gfarrell80 posted:

BSG? Strong theme of imperialism? Not so sure about that one.

Everyone posted:

They thing for me is that "population control" usually devolves down to "We have way too many brown and yellow people. We need to cut down on them now. We could use some more hot blonde white people, though."

gfarrell80 posted:

The 1st Cylon war (the robo revolution) is background for the series, not really present. The reason why the cylons revolted in the 1st cylon war is of miniscule concern in the series, I am not sure it is really even covered. The statement "The Colonials enslave Cylons and extract labor from them to enrich themselves" is somewhat questionable. To enslave something it has to be sentient. I'm not sure the colonials in the 1st cylon war were knowingly enslaving sentient robots; my understanding was that it was kinda a skynet type moment causing the 1st cylon war. More the classic 'be wary of technology because it will kill you' myth (Daedalus/Icarus) than a warning against colonialism.

Also the statement "liberated skinjob cylons then enslave the old generation Cylons to extract labor from them" is a little dubious. The exact relationship between the skin jobs and the other cylons is a little mysterious. To me it always seemed more symbiotic and cooperative rather than exploitative. There doesn't seem to be any kind of priority given to skin job projects at the expense of centurions and raiders.

To me BSG was less about imperialism and more of a warning about how technology is as likely to be our killer as our savior. Also BSG had some of the typical petty tribalistic politics thrown in there.

Was that thing about Caprica in the 'Caprica' show? I don't remember that in the mainline BSG story. It has been several years though.

Everyone posted:

Actually, you should care what white supremacists think because in our real world, white people still rule the world. Well, rich people do, and the largest percentage of rich people are white. It's not about rear end in a top hat MAGA nazi-types. White people (and I am one) want to stay "supreme" because that's the status quo. Rich people tend to be white. Rich people support the status quo so they can stay rich.

Who says that at least some of that hasn't already been done, at least on Earth? With 30 billion people, many of whom lack employment and are on Basic, presumably population controls like you have outlined have already been implemented. As medical knowledge increases, lifespans lengthenSo figure at this point either they take advantage of the 1300 new frontiers that just opened up or they start building extermination camps. Maybe they can raise money via gladiatorial "Hunger Games." The survivors get to eat the losers.

Delthalaz posted:

Nobody should watch BSG unless you enjoy sweaty gross people with no chemistry grunting and mashing their mouths on one another for 20-minute PG-13 sex scenes every episode, petty assholes backstabbing and murdering one another at every opportunity unless they happen to have plot armor at that moment (like in GOT), and a completely nonsensical broader plot. Or if you like being blatantly lied to by a tv-show. Each episode begins with the total lie "they have a plan" -- nope it turns out nobody had a plan it was just a bunch of stuff that happened because this is God's dialectic for human history.

Jakabite posted:

Surely this is sarcasm

Toxic Fart Syndrome posted:

He’s nice to some people, when they have utility for him. He was super chummy with his shipmates right until saving them meant jeopardizing his op. Out of the blue kidnapping your mother does not seem nice or chill, but definitely cleaves towards psycho...

Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:

Hitting the moon seems like a real trick shot compared to the Earth.

Collateral posted:

I think it will result in a mass migration of humanity through the ring gates. Earth's population is going to be under pressure to gtfo. With the marco's gang predating them, earth military will have no other option but to hunt Marco down.

Open Source Idiom posted:

Who's Holden in the above?

emanresu tnuocca posted:

Is it ever addressed in the books\show why nobody other than the Mormons with the Nauvo ever tried reaching a different star using the epstein drive? the franchise kind of gives the impression that fuel is pretty much a non issue, a ship like the Roci can burn for the year or so it would take to make it to the ring and return, it seems like you could just stock it with enough 'fuel pellets' and point it towards proxima centauri and reach it within an acceptable amount of time, in that sense a generational ship like the Nauvo doesn't really make sense, a constant 1g burn would get the mormons as far as the Andromeda galaxy in several decades 'ship time'.

Just some nerd musings, sorry.

Defiance Industries posted:

Is swatch time code for "the four-corner simultaneous four-day rotation of Earth"

Baronjutter posted:

I don't understand marco's plan beside doing a revenge genocide on earth's working class for daring to be under the same boot as belters. He says belters can't settle on any of the ring worlds due to the gravity there, and the ones who did would cease to be belters. But he wants earth and mars restricted to their atmosphere and denied access to space because space should belong to belters. He just doesn't want anyone settling new planets, even belters. He just wants to spread low gravity space-based belter society through the ring gates and leave the planets unsettled?

Fister Roboto posted:

Just because it could be worse doesn't mean it's not dystopian. Just because the people running things aren't being intentionally evil doesn't mean it's not dystopian. A system where the vast majority of people are forced into a dull, boring existence unless they get that one in a million chance to work a normal rear end job (also you can't have basic reproductive rights) sounds pretty dystopian to me, regardless of how many people alive today would be OK with it.

Crazycryodude posted:

Earth and Mars suck up all the industrial metals and useful volatiles, but Mars exports a lot of high tech manufacturing and a navy from Space Raytheon, while Earth is the only truly functional biosphere humanity has (even with the damage from climate change) and exports huge amounts of organics to both Mars and the Belt.

Boris Galerkin posted:

I still don’t buy this because in TYOOL 2021 we still have people choosing to live in inhospitable hellscapes in the desert that have no source of water, 40+ degrees all day every day, and impossible to grow anything outside. These people chose to move there despite all of that, and they choose to live there still instead of the thousands of other cities that exist in conditions conducive to life.

I think it’s real dumb to assume that Mars would just be abandoned cause it’s basically the same thing.

Lamebot posted:

It could be the whole galaxy. Protogen dated Phoebe to 2 billion years old.

Collateral posted:

My only surprise in this situation is that they only sent one, why not send 10?

Wheeee posted:

Yea I've enjoyed this season but taken in the context of there only being twelve episodes remaining in the series it's not so good with pacing and setup, I'm kinda expecting the final season to be relatively rushed and unsatisfying.

Baron Fuzzlewhack posted:

Visual context:

Panderfringe posted:

That's exactly what we're heading toward, since they've got to wrap up so much plot in season 6. They took way too long to do anything at all this season, opting to save it for later.

Barreft posted:

Yeah that's fine for book readers, but I'm watching a show and knowing it's cut off 2/3rds into it's story. So I'm just bummed in general.

Whatever they say about books 7-9 in the future I don't give a poo poo, cause it probably won't happen, but mainly I'm invested in the Expanse tv show.

If this was as popular as GOT people would be furious you'd end the show after season 6. (in retrospect I wish they did).

Mu Zeta posted:

The actors are really good for the most part. It's just Marco that sucks rear end. Just bring back David Straitharn to play Marco in season 6.

Slashrat posted:

How is the Barkeith's disintegration described in the books? Not looking for plot spoilers, just additional insight into what happened there that that visual medium of the TV show doesn't communicate.

splifyphus posted:

No, it doesn't, because this is a work of fiction. It doesn't 'have to be' any which way, and it is the way it is because it's based off a D&D campaign that's been fleshed out by amateur writers who ran out of ideas and began recycling their own material.

Everything to do with Inaros is a mistep, and a lazy one at that. Oh no stealth rocks are headed for Earth - we've already done this. If you're going to write a new trilogy having a new story to tell is kind of a prerequisite, and they set themselves up with virtually infinite potential for new material and totally fumbled it.

e: Let's do an actual analysis. Class struggle in space is easy town frolics, it writes itself - because it's a story that's been generated by a social order that is itself defined by fundamental antagonisms of social interest. All you have to do is take actual history and put it in space - scifi is largely just this, from star trek to star wars and back again. Earth is USA, Mars is Soviets, the belt is the 'third world', ie; the global periphery. Yawn.

Now, class struggle irl is the opposite of pointless - it's extremely pointful and can't be escaped. The 'developed world', ie; the global core exploits the global periphery for its wealth and resources - it would take 6 earthlike planets and an additional 30 billion super-exploited peoples to give the currently existing population the 'lifestyles' enjoyed by the inhabitants of the core. This is obviously impossible, and calling this state of affairs a 'civilization' is a euphemism in appallingly bad taste.

Because the core has most of the resources, it generates the most leisure time and thereby the most art. For a writer to get published, he/she/it has to appeal to the audience that can afford the time/money to consume said writings. So the vast majority of what is published is going to be written from the perspective of the current winners of history, the middle and upper classes of the 'developed world', for their own perspective. For a writing to get filmed for television, the barrier to entry is even more strict. Film production is expensive, and the vast majority of it has to conform to hegemonic perspectives, narratives, and expectations just have a shot at the screen.

The middle and upper classes of the core like their burgers and SUVs and television and air conditioning and live under the most totalizing propaganda apparatus ever conceived, so they aren't really about anyone who might want to change this situation so that there might actually be like, a liveable future or any such thing. So when they consume literature generated by social antagonisms about social antagonisms, it's all gonna be written from one side of actually existing social antagonisms.

This is what Inaros is - an ridiculous exaggeration of real world interests opposed to the dominion of capitalism (also known as the 7th mass extinction event). He's not interested in making the belt politically or economically independent, he can't even spell the word 'autarchy', he has no concrete analysis of his conditions, he has no grand plan for new structures of social relations, he doesn't really give a gently caress about Belter liberation, his 'fleet' is partially composed of indentured unwilling participants, he doesn't even have that much of a mass base - he just wants to kill as many Earthers as possible as fast as he can. (This is not a 'genocide' - a genocide is ethnically targetted, Inaros is a specifically democidal maniac). So he does. Instantly and obvously this makes everything worse for everyone - the belt is defenceless except for the 'Free Fleet' and and isn't remotely self-sufficient.

No actual Belter revolutionary group would ever have done anything like this. It's ludicrous. A non-caricature, seriously organized group working from such an overwhelmingly underdog position would have used the threat of possible conflict to negotiate more equitable deals, a lasting peace and some level of Belter self-determination (or at this point in the narrative, focused its efforts on GTFOing to any one of the thousands of new explicitly habitable systems available, where the fun and cool stories are) - not hosed the entire sol system up the rear end with a big rock. Not even Stalin or Mao ever set out to do anything this deranged. You don't build a new future by burning everything down.

This is an absurd cartoon of actual world history, obviously based on the absurd cartoon of propagandistic bullshit the USA tells itself about its own history. ANARCHISTS BAD, CAPITAL GOOD, SHUT UP AND WATCH YOUR SHOW WAGE SLAVE. Marco Inaros is Jeff Bezos jizzing into your gaping credulous eye sockets when you could be doing your goddamn homework.

Open Source Idiom posted:

This is such a weird scene in general.

"This is how we win!"

*the apocalyptic corpse of the planet Earth looms in the background*

Dalael posted:

Earth's had 3 rocks lobbed at it and the show makes it pretty clear that things are going downhill on that blue dot. Mars' fleet is half being cut up, while the other half can't be trusted. Every now and then they mention that earth's fleet is getting its rear end kicked in the belt. I feel like the shows conveys exactly what you're saying. My only issues when it comes to earth is it doesn't look devastated enough imho.

gfarrell80 posted:

Pattonesque posted:

also, we're gonna get rid of all technology so we don't repeat our mistakes! oops, what happened to our antibiotics?

Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:

You'd think that Basic would at least result in an explosion of art, music, and literature with billions of people literally idle but the introduction of the Canterbury features a funky space instrumental cover of Rod Stewart's Do Ya Think I'm Sexy soooooo

Mu Zeta posted:

Earth should consider a genophage to cut down on the population for a few generations.