off on the groundsiders.

It's actually implied as a pretty common thing for everyone iirc, unless it's specifically happening to them of course. There's a reason the violent crimes division of the police is called "Organic Damage".

# ¿ Feb 6, 2018 02:06

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Mooktastical posted:

In the book do they explain how Rei got a hold of a little girl's sleeve? I'm assuming their society has similar rules w/r/t juvenile criminal law, and therefore she's not a long term prisoner. Following from that, I'm guessing it was some hosed up kidnapping/body purge operation just so she could mind gently caress Tak for a 5 minute conversation.

That part never happens in the book. Also Rei is just her own person, Tak's sister is entirely original to the show.

Minor sidenote though, but prison isn't actually the only way for a little girl's sleeve to be vacant/available/however you want to phrase it. People will resleeve just for the convenience of traveling across the planet near-instantly as d.h.f. Nevermind that it's the only way to go interstellar outside of decades to centuries spent in cryo.

Neddy Seagoon fucked around with this message at 03:06 on Feb 6, 2018

# ¿ Feb 6, 2018 03:03

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Young Freud posted:

More likely spaceships would be "virtual", crewed entirely by stacks and robots, with 3D printers to print out sleeves, food, equipment, etc. when they actually get there. And that's not if the range is short enough that it would be easier to needlecast to another planet or habitat.

Speaking of 3D printers, you know the whole reason that organic 3D printer is probably illegal is that it's an IP thing as well as Psychasec doesn't want the competition. This show is a Rentism dystopia, like In Time.

Regular spaceships are crewed, but the big old colony barges worked exactly like that; They'd land on a planet, sit for YEARS while modelling the environment (seasons, wildlife, etc), before cloning Sleeves and decanting them.

Most Protectorate worlds don't even have spaceships though, because there's zero need to go off-world.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2018 06:06

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Syzygy Stardust posted:

Pretty sure needlecasting in the books is a Martian derived FTL tech. Otherwise the envoys as counterinsurgents beamed in would never work. Plus Kovacs stack was on Harlan�s world before being beamed to earth in response to Bancroft�s death. Years did not pass between these events.

Yup. A needlecast is called that because it is an insanely tiny window through hyperspace that they can "only" manage to push a high-bandwidth signal through. And even that takes some obscenely expensive power requirements.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2018 14:17

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Woden posted:

Also Kovacs woke up after 250 years and seemed to fit in fine, society seems to be stagnating. Like they haven't even upgraded stacks in all that time, I'm sure even a few decades on a ship wouldn't be that big of a deal.

Earth isn't a gleaming uber-futuristic metropolis in the books; It was, once, but now it's a backwards backwater in all but name. A whole lot of people got the hell out of Dodge on the Colony Barges centuries ago, and the only people who've stayed are the ones that wanted to or had no choice like the Catholics. The only real thing of note is the UN Protectorate is headquartered there, and a big general tone of Bay City is a metropolis whose time has well and truly passed.

Kovacs fitting in fine is because he's an Envoy. They are psychologically broken and rebuilt to be Zen Masters of Death. They expect nothing, assume nothing, just sit quietly and pay attention while things just sift into place of their own accord. Give them a few weeks and you'd never know they weren't born on whatever world they're currently infiltrating.

As for the 250 years thing in general, the books make note of how hard it is to adapt to life after a long stint in Storage, let alone being in the body of a stranger, and the BIG punishment to drop on major crimes is 200 years in Storage (the "you're going down FOREVER!" :cop:

in the series is just childishly weak writing). And you gotta really gently caress up royal to get that. The only higher punishment is Erasure, and you need to do something spectacularly illegal like duplicating yourself to earn that one.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2018 14:55

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Kegslayer posted:

No I'm pretty sure she gets it.

Kinnaman did a really good job but you could just as easily had Will Yun Lee play Kovacs for the entire show without losing anything.

If you wanted to undermine one of the basic premises of the story, sure. The whole point of it being an asian guy in a white guy's body is to underline just how far off-base someone can go and that ethnicity fundamentally means nothing anymore. At every point in the story the reader/viewer is made to deal with the protagonist himself is someone in a body that's foreign in every respect.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2018 01:53

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Kegslayer posted:

Being in another body is a well established science fiction trope and a whole bunch of movies and television series have been able to portray the same idea in different ways.

But yes the whole point of the story is that ethnicity fundamentally means nothing anymore which is why he cannot be played by an Asian guy and must be played by a white guy.

Did you miss that the body he's in is actually pertinent to the story beyond generic white guy?

# ¿ Feb 7, 2018 04:48

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Proteus Jones posted:

1 - It�s only through using an actual bona-fide clone that you can be effectively immortal. As far as soldiers, I imagine there�s a drawback of some kind. I can�t remember if it�s explained in the book or not (it�s next up in re-read queue for me).
2 - No loving idea. Obviously RK Morgan isn�t a paranoid IT type.
3 - In the case of the Rebel Forest Base, I think RV was delivered by a biological vector that caused a violent psychosis. But apparently RV alone is a cognitive(?) virus since they were able to corrupt Rei�s backup by piggy backing it onto her stack backup�s needlecast. This is probably another thing that will be more clear on a re-read.
4 - Agreed.

Regarding 1; The books have none of the drawbacks the series tries to imply occur from re-sleeving. The only exception is if someone is re-sleeved repeatedly in a short amount of time, and it creates a nasty case of literal identity issues (you can't tell your hands are your own, that kind of thing). Even then that only really happens in places like active warzones where they're re-sleeving fallen soldiers, and it's still an exceptionally rare thing.

Regarding 2; I haven't gotten through the entire series yet to see if they changed it, but the Rawlings virus screws the pooch on Rei's entire backup system. Military-grade computer viruses (even century-old ones) are much scarier and smarter things in Altered Carbon, because it wasn't just passively sitting in her backup file with a red flag, it was eating the entire backup system. All you can do once that starts is weld it shut and wipe everything.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2018 05:04

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Kegslayer posted:

You see, as a hardcore science fiction fan, there was literally no other way to show or tell this and furthermore

Soooo the best way to show the divorce of body and identity is with an asian guy in an asian body? :confused:

Solkanar512 posted:

Is any of the alien stuff ever covered? Like how stacks were developed for human use or anything like that?

Edit: In the books I mean.

The short answer is the "Elder Race" are called Martians in the books. It's not quite the "correct" name, but it's the colloquial one because explorers originally found functional ruins on Mars. They found starcharts to other Martian worlds, and all the Protectorate Worlds are Martian worlds they sent the colony barges off to centuries ago. Most have Martian ruins of their own, some are even functional, but the Martians themselves are just gone with no discernible cause. There are corpses, but no living ones.

Stacks are an entirely human technology, incidentally.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2018 05:45

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Kegslayer posted:

Yeah because all Asians don't actually look the same but going back to the original Times article, having an Asian actor play the original Kovacs wouldn't have affected the story in any meaningful way.

You could either have an actor playing either as original Kovacs himself or as Ryker's sleeve and the audience would still be able to follow the story and be aware that Kovacs looks completely different to what he did originally. If other media from childrens shows like Doctor Who to critically acclaimed Jack Black 2001 comedy Shallow Hal can do it then I don't think it's going to be a problem even for TVIV goons. He could have just as easily been any nationality or sex and the show would have still worked great.

It's still funny watch people demand that Kovacs has to be white though.

I mean, what is this, the local?

You're still completely missing the point in sleeving and personal identity in Altered Carbon. Each one is not a temporary thing overlaying the original, it is the new you gor the lifespan. The series even gets that right with Kovacs looking at his reflection and having it change to his new body; it's self-realization and acceptance.

Meths with clones is an extreme outlier. The person you see on Harlan's World, sorry "STRONG HOLD", is just who he used to be. There's a dozen more faces listed any time you see his ID data get flashed on a screen.

Neddy Seagoon fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Feb 7, 2018

# ¿ Feb 7, 2018 06:33

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Rinkles posted:

Was the 50 years w/o a guest comment from Poe an exaggeration? How'd he pay the rent or upkeep? Wouldn't he get evicted (even if he is the hotel)?

The AI Hotels own themselves outright, they're not just attendants.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2018 07:15

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Synth bodies also require regular maintenance.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2018 08:14

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Fututor Magnus posted:

i think the stacks in the show are far better than the book alternative you describe. a small cylinder would resemble every other boring sci-fi prop design, boring and minimalistically designed. the stacks on the show befit the actual orgin of the tech, since it looks like something with an inherently alien design, nothing like how a human designed sci-fi thingmajig would be. has the look of a powerful alien computer / storage device.

Stack technology is entirely a human creation in the books, and the mundanity of the design is on purpose; Sleeving isn't some scary new technology, it's treated like it's as old and commonplace as the telephone. The strangeness/wonder comes from that; "Here in your hand is a tiny little mundane cylinder, containing an entire human life."

The TV version is unnecessarily awkward and actually inferior for no decent reason. Having them implanted at one year old is also an unnecessary complication, because it destandardizes the technology; You have to actively bring your one-year-old kid to have invasive surgery done rather than a quick-and-simple injection at birth.

Also there's a pretty obvious failure to the design; can you honestly see a disk as broad as your palm fitting inside the body of an infant, letalone at the nape of the neck?

# ¿ Feb 7, 2018 09:23

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

navyjack posted:

Oh man, the scene in Book 2 at Semetaire’s Soul Market, though...

I love that bit too :magical:

.

For those that haven't read it, the Soul Markets are just massive wall-to-wall massive piles of Stacks from people dead in an ongoing global war. Scavengers and opportunists sift through them, buying by weight and volume, to try and find the Stacks of people with skills they can sell on to buyers (ie; Soldiers).

# ¿ Feb 7, 2018 09:59

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Proteus Jones posted:

Your post is basically the non-sectarian version of the Neo-Catholic view on re-sleeving or being spun up into a VR post-mortem.

So yeah, there are likely people with this view. But they are probably even more in the minority than the Neo-Catholics.

The book does touch on it a little towards the end; Kovacs remarks that Bancroft needed to have some serious stones to fry his own stack, knowing that even though he would come back from a backup he as he was now would still be dead and gone.

Le Saboteur posted:

I'm just a really big fan of what the show has done with the relationship between Kovacs and Poe so far. And drat if this doesn't look like a million bucks, looks like the most expensive thing Netflix has produced yet.

A lot of the changes to the basic parts of the book are really really dumb, and a few are outright-bad, but I do like some of the new stuff. Poe's interactions with Kovacs are quite fun, and I like Ortega dealing with her devout Catholic mother hassling her as a means to discuss that topic a bit more.

Neddy Seagoon fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Feb 7, 2018

# ¿ Feb 7, 2018 16:18

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Deadulus posted:

IDK. I figure in the real world super rich people would def do something that on the nose if they could.

The problem is being on top of a building isn't actually isolated. It's just being on top of a huge-rear end building staffed by thousands of people working every day. Being on a private island out in the bay tells you much more about the Bancrofts being in their own isolated world, observing the city (and mankind at large) from the outside.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2018 17:00

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Rinkles posted:

-----Rei's-- frenzied reaction to the prospect of being put back on ice made me think it was particularly unpleasant.

You aren't conscious, you're just stored data. Helpless and knowing you won't get spun back up until someone wants to do so.

At-large, here's some of the stuff the book does, just to get people caught up on what some of us refer to as being changed;

Kovacs isn't the last of a dead breed of super-terrorists. He's ex-military. Envoys aren't a gone breed of Quellist super-soldiers either, they're the UN Protectorate's Big Stick to keep the worlds in line. They do not tolerate rebellion in the slightest, and if Envoys are coming through the needlecast you are hosed. Real-Death'ed, across the board, hosed. He's not special, he's just available.

As for the Envoys themselves, the series has a fair bit of how they operate right; They're the answer to the question of how you deal with soldiers being on a foreign world, in a strange body, trying to get them combat-ready ASAP. The terrain's wrong, the gravity's weird, and they're expected to deal with opposition that have grown up with both natively. The solution to that is, naturally, to train the mind. Envoys get put through psychological torture and hell to mentally break and rebuild them to expect nothing at all. Just to observe and take in everything around them, calmly and objectively, letting it all just filter together into a large picture (it's also why they make good investigators). They can also focus their senses better than normal people (A lot of what you see Kovacs do, however, is from his Sleeve on Earth having a neurological enhancement called Neurachem). Put them on a world, and eventually you'd never know they weren't born there; They'll know all the local slang, the local gangs, how to walk like a native, etc. They're master manipulators (ideal for regime-creation/changing), happily and readily capable of violence, and are banned from serving in any political role on a Protectorate world if/when they leave the service. Most Ex-Envoys tend to go right into crime due to their skillsets.

Kovacs left the Envoys of his own accord after an assault went well and truly FUBAR on a world called Innenin. His whole platoon got wiped out by a computer virus called Rawlings being broadcast through their comms gear and driving them all face-clawing insane. Kovacs got very lucky and had a broken comm rig at the time, and part of the book is every now and then he's mentally talking to his best friend who died there. Sometimes he's alive and well, other times he sees Jimmy DeSoto as he was post-infection; trying and succeeding to claw his own eyes out.

The reason he gets shot up on Harlan's World at the start was he'd robbed a research facility and the local law doesn't take kindly to that :commissar:

.

Meths aren't a deified/feared group holding supreme either, they're just generally old, powerful and annoying on Earth. Like Republicans. All they do is keep to themselves and live their lives like everyone else, the difference is they tend to have accumulated a shitload of wealth and power.

The Quellist stuff happened, and about that long ago, but Tak wasn't there. Quellism in the books is just something scattered into pop-culture; People use her quotes to sound impressive, probably wear shirts of Quellcrist's face like Che Guevara, that kinda thing. She was leading an insurrection against the government of Harlan's World, Tak's homeworld, for the atrocious conditions commoners were forced to work in the Harlan family who owned the planet. It also pre-dated Envoys, or it would've been over very quickly.

The girl at the start of the series getting her stack blown out creates a major problem towards the end Rei getting Kovacs to close the investigation ASAP is motivated by her needlecasting in Sarah like Bancroft did for Kovacs. Either he closes the investigation (doesn't matter how, just get Bancroft to believe it), or Sarah spends time in VR testing out Rei's lovely new torture programs.

Strom Cuzewon posted:

Book spoilers: Not sure she's the one who specifies Tak. I think Bancroft finds him of his own accord. I might be wrong.

Importantly, Tak is less of a big deal in the books. The Envoy's are the elite strike forces of the protectorate, and rogue Envoys that can be hired by the super-rich are a dime a dozen.

Rei put him on the shortlist iirc.

Platystemon posted:

My number one complaint about the show: Harlan’s World shouldn’t look like British Columbia.

Agreed. I fully accept it's probably a budgeting thing, but Harlan's World should look more like Thailand.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2018 02:27

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Minor side-note, but is it just me or does it sound like the actors are actively having to force the phrase "The Elder Race" out. Not once have they managed to make it flow naturally in dialogue so far.

Perestroika posted:

TV is a visual medium, which has different strengths and requirements compared to literature. The stacks are utterly integral to the setting and the story. To have something this central be a barely recognisable generic little thimble would simply be outright bad showmaking. You'd have to spend yet more time zooming in on them, showing them for longer, to give the viewer sufficient time to realise that yes, that is in fact a stack. Which is a things that will come up again and again very often. And that's not even getting into the various occurrences where stacks are intentionally destroyed. It's easy to show a shattered, impaled, or otherwise destroyed semi-large disc. To do the same thing with a small compact cylinder is simply not nearly as visually clear.

The key point here is that the show does not just need to communicate what people in-universe think of stacks. It also needs to communicate to the viewer what they are. And to us they're absolutely amazing things, immortality in a can. And the design reflects that. From the very moment they're first shown, the design tells the viewer "Here, these things are unique, strange, and important. Keep an eye on those.". Any time somebody handles a stack in the show, the viewer knows immediately what it is, and can tell the significance of it. And that's an appropriate trade-off, as the show still has other means of showing how commonplace sleeving has become, such as neonazi-abuela.

For a properly comparison, think of the Lord of the Rings movies and the scene where Elrond reforges the sword Anduril for Aragaorn. But this time instead of looking like this:

It looks like this, because the prop guy couldn't be arsed:

That would also be just plain bad filmmaking. If an object is somehow integral to your film or show, you give it a memorable and unique appearance.

Your example is a key and, importantly, unique thing. What you're saying is every sword in the movies should be unique works of art just because they're onscreen right down to that of a mere footsoldier's. And a medium to explain Stacks to the audience is very easy; The opening credits (Along with that scene post-decanting in prison). Westworld also has to convey that the people you see in-town are artificial despite appearances and manages to do so by showing them getting assembled piece-by-piece. There are also ample opportunities in the book to draw from of yanking the things out of corpses, let alone in the series.

And again, you're missing the big key flaw in the series version compared to the original; It loses it's commonality by being something that requires attending surgery post-birth and doesn't actually fit inside an infant.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2018 03:21

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

LORD OF BOOTY posted:

you're missing the dude's point with the sword analogy. a random footsoldier's sword can totally look like the second example, because there's no real importance to it. but if an item has some kind of unique importance, such as being a main protagonist's sword with an elucidated history behind it, it deserves a memorable design.

No, I got the exact analogy and explained they had the wrong end of the stick; Stacks are meant to be on the footsoldier end of the scale; Everyone has one and they're all identical.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2018 03:42

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Kegslayer posted:

Actually a shitload of people around the internet have been up in arms about this to the point where you even have Kalogridis come out and acknowledge that it's a problem but point out that she tried to offset this by having Kovacs also portrayed by two Asian men.

They've already changed so much about Kovacs from his personality to his history but you still have people believe that changing the colour of his skin would somehow ruin the show.

Because the whole point underlined, writ large in neon letters, is he is no longer the man he was. He was an Asian person and now he's white, and on an entirely different planet. About as far removed from the man he was as he can get. And that is how it is for everyone.

People are only jumping on this because A; it's the internet, and B; Ghost in the Shell raised a big stink for it's rampant stupidity and now people think they have a fun opportunity to get angry again because, again, it's the internet.

Neddy Seagoon fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Feb 8, 2018

# ¿ Feb 8, 2018 04:14

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Avasculous posted:

Quellcrist is explicitly pro-stack technology, IIRC. Considers it a vital tool of the revolution.

An annoying pattern I've noticed with TV/Hollywood sci-fi is a knee-jerk tendency to brand any technology that makes someone superhuman, especially immortal, as coming at a terrible cost. Immortals always wish they could get cancer and die miserably after 70 years, so that "their life would have meaning". It's almost like writers feel the need to reassure viewers that superhuman characters are actually worse off.

I liked BSG a lot at first because it seemed to eschew this- the Cylons reveled in the fact that they were effectively immortal and all of the advantages that came with it. And then they hit season 4 and bam, Cylons nobly sacrifice their immortality so that their lives could be short and meaningful.

So one of the things that I liked about Altered Carbon was that the protagonist not only embraces the technology the way most of us would any medical advance, but views people who reject it for themselves as naive and people who reject it for others as despicable.

It was disappointing if unsurprising that they made Kovacs ultimately go (slightly) antivaxxer just like all the others.

I'm disappointed that they cut a lot of the world building stuff but found room for side plots I didn't care about, like [spoiler] Elliot's and Ortega's families. Although skinhead grandma was amazing.

In fairness though, as much as I liked the sequels, that genre jump was pretty jarring for the books too. I wouldn't mind if they just stuck with the cyberpunk noir instead, provided Morgan was involved.

Multi-century subjective lifespans aren't even common in the books, and have a far more interesting take on why most people aren't Mething their way through the centuries in a constant parade of Sleeves; Mental exhaustion. Most people will live out their life in their birthsleeve, maybe pay out on a second, and after that happily go into Storage because they don't want to go around a third time. Spun up for holidays and birthdays in VR or a brief rental sleeve to spend time with the family, and that's it.

It also tells you a lot about what you're dealing with when facing people like the Bancrofts; They have to have an insane degree of mental fortitude to want to just keep going on and on.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2018 05:05

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

So something with the third episode is they've completely gotten Betathanatine wrong. Especially considering they got the street name right; It's not a sedative or a lethal poison to be stuck in a blade, it's a horrifying mood stabilizer that just makes you feel absolutely amoral. While you're Riding the Reaper you can happily walk through a town kicking puppies and shooting civilians without feeling so much as a pang of guilt. This is also more of a general nitpick, but the Tebbit's also wrong too; The blade's designed so you gotta stab DEEP to get blood in the biocoding runnel and trigger what should be near-instant lethal poison. Keeps the owner from killing themselves with an accidental scratch.

Also just the general tone towards death itself is way off; Killing people's still a MAJOR hosed-up thing rather than "ha-ha how QUAINT to see normies die :wotwot:

", and there's much better entertainment to be had than two normal people killing eachother; Freak Fights. Why have two average people beat eachother to death when you can have custom-grown/enhanced sleeves into literal Hulks and have them brawl in an arena on Pay-Per-View? The big thug with the exoskeleton arms is supposed to be one, incidentally.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2018 06:16

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Lady Galaga posted:

Episode 4 and it's consequences seems to match the idea that killing people was a big deal. First time we saw Tak specifically headshot the poo poo out of everyone and leave no survivors, although the AI hotel lobby scene was kind of the same thing - I don't think any of the russian gang survived, an entire torture hospital with indirect assailants and outright civilians was way more hosed up

That because he RD'ed over a dozen people and walked off with a head. I meant more the attitude of "woah, hey, a Meth kills someone but gets them a new sleeve, it's all good!" :yayclod:

Speaking of episode 4; The whole "YOU MUST BECOME NEO" thing in VR was stupid as hell. The whole point of VR torture is it's inescapable; You are separated from your sleeve, and they can do whatever the gently caress they want to your psyche in a sim. You die, they reset and start over. Repeatedly. Even if you go nuts, they'll just run psycho-surgery to fix your mind and start again until you break. It's not even a hard thing to bring in line with the book's version and what the whole lesson was about dealing with being tortured in VR; Work out what they want and lie your way the hell out if you can. The only difference is Kovacs starts his "I AM A PROTECTORATE OFFICER" tirade while inside VR, scaring the interrogators enough to pull him out. I kinda like the book's version better of him going back later to deliberately murder everyone in the Wei Clinic as a personal errand, but for timing in a tv series it's still a pretty good shootout.

Also to what others were saying; Skinhead Grandma was indeed amazing :allears:

Neddy Seagoon fucked around with this message at 10:50 on Feb 8, 2018

# ¿ Feb 8, 2018 10:48

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Ora Tzo posted:

Supposedly in the second book he has a black sleeve at one point.

Actually he's black for the entire book.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2018 13:00

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Fututor Magnus posted:

i never read the book, so i can't judge too much on that conception of the technology, thematically it makes sense, a mundane tecnology conceived by human minds capable of so much.

but, in fact, it's origin as a elder civilization technology makes sense to me too, that's because i'm interested in neuroscience and the fact that we know essentially jack poo poo about consciousness, and what exactly makes us "us" in our brains.

it's humbling to consider that perhaps even in the far future we wouldn't understand that, and that makes the themes of loving around with the very fundamentals of human identity, in that we're one mind rooted in one body, without understanding how it all works. and it thus made sense to me that humans have to reverse engineer a technology from an ancient alien civilization that understood consciousness better than we do.

also, if I'm not misremembering, didn't the exposition at the beginning say that the stacks are made of an alien substance called "living metal" or something they got from the elders? if so, it is probably implanted in a smaller form and "grows" somehow into its later form.

idk, maybe if i read the books i'd prefer its version of the technology, but goons seem to call it boring, which seems a shame.

The problem is it's the most generic and boring cliche thing in sci-fi to say "we got it all off the aliens, we stupid monkeys barely understand it". Having something as fascinating as Stacks be an entirely human technology says far more about how we have developed as a species. That we HAVE found the answers. Bugger still being humble about ignorance in the 2600's.

It's meant to be a mundane technology because it creates interesting vignettes and perspectives on how other things have changed. Homicide is now Organic Damage. Your dad came home from war as a white guy. This is where the books shine. The series kist keeps chasing its own tail at "stacks exist. Good/Bad?!!!".

NmareBfly posted:

The one thing I like about stacks being Elder-based is that it excuses a bunch of the stuff that would annoy me otherwise.

If stacks themselves are ancient alien woo tech it implies everything derived from them is too. This makes it easier for me to buy some Envoy ~special powers~ especially because they learned them from the person that developed the tech. Like breaking out of VR; Quell might have an understanding of a fundamental component that hasn't been well examined even 250 years later. Same reason Rawlings still works. A computer virus that is at least 250 years old is still weapons grade, which only makes sense if human technology -- or at least certain strands of it -- haven't developed much because they're based on a framework still half-understood.

I read the books but I can't for the life of me remember what happens in 2 and 3. It's weird. I think I found Market Forces so heinous that it was a net negative and deleted some other books from my brain.

Tak's protectorate rant happens INSIDE VR to get them to pull him out. The rest is neurachem cybernetics.

Neddy Seagoon fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Feb 9, 2018

# ¿ Feb 9, 2018 01:21

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

NmareBfly posted:

... in the books, yes. In the show, he stops his own heart in VR then they pull him out and he rants before they dunk him again.

I'm not disagreeing that the book version is better and that ancient technology is poop as a plot device. I can buy that social engineering hasn't changed much in 250 years! I'm just saying in view of them updating Envoy training from a brutal regiment that turns a person inside out to a drum circle in the woods they needed to have provided an explanation for why it's so special and hasn't been duplicated in further centuries. Ancient aliens slot into that nicely, even if it's the cheap way out.

The problem is it's a crap and unnecessary change. The whole point of VR Torture is it wholly inescapable. Even if they could escape it then, 250 years of tech advancement AFTER facing Envoys, would see that loophole welded shut.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2018 01:43

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

NmareBfly posted:

In the books, yeah. But in the show, it happens. So they spun the lore in a way that there's an explanation for how. I don't like it, but it makes sense.

I know it happened. I'm saying they wrote around a perfectly decent scene for a halfassed Matrix ripoff.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2018 07:07

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Here's how it works in the books; It's not going "on ice", it's going into Storage.

Stacks aren't meant to be special alien devices, they are a wireless storage device. That's it. Everyone gets a little cylinder in injected at the back of the neck at birth, good luck.

When you go into prison, your body goes into cryostasis and your mind gets downloaded onto archival media; 30cm diameter discs made of... Altered Carbon. That's it. Once your time's done, you get sleeved into whatever's available in stock.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2018 08:45

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Zaphod42 posted:

When you aren't sleeved, do you experience anything? No, right? You have to be "spun up" to experience anything?

Yuup. As in spinning up a disc.

VR, incidentally, is just running your mind as software off the stack which is why VR torture is supposed to be completely inescapable. And can be run at time ratios scaled waaay up (like hours or days in seconds, if you have powerful-enough hardware for it). Your body is just vacant for the duration.

The split-personality thing is entirely bullshit from the series, incidentally. Most people willingly just go into storage rather than go around a third or fourth time because of how mentally draining it is. Like Skinhead Grandma.

Neddy Seagoon fucked around with this message at 08:54 on Feb 9, 2018

# ¿ Feb 9, 2018 08:52

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Avasculous posted:

Specifically, the awkward ideas mostly come from the adaptation and the great ideas mostly come from the source, with the notable exception of skinhead grandma.

A big part is them wanting to make Takeshi Kovacs into The Special, which just doesn't work. The series does a poor job of adapting how Envoys actually operate and makes him an emotionless killing machine. Which, to be fair, is part of being an Envoy :murder:

.

There's ample opportunity to show bits of Envoy intuition too; instead of Poe just giving him clothes, in the book Kovacs goes shopping and learns to blend in. How to walk, common clothing styles, etc. All ways to help potentially show the audience how he puts clues together

The "weakness of weapons" also isn't entirely about kung-fu kickflips; it's about choosing the tools for the job and not jerking off over your favourite assault rifle with every rail accessory imaginable. Work out what you need, THEN pick them as necessary, if they're necessary. And how to brain the poor rear end in a top hat pulling a Sunjet on you :v:

. Kovacs actively goes out to buy the Nemex, a little silenced pistol, and the Tebbit knife after the hotel lobby incident. Something big and mean, something discreet, and a small blade. All ideal for a general detective job.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2018 10:45

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

So minor thing for episode 6; They kinda missing the point on Kadmin using the quote "That's loving enough". How it goes in the book is a brutal gun battle in the Oakley VR cafe, with Kadmin rocking up in a cheap synth body with some hired goons. They shoot the hell out of him, have him dead to rights, and that's when he says "That's loving enough". Which is enough for Kovacs to drag Ortega into cover a few seconds before Kadmin self-destructs just like the interrogated woman on Adoracion. That said, past that bit I think it's a good adaptation of the fight in the Panama Rose. Also the general change of Laurens Bancroft being such a violent manipulative piece of poo poo is just dull and utterly sinks how the story is (presumably) going to go by the end seeing how tightly they're generally riding the original book. The whole "Meths are an elite breed :rolleyes:

" thing is still stupid too.

Also the Reaper thing is still annoying, just because it's the only thing they've gotten outright-wrong with the adaptation; Betathanatine isn't a relaxant in way they use it, it just makes you calm and uncaring, no matter what you do. You could take a flamethrower to an orphanage and feel nothing beyond the fact that it's gotten a tad warm and a bit loud (hence the street-name of The Reaper). It's used a lot in Protectorate military operations. All it'd do is make Kovacs and Ortega not care at all if Kadmin started carving up the other.

Proteus Jones posted:

Agreed. I love all three, but I freely admit to being disappointed they didn't all go for the noir detective vibe. It's kind of a "I love all my kids, but in my heart of hearts I love Altered Carbon the most"

I'd say the third book is definitely the weakest of the three, not just because it lacks a coherent end-goal like the first two, but they're all well worth a read.

Teal posted:

I'm willing to attribute that one to him getting a bit lost in the I'm Lizzie's Mum roleplay but they did pull the carpet from beneath him a bit too often, that's true.

Kovacs getting jumped so often is because he's on a foreign world, in a sleeve with some serious local history, and there's too much he doesn't know. Half the stuff that makes a run at him is going in thinking he's Ryker.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2018 15:56

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Zaphod42 posted:

If they put you in VR in prison that naturally changes everything as you then are conscious. Don't think the show said that though. Why wasn't kovacs in vr if he's a terrorist?

But yeah that works.

VR time is expensive. Why spin up someone when you can just store them on the cheap for a century.

One other thing with episode 6, on second thought; Good loving lord did the squander the death of Amun. Oh noooo, a dramatic death of the secondary character who was Ortega's surrogate father figure... Which shouldn't actually mean anything in Altered Carbon. The writers really do not grasp the whole point of Stacks, because I don't think we've had one death so far that wasn't Real Death. Bring him back in a new sleeve, and gasp, we'd have something interesting for the audience to discuss about resleeving someone they've known for half the series.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2018 16:38

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Ugly In The Morning posted:

Yeah, I will say the series has a major hardon for people getting RD�d. In the books it mostly comes up as something that�s not done lightly but in this it feels like they blast out stacks more often than not.

Especially when RD'ing someone is supposed to be a rare thing, and one you really have to try for at that. But no, we need the unnecessarily-large and over-complicated ~Elder Race~ stacks because the writers can't think of anything better :nallears:

.

The whole reason Kovacs takes Kadmin's head (or rather, the Wei Clinic's director in the book) is because he doesn't have the time to go rooting around in his spinal column to pull his stack.

Also the series is really frivolous about people holding onto Stacks. That is supposed to be a major felony, because it's tantamount to kidnapping.

Neddy Seagoon fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Feb 9, 2018

# ¿ Feb 9, 2018 17:07

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Also the whole thing about space exploration is bunk. One of the things that WAS Martian-related is how the Protectorate has so many worlds; they found Martian starcharts. There was no blind exploration of deep space, they had the guarantee of habitable worlds waiting for them on the other end of the trip.

Ugly In The Morning posted:

Harlan’s is more ruling dynasty than meths. The orbitals only blast advanced craft, you can use helicopters there, but jets are out. (That reminds me, were the (ep7) red lasers on the ship with rei and quell supposed to be angelfire lining up?

Nobody knows what the targeting tolerances are, they just know that micro-lite helicopters usually aren't it. Even then, you need to be nigh-suicidial to trust in one not getting lit up by angelfire.

Also the worlds aren't all Oligarch-ruled. Latimer wasn't. All the Protectorate cares is that it's a stable pro-Protectorate regime with the general threat of Don't Make Us Come Over There.

Neddy Seagoon fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Feb 10, 2018

# ¿ Feb 10, 2018 01:03

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

McCoy Pauley posted:

So my understanding is the Envoy Corps are developed because of the realities of the colonial worlds and the availability of the stack/sleeve and needlecast technologies. Quell is a Harlan's World revolutionary -- and she's certainly presented in the book as being interested in smashing the local governing system in ways that makes the Protectorate antsy -- but it doesn't seem to me that the UN creates the Envoys to deal with Quell.

I say this having only read the books, and not yet having tried out the show, but everything I've read here about the changes they made to what the Envoys are, who Quell was, and how stacks works sounds really weird, and not great compared to the books, and if Morgan was on board with all, it makes me think that the things I enjoy and think are important in the books must be totally different than what he thinks.

I swear blind one of the books, I can't remember which, mentions that the Envoys came after Quell (and not due to her), because the Unsettlement would've been over very fast if they had existed.

Also my bet would be that Morgan was just happy to have Altered Carbon adapted in any form, after seventeen years of it being optioned.

Zaphod42 posted:

Once again, people in prison generally aren't punished because they aren't spun up, because its expensive. That's exactly what I was driving at. That's what I keep saying! So prison is generally meaningless.

You'd think, even if expensive, they'd make an exception for a terrorist. If Kovacs isn't put into some hell virtual reality as punishment, that means nobody is. That means you're just a stack. Which means you're the same as old people or poor people, there is nothing punitive about prison.

The punishment comes from losing all connection to your former world. Family and friends have moved on or gone, society changes, you lose everything. Least of all your sleeve. Especially if you do a century or two. Old people aren't doing it for fun, they're willingly going into non-existence rather than endure the strain of another lifespan. Poor people don't go into Storage for no reason though, I dunno how you got that one.

It's also because the writers can't think beyond their adaption changes to their repercussion on the rest of the story, and Kovacs was just a petty Ex-Envoy criminal in the books; They nailed him for a heist, shot him in his apartment, and he went into Storage before Bancroft leased him out with a shitload of money.

Neddy Seagoon fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Feb 10, 2018

# ¿ Feb 10, 2018 01:22

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Fututor Magnus posted:

human civilization has spread out to several planets, there should be death EVERYWHERE and also plenty of criminal smuggling of stacks, nothing else makes sense for this level of human civilization where everyone has stacks and there are a lot of people long dead and forgotten still around in stack form.

i would just needlecast around and do some shopping, hell, even on earth there ought to be plenty of loose stacks around, even if it wouldn't be a buyer's market like on some world right after a devastating war with ridiculous "body"count.

i could be a far better future pimp than rey, if you want your workers to be 100% loyal and disposable, why the gently caress would you recruit people who actually have poo poo like family and friends in the outside world. that's no way to run a highly illegal prostitution, rape, and murder business.

also, someone mentioned last page that christianity is not common outside of earth, so this neo-catholic programming stuff is just on earth?

Catholics are very much a forgotten relic at this point. No sleeving means no needlecasting or d.h.f., so they never got off Earth when the colonization barges left over 400 years ago. They have a few cryo ships out, but they're still going and won't reach any of the Protectorate worlds for decades to come.

Neddy Seagoon fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Feb 10, 2018

# ¿ Feb 10, 2018 02:49

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Rhyno posted:

Okay so how did they reach the Protectorate worlds to begin with?

Colony Barges aren't big cryoships, they just have cloning and sleeving facilities. Everyone rides in Storage.

How they work is the big goddamn ship lands on the planet and starts spitting out probes. Everything gets modeled in virtual and observed for years by the Barge's AI before anyone is allowed to wake up. They learned that one the hard way with a few failed colonies suddenly finding Winter is lethally cold and lasts years at a time, or Spring causes colossal swarms of deadly insects to hatch. Oops. It'll also tailor the genes of livestock brought with them to endure the climate, along with immunization for local diseases and the like in the cloned sleeves.

Platystemon posted:

They have six‐seat helicopters. Any flying machine larger than that is guaranteed to be taken out.

You can still lose smaller craft by exceeding the speed and/or altitude limit. I think hang‐gliding would be impossible for that reason�certain prisoners are executed by strapping them to jetpacks and lighting the engines.

At least one of the defence satellites doesn�t work, creating a launch/landing window once per day (over the equator, I think), which is how the colony barges were able to set down at all.

Some of the Orbitals over Harlan's World being gone/destroyed is known in the first book. He actually tells that to Ortega, specifically iirc. Also a six-seater helicopter is not a guarantee of not being zapped by angelfire; It's how Quellcrist Falconer died, after all.

Neddy Seagoon fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Feb 10, 2018

# ¿ Feb 10, 2018 04:06

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 15:45

Neddy Seagoon: Oct 12, 2012; "Hi Everybody!"

Hobo Clown posted:

Just finished the series, I really loved it. Probably gonna read the book as soon as I finish the latest Expanse novel.

A couple silly questions that I was wondering about :

Ep 4: When Kovacs goes into virtual to be tortured, why does he still look like Riker rather than himself? Since it's entirely within his own head, wouldn't his current sleeve be irrelevant? I get why they'd do it from a TV standpoint, but it's specifically part of the plot because Dimi the Twin still thinks he's Riker.

The short answer is because there is no difference when sleeved. That is your body and who you are; He is not Kovacs in Ryker's body, he's just Kovacs. That's how everyone treats their sleeve, it's just awkward for him personally because he keeps running into people who knew (and generally hated) Ryker.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2018 06:19

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > Altered Carbon - 'I never asked for this'

«‹›5 »