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

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navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

Hit and miss so far for me. I do have to admit I clapped my hands and laughed like a child when The Raven initiated guest protocols.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2018 11:30

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# ¿ Apr 20, 2024 05:27

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

Ok, the freakin bearded biker abuela in ep4 is breaking my fucken heart. :3:

# ¿ Feb 4, 2018 02:01

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

Svaha posted:

Started out really liking this, but experienced diminishing returns as it went on.
The setting is great, the fight scenes are badass, (as is the music accompanying them), it has just the right amount of humor and the pacing is mostly breakneck throughout, but ultimately, I feel they didn't land the resolution. Especially in regards to the whole sister thing, which i found pretty unsatisfying. This seems to be a running theme with Netflix shows.

What was with all the allusions to the patchwork man throughout the show but never actually firing that Checkov's gun like they did in the books? What the heck were they doing with the spooky credit nursery rhymes and such if they were not setting up an appearance by the patchwork man?
Feels like they missed a few really good opportunities. That said, I'll definitely watch a second season. There is room for improvement, but this is one of those extremely rare times I've seen a cyberpunk book being done any sort of justice.

The patchwork man is Dimi the Twin. In the books, Dimi reminds Kovachs of the story because of the way his appearance shifts in virtual

# ¿ Feb 4, 2018 07:14

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

Phobeste posted:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory

It was weird that they fused the envoys and the quellists not least because why would they be called envoys then. And the weird grandiose language that quell uses when she�s being the envoy trainer really don�t make much sense in the context of weird forest bound revolutionaries.

Yeah, I get why they did it, and fused Virginia Viadura with Quell, but it would have made more sense if you had gotten the idea that Quell and the Unsettlement had nearly brought down the whole system. It would have made the notion of the Envoys as bogeymen easier to accept.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2018 07:17

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

Boris Galerkin posted:

The character/actor is funny but I have to correct you right there: he�s not a �bearded biker� he�s a literal Nazi (he has a 88 tattoo, which doesn�t mean he�s born in 2x88). I know it�s just a TV show but we kinda have a problem with nazis right now, so I�m just pointing it out for more awareness.

Yeah, I caught the 88 in the second appearance.

Also, I know ppl said things went off the rails in the last few episodes from the books but Quell/Nadia INVENTED STACKS?? I knew that Quellism wasn�t going to make it through corporate TV, but wow they really gutted it, and that change really brought it home.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2018 09:20

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

Ugly In The Morning posted:

If they had gotten Peter Serafinowicz to basically reprise his role from John Wick 2 they could have put that scene on screen perfectly.

Strom Cuzewon posted:

The change that most irritates me is a really minor one in ep 2: he buys all his guns from a blackmarket dealer

In the book he goes to a swanky walnut walled establishment, where a very dapper synth sells him perfectly legal hyper-cyanide tipped knives, and a mag-flechette with a spare battery and "a charger compatible with all standard household outlets"

It gave a really nice civilised veneer to the dystopia, and made it a lot more than a generic gritty cyberpunk.

I think I might do a �Let�s Read� of Altered Carbon with some extra highlighting of where the books and show diverge.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2018 20:56

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

bring back old gbs posted:

Just started episode 3, this show spent it's money right. It looks expensive as gently caress.

I'm really starting to like the Hotel AI too.

That was a change I wasn�t crazy about when I heard about it, although I understand why they had to do it, but honestly, they really sold me on it. Poe ended up being one of my favorite parts.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2018 06:45

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

Avasculous posted:

It doesn't even make sense the way she frames it, since whitewashing traditionally means taking a minority role from the source material and giving it to a more palatable, white actor. She's just following a knee jerk script.

That's bad, but not quite as lazy as the reviewers complaining that the show exploits violence against women.

I'm only 6 episodes in, but the gendered body count has got to be at least 25 to 1, and the one protracted torture scene has a male-bodied victim, in an intentional change from the book.

So, what the gently caress are they gonna do if they do the Broken Angels storyline on Latimer and Tak is wearing a handsome, studly Afro-Caribbean sleeve? Accusations of black-washing? drat these people are dumb.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2018 19:57

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

Neddy Seagoon posted:

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

It sort of does, sort of. Remember the UN Judge�s son being a lovely tennis player?

# ¿ Feb 6, 2018 07:57

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

Avasculous posted:

And double sleeving is super illegal, punished by mandatory erasure. I think the only other crime they mention that gets that is unauthorized possession of a viral WMD.

Which crime he also commits. Book Tak gives no fucks. I�m 3 eps from the end so I don�t know if it�s the same in the show yet.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2018 22:54

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

Neddy Seagoon posted:

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?

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

# ¿ Feb 7, 2018 09:38

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

How come none of the whitewashing complainers note that it�s problematic to have Korean actors portray the (half-ish) Japanese Kovacs?

# ¿ Feb 8, 2018 05:12

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

Rhyno posted:

Book 2 or 3 deals with that according to what I read

I think

# ¿ Feb 8, 2018 20:53

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

Fututor Magnus posted:

so earth is the only place with 300+ year old elite with an incredible amount of power? is it because the colonized worlds aren't old enough for their elites to approach the same age as earth meths?

Book stuff: So, basically in the system protectorate/colonized worlds, there is no real democracy. There is window dressing to one degree or another, enforced by the occasional prole rampage which starts with riots, gets some wealthy members of the Oligarchy having their stacks fed to the EMP, and always ALWAYS ends with the Envoys and Protectorate stomping all over both sides, reestablishing the local oligarchy in some fashion and saying �don�t make us come back.� The oligarchs are all meths, they just don�t call them that because Christianity isn�t particularly wide-spread off Earth.

Earth seems like it has a little more in the way of actual political power and a pretense of representative government amongst the lower class than say Harlan�s World does. The law enforcement on the World explicitly works for the oligarchy, so there wouldn�t be any bribing of cops or back talk from Ortega on Harlan�s World.

The Unsettlement kicked off amongst the proles on Harlan�s World and Quell was a huge factor there, both as a revolutionary philosopher and a guerrilla leader/general. The fighting eventually made one of the major continents mostly uninhabitable due to large numbers of AI driven war machines. It�s never said explicitly but the normal �bombardment from orbit� tactics don�t work on Harlan�s World because the Martian defense satellites still work, are uncontrollable, and blow anything bigger than a small hang-glider out of the sky at like 100 meters. That�s why Kovacs mentions that �we don�t go off the ground much where I�m from.� Quell was eventually defeated, but enough concessions were wrung out of the Harlan family that life became tolerable enough for the proles that the revolution fizzled out when she died.

The Envoys, iirc, were created as a response to Quellism, which, as a philosophy keeps cropping up and causing problems.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2018 00:24

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

Neddy Seagoon posted:

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

Yeah, I might be misremembering that it was due to The Unsettlement, but they definitely didn�t exist during it.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2018 02:58

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

Tiggum posted:

That still takes an entire lifetime though. It's not like they're upgrading every couple of years or anything. You see someone today who you saw last week, you assume it's the same person because the chances of it being someone else are so slim as to be not worth considering.

It only works because people aren't doing it all the time though. It's pretty clear that the events of this story represent a dramatic departure from the norm. Even the super rich people don't switch bodies often, and in the ordinary course of events they're the only people who'd be able to anyway.

On Harlan�s World, in addition to putting a notice of resleeving on the net, they also have a social event called an �Ascertainment,� where you and your friends and family all sit around with your new sleeve and get wasted on sake and spend a few hours going �Member when you cracked cousin Joey over the head with a pop bottle cause he turned off your cartoons?� And �Remember when we got in that fight at Nakamura�s over that girl? What was her name?� And just talk story until everybody is used to the new you. There�s probably cake :3:

# ¿ Feb 11, 2018 09:14

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

Neddy Seagoon posted:

That's not the point of Ascertainment; It is literally to prove you are who you say you are because they have no other way to do so. The point is to bombard that total stranger claiming to be your friend/family/loved one with random questions until you can ascertain that they are who they claim to be.

That's exactly how it goes in the book too. The series just keeps trying to make him out as a brutal tyrant.

quote:

Ascertainment.
In today's society, it's as common a ritual as parental acknowledgement parties to celebrate a birth, or reweddings to cement newly re-sleeved couples in their old relationship. Part stylised ceremony, part maudlin what about that time when session, Ascertainment varies in its form and formality from world to world and culture to culture. But on every planet I've ever been, it exists as a deeply respected underlying aspect of social relations. Outside of expensive hi-tech psychographic procedures, it's the only way we have to prove to our friends and family that, regardless of what flesh we may be wearing, we are who we say we are. Ascertainment is the core social function that defines ongoing identity in the modern age, as vital to us now as primitive functions like signature and fingerprint databasing were to our pre-millennial ancestors.

The only reason, he goes on to say, that there was any hard-rear end questioning at all was because of WHO they were ascertaining.

The only reason, he goes on to say, that there was any hard-rear end questioning at all was because of WHO they were ascertaining. I get what you�re saying, but in practice, you�re doing the ascertainment on gramma when she resleeves as a social function and party not because you think the clinic slipped you a ringer. You can also see how spending a few hours doing so (drunk) would go a long way to acclimatizing everyone to the fact that Abuela is now a hot 20-something (or a beardy Nazi) so they can get on with their normal social relationship with her.

navyjack fucked around with this message at 09:52 on Feb 11, 2018

# ¿ Feb 11, 2018 09:34

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

Neddy Seagoon posted:

Read the second part of your own quote;

Sure, I�m saying that it�s not portrayed in the books as being a hard-assed questioning under normal circumstances. He lumps it in with baby showers and engagement announcements, ffs. When they are Ascertaining Quell/Mikita, yeah, it gets intense, but you don�t get the impression you are peppering gramma with trick questions. Getting a new sleeve for common people is a pretty happy and momentous occasion, so there�s a party and reminiscing to make sure the person is who they say they are but everybody pretty much knows because it�s been planned for weeks and half the family went to the clinic with her and then drove the new sleeve home. Most people aren�t criminals or famous revolutionaries back from the dead so it�s a fun little formality.
Yeah, there�s probably some dick who asks a bunch of penetrating questions, just like there�s some jerk at the housewarming who has to say something about termites.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2018 10:05

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

A couple of quotes from a Guardian piece that might be relevant to this thread�s interest:

quote:

Morgan is a consultant on the show which, if all goes well, will run for five seasons.

And:

quote:

He has said in the past that he is done with Kovacs, but the adaptation has �kind of woken it all up again�, so he might reconsider

# ¿ Feb 13, 2018 11:05

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

bring back old gbs posted:

That's sort of what I was getting at. Could an olympic athlete sell a copy of their skills, or pro skateboarder sell his new trick for $14.99? Could you buy a P-90X routine from a huge guy in an infomercial that was his entire memory of correctly learned exercises and food prep routines? Or would you get his roid rage / general distemper along with it?

A theme park where they temporarily load you up with the best jetfighting skills in the world and let you tear rear end around in real jets, or gunslingin, whatever.

So, really minor spoiler from book 3, not worth blacking out: Tak meets a person on Harlan�s World who is a 13 year old clone sleeve working in a surf shack (The World has amazing waves it�s a thing). The deal with this guy is, he lives in this sleeve and surfs in it more or less constantly, building up the muscle memory for surfing in it. At a prearranged time, the �rich aristo� who comes around now and again to catch some waves and check on his investment trades the guy his 30 year old pampered aristo sleeve for the young super-muscle memory surfer sleeve. Works out for everybody. It�s basically the sleeve gig economy.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2018 10:17

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

Neddy Seagoon posted:

If you want to take the Altered Carbon example, consider this; Battuta's concepts would explicitly prevent Double-Sleeving.

It works by bouncing someone as d.h.f across a planet to a resleeving facility, faking a failed transfer, and they restore the original from the transmission buffer. Oh well, guess I'll go home then. Nobody even knows the second one's walking around until they get back.

This is actually drawn from the book, but as usual the writers don't understand what they're doing with the nuances of the source material they drew from. The short answer is that Earth isn't the super-populated technological hub of the Protectorate. They're headquartered there buuut, that's about all the planet really has going for it aside from general corporations. See, once the Martian starcharts were discovered with maps to worlds that were guaranteed habitable, anyone with a desire for adventure got on the first Colony Barge they could.

The only people left on Earth were the ones who didn't want to leave, or couldn't (like the Catholics), and Laurens Bancroft was actually around for watching the Barges take off into the sky. It's what his telescope was used for. Bay City is probably about identical to how it is nowadays, but a big theme of the book is that everything is recycled from what it once was. It's why Fell St Police Station has the big glass windows; It used to be a Church. 'Licktown' is just low-lying under-the-freeway-strip-mall territory, and most of the traffic there is regular old ground-cars.

Another example is the Fight Drome in the book was a beached aircraft carrier called the Panama Rose (and the series flubs its script editing by calling the Fight Drome 'Panama Rose' a few times. Oops.). Even the vaunted Head in the Clouds isn't some uber-advanced floating platform. It's just a massive repurposed blimp that was once used to monitor the Earth's environment.

I love the bit in Book 2 where someone is arguing that because the humans only got to space because we found the Martians� maps and �we don�t belong here,� Kovacs� response is: well, save up for a needlecast to Earth. Place is a loving shithole, but we sure as poo poo belong there. I thought it was pretty funny.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2018 10:28

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

There Bias Two posted:

Another question maybe the book readers have an answer to:

Why are people still bothering to use flesh bodies and live in the Real, other than for religious reasons? Usually stories with digitization of consciousness result in hiveminds and VR civilizations, but I don't see much of that here.

There is a sect/group in the books that do exactly that, but somebody has to keep the lights on, and people mostly treat the idea with a kind of genial contempt.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2018 19:46

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

General Battuta posted:

Morgan's ideology is basically 'all systems tend towards complete value capture by the rich and powerful' so I think the Protectorate is more or less going to be an armature of the Meths by ~soon.

Aha, it's right on his Wikipedia page!

He seems like a fun guy

I mean...*gestures helplessly at like the whole world* he�s not wrong...

# ¿ Feb 15, 2018 04:23

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

Ugly In The Morning posted:

Didn�t the martians have some kind of remote upload thing going on and didn�t need stacks? It�s been ages since I read the books so I�m probably misremembering.

Nobody�s sure. Some think they didn�t have technological immortality and some say we just haven�t found the mechanism.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2018 20:48

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

Neddy Seagoon posted:

The good parts are from the book, all the bad ones are series-original. They've also deviated far enough that they can't fully adapt books two and three due to their Young-Adult-Novel-tier rewrite of Kovacs' past.

A second season would have to be far more in the hands of the series writers, and they're not capable of much beyond tired "Supernatural Guy Who Solves Crimes" cliches at the best of times.

I mostly agree with this, with the exception of Nazi Abuela and The Raven.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2018 08:59

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

Open Source Idiom posted:

Honestly, my biggest problem with the show was set design.

Like, how does a lovely cop who isn't on somebody's payroll afford that massive gently caress off apartment? Because, jeeze, her house is loving huge. To say nothing of that other family's beautiful, if cluttered, circular sun room.

Did no one tell the set designers that severe income inequality would lead to shortages on space? Everyone lives in these enormous homes, but oh no, they must be poor because you have to duck between two artfully graffited shipping containers to get inside.

That and that police station is an insanely over designed set. On top of having a fancy scifi desk, the police chief's office has two separate glowing walls that seemingly exist purely to project various shades of blue light into his office. It's insane. It's like he's working in two different discos.

I liked the bit where they blew up.

(And I didn't mind dream Quell tbh. Not the flashbacks, but the bit where she turns up and haunts him a bit were fine and occasionally moving when they underplayed things. i.e. not the last episode.)

Well, the worse income inequality gets, the better compensated the agents of state violence become.

In the books, though, the sweet digs were a boat that Ryker acquired through crooked means.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2018 20:44

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

Zil posted:

Not to mention that the sleeve he was in was specifically made for high radiation areas, like humanity has found a way to slow down the ravages of nuclear weapons on the human form.

Actually....his, Tanya�s, Hand�s, and whasshisname the pilot�s weren�t. They were just slugging down anti-rad meds like crazy. The spec ops team guys were in the rad-hardened Maori sleeves! :eng101:

Not that it mattered other than making a patented :yikes:

Morgan sex scene even more :yikes:

# ¿ Feb 27, 2018 08:30

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

Elias_Maluco posted:

Makes more sense, I guess. Now I have to read the drat book or at least some summary of it, I'm too curious about what else they changed

Oh man, Quellcrist Falconer was born, fought her war, and died a couple hundred years before Kovacs was born and had nothing to do with stacks. The Envoys were the Protectorate super troops, not forest hippie terrorists. Kovacs was an armed robber after having quit the Envoys which is why he was in Storage, not because he was a hunted terrorist. There is no super cyborg arm for Ortega and no �are you a man of faith� weirdo. Bancroft�s kids are only mentioned in passing. That�s probably the main non-spoiler stuff that deviates hard from the book.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2018 20:03

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

Johnny Truant posted:

Poe and abuela are pretty much the only good things the writers came up with themselves.

Woken Furies question: I just got past the deCom team and Tak blowing the temple and faking their death so they can find Jad and Tak new sleeves, but I think I must've just missed a partial explanation of the command heads, what Sylvie is? They have external processors in the shape of hair and stuff, and that lets them network together their deCom team, right? But they can also just connect to like, almost any broadcast? Also, wincefish? What now?

So, after Broken Angels, a whole bunch of Martian tech got disbursed to society. All the cyber stuff you see people getting implanted is adapted from Martian tech. The DeCom teams are all stuffed full of it, and the Command Head gets a whole bunch of extra that is mostly devoted to comms, network security, and coordination. Sylvie�s �hair� is a combo supercomputer and antenna. It wasn�t designed to take out the autonomous machines, but it turns out to be helpful.

The wincefish are �point� specialists. Their implanted Martian tech and training tends toward threat detection, stealth, and surveillance. They�re the guys who go in and look for booby traps and hidden mechs and stuff. That�s why they have the rep of being both jittery and insane.

# ¿ Jun 16, 2018 20:56

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# ¿ Apr 20, 2024 05:27

navyjack: Jul 15, 2006

Johnny Truant posted:

thanks!

I must've missed the Martian bit, but that all groks with the rest of the story.

Are there any plans for more Takeshi Kovacs books? Homie does awesome world building.

Originally, no, but supposedly working on getting the show to air gave him some ideas so maybe.

His Land Fit For Heroes books are pretty good with lots of fantasy world building (and some cringey sex but whatever). And there is at least a tangential possible relation to the Altered Carbon books. The �Gods� might be people from Kovacs world after some weird
Martian singularity or they might not be, just some odd coincidence of name and archetype

# ¿ Jun 16, 2018 22:17

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