so nerds and scifi franchises

[Zod]

cats vs dogs

[Pieman]

I don't really understand fantasy sports or the appeal of it honestly.

And stamp collecting has like art and stuff to look at.

Technical discussion is ok on its own but that has its own dead ends.

Technical discussion for Vs. debating? It just seems like a veiled way to saying "my thing is better than yours"

It's inherently confrontational and just makes people defensive

I guess in a positive way, it can be used to illustrate severe flaws in another fictional body's way of thinking and how it affects its fans

like the ever present Gundam vs. Battletech threads

but to be honest, you don't need a versus debate to analyze something

Yeah.

Versus can be about "yeah, look at how seriously messed up this social system is, it couldn't survive a challenge from outside even though it looks all mighty and powerful and tyrannical PATH OF THE WARRIAH and BALLS OF IRON." This is how one of my friends talks whenever he gets into a BattleTech versus, he thinks all the warrior bullshit from the Clans and stuff is bullshit, and thinks that the Clans would probably get their asses kicked fighting a lot of other powers because of that, regardless of any obsessing over TANKS VS MECHA or whatever. So I think that's good because he's thinking about the social aspects.

Or versus can be about "wow, we don't often think about just what kind of crazy shit might be possible to a civilization that can do X, but some of it is pretty damn impressive." And when it's about that, it can be pretty good. You go "holy shit, these guys can steal a whole planet's oceans and it's not even a big deal" and that at least leads your imagination to cool places sometimes because you imagine things like putting engines on planets and pushing them slowly into orbits, stuff that you would not normally conceive of as possible.

On the other hand it can all be about stupidity and obsession over details of dialogue and whatnot, in which case it is blah.

I've seen versus that went good places. I've seen versus that went into stupid minutiae. It's a tossup, like most forum conversations. Heck, this is the Internet. All good things on the Internet have a half-life before they decay into stupidity.

So I don't let it bug me too much. When it's fun, it's fun, when it's not fun anymore you can always just walk away and leave it to the people who are bigger idiots, right?

[Akhlut]

That was shown to be a power only Vader employed, to torture or kill people. Luke uses it the first time we see him in RotJ. (Which I think is cool because I interpret RotJ as Luke struggling with and ultimately rejecting the Dark Side, something Anakin couldn't do which is why he fell, but which his son's example redeems him to turn against the Emperor)

That reminds me: this is why I vastly prefer the scene in the original trilogy (and the first Special Editions) where Anakin's ghost was of him as an old man, NOT when he was a young man prior to becoming Darth Vader. I think it is a lot more powerful image for him to be a force spirit as an old man, as it shows that he died as Anakin, not Darth Vader.

[Questor]

It's just a veneer so that they can justify why they like a certain movie/book/comic book/play/whatever.

For some reason, they can't just say "This sucked, it sucked hard, Michael Bay makes deeper movies, but I still had fun." They have to construct some threadbare rationalization. I love horrible movies. I also love horrible books. I'll slog through 300 pages of tripe from John Ringo for the single line that makes me break out laughing out load. I don't try to claim that this makes Ringo a good author, it just means I can read fast enough to make that trade off attractive. Movies are the same way. I ENJOY bad ones, but that doesn't mean that I think they're good, or need to be defended.

[Questor]

Hypocrisy, on the other hand, shouldn't be tolerated.

[Agent Bert Macklin]

Mang, I'll justify Bay's existence in the film world with one movie.

[Questor]

Hey, I enjoy his movies, but I just admitted to liking bad movies.

[Agent Bert Macklin]

Yeah. I do too. Yesterday I was accused of being "Joe Popcorn" because I like his shit. Apparently I need to see more foreign movies to be up to snuff to cinephiles?

[Agent Bert Macklin]

This drove some people nuts, lol. I wrote this a while back.

The Island: A Lesson in American Fundamentalism

It’s no secret that American fundamentalists are their own unique brand of lunacy. They love sheltering their kids from opposing outside forces and the alternate views that accompany them. They consume religion in quantities that are comparable to the diets of world-class athletes. Fundamentalists corrupt any sense of critical thinking in their children, keeping them within a certain frame of thought that could last indefinitely. A little motion picture was released in 2005 that aptly demonstrates this lunacy was directed by the much-maligned Michael Bay. Its title is The Island.

The Island shows a part of society that is separated from the rest. Its inhabitants, known as “agnates,” lead normal lives by eating, working, sleeping, socializing, and sporting. They do not know that they are sheltered and that it’s harsh and detrimental to them all. The character Lincoln Six Echo, portrayed by Ewan McGregor, begins to notice that there’s something wrong with how he and the others are living and he begins asking questions. Lincoln confides in Dr. Bernard Merrick (Sean Bean), the God of the compound, and these questions are not appreciated. He has created them and they must obey his every command.

It is completely normal to become inquisitive with age, to ask about your existence, where you live, your purpose in life, what these things mean, etc. So why is it that when Lincoln does it, it is frowned upon by his creator, Dr. Merrick? Why is it that when children, reared by fundamentalist parents, inquire about important issues, it is considered wrong to question their authority? The answer is obviously because they want their subjects/children to stay brainwashed so they can remain subservient to the authority. The revelation of what is being done to the inhabitants in the compound shows exactly that: they are being brainwashed to stay in line and have the desire to reach “the island,” their own special paradise. How do they gain entry onto the island? They follow a set of rules established by their creator.

Certain rules exist on the compound which mirrors those of millions of Americans, rules that are supposed to make them better people. They follow these rules because they are destined to leave for paradise, as they have been programmed since birth to believe. For one, sex is considered taboo in the eyes of Dr. Merrick. He has directly removed any sense of natural sexual impulses that come with being human. He took it a step further and instituted “proximity” alerts when subjects remain too close for an extended period of time. These abstinent measures are to keep them in check in case something does happen, because Lincoln and the others must obey their master and throw away all worldly “sin.”

Sex is avoided at all costs on the compound. However, promiscuity is not a problem for those in the society outside of it. A get-out-jail-free card is obtainable thanks to Dr. Merrick. They can start over and not have to worry about past transgressions. In fact, this is the case with many clients who possess the insurance policy Dr. Merrick has given them. The connection to Christian redemption cannot be denied: even the most despicable human being can earn a place in heaven by simply feeling remorse and submitting to God’s will.

Asking questions that can reveal the nature of the compound is prohibited as well. When Lincoln discusses a dream he has with Dr. Merrick near the beginning of the film, the good doctor wants a test done immediately. A red flag has gone off in his head that his creation is beginning to question him and that cannot happen. Later, Dr. Merrick is having a conversation with another agnate, Gandu Three Echo. It is here that the obsessive questioning plaguing his compound reaches a new height: Dr. Merrick murders Gandu because he is beginning to show signs of logical maturity, and rising up against your creator has dire consequences.

Behavior is monitored just like proximity (note that there are no hints of homosexuals in the film, and it can be deduced that they don’t exist seeing as how proximity alerts are only there for heterosexuals). Gandu is a bit of a troublemaker and when he finds out at the beginning of the movie that he did not win the lottery to go to the island, he is confronted by the compound’s security after an outburst of anger. He has a look of fear on his face; fear that because of this misdeed, he may never win the lottery. Stay in line, obey, and you will be on your way to paradise.

The best parallel between Lincoln and Jordan (Scarlett Johansson) and American fundamentalists involves seeing new things for the first time and realizing that these people were deliberately reared to be stupid. Lincoln and Jordan were kept in the dark: when they saw children, saw the vast stretch of land before them, when they learned about sex, they were dumbfounded. There is a line uttered by Steve Buscemi’s character, James, that Lincoln and Jordan have the knowledge of 15 year olds. If it weren’t for them regaining memories of the clients they are supposed to replace, they would be stuck like the millions of children who grow up to be among the dumbest in the population.

If only the religious extremists in America are as lucky as the agnates when two of them go out of the box to find answers and help them see the light. When one does that in the United States, there is vast shunning: you are looked at differently, your opinions are not taken seriously, you are criticized in the open, blamed for the ills plaguing society, etc. A lengthy action sequence is followed by the freeing of thousands of brainwashed humans, where they see what they have been missing and will experience things they couldn’t have imagined. Once again, if only the fundamentalists were so lucky.

[Shroom Man 777]

Or, two, and it does get used this way here much of the time- it means a sort of... fatness of the soul, a hardening of the arteries of the mind, so that their scope becomes limited, their flexibility disappears, and they become useless for any serious or intelligent purpose.

i like the cut of your jib

[Pieman]

Thanks, mang.

There's a catch, though. Speaking for myself, it would be very easy for me to look at someone and say 'he suffers from fatness of the soul,' when in fact this person just does not agree with me. Or lives and thinks in a way that is different from mine, but not unworthy or inferior to mine.

It's easy to do, and it gives me a convenient excuse not to think about what other people are saying or doing. It's like mocking someone as stupid- in fact, it is mocking them as stupid, because this fatness of the soul is a kind of stupidity. So if I do it too much, my own mental arteries harden and my own scope becomes limited. And then people can look at me and say "no, Pieman, you are the fatty," and then I am the fatty. So that's no good.

[Darth Fanboy]

tucker and raynor siiting in a tree, k-i-s-s-writingproustianresponsesaboutscifi-n-g

[Jung]

Versus can be about "yeah, look at how seriously messed up this social system is, it couldn't survive a challenge from outside even though it looks all mighty and powerful and tyrannical PATH OF THE WARRIAH and BALLS OF IRON." This is how one of my friends talks whenever he gets into a BattleTech versus, he thinks all the warrior bullshit from the Clans and stuff is bullshit, and thinks that the Clans would probably get their asses kicked fighting a lot of other powers because of that, regardless of any obsessing over TANKS VS MECHA or whatever. So I think that's good because he's thinking about the social aspects.

Or versus can be about "wow, we don't often think about just what kind of crazy shit might be possible to a civilization that can do X, but some of it is pretty damn impressive." And when it's about that, it can be pretty good. You go "holy shit, these guys can steal a whole planet's oceans and it's not even a big deal" and that at least leads your imagination to cool places sometimes because you imagine things like putting engines on planets and pushing them slowly into orbits, stuff that you would not normally conceive of as possible.

Yeah, this kind of stuff is what I see as potentially interesting in vs. debating.

It doesn't have to be all "well my pew pews are 9999 gigatons whereas yours a mere 999 gigatons therefore I rox u sux."

[Agent Bert Macklin]

tucker and raynor siiting in a tree, k-i-s-s-writingproustianresponsesaboutscifi-n-g

[Veef]

https://twitter.com/nedroid/status/2127 ... 61/photo/1

gmic

[Darth Fanboy]

Hah! Well played Knubs.

[Pieman]

Yeah, this kind of stuff is what I see as potentially interesting in vs. debating.

It doesn't have to be all "well my pew pews are 9999 gigatons whereas yours a mere 999 gigatons therefore I rox u sux."

Honestly, how many of the SDN people really even do that anymore, in actual versus threads? There's always a few newbies who think they can look impressive by parroting stuff on the long-defunct "main page." But of the people who have been around a while and are older than about 21, do any of them really say it like that?

Or can they talk all this other interesting stuff, and sometimes get sidetracked into pew pews?

It seems to me that most of the big pew pew obsessed threads these days are from people like Connor and Ahriman sitting down and putting a huge amount of effort into "analyzing" things without any versus component at all. And half the time those turn into launchpads for discussions about other things, like military strategy or what the fuck is wrong with Baen books.

[Zod]

Yeah, this kind of stuff is what I see as potentially interesting in vs. debating.

It doesn't have to be all "well my pew pews are 9999 gigatons whereas yours a mere 999 gigatons therefore I rox u sux."

Honestly, how many of the SDN people really even do that anymore, in actual versus threads? There's always a few newbies who think they can look impressive by parroting stuff on the long-defunct "main page." But of the people who have been around a while and are older than about 21, do any of them really say it like that?

Or can they talk all this other interesting stuff, and sometimes get sidetracked into pew pews?

It seems to me that most of the big pew pew obsessed threads these days are from people like Connor and Ahriman sitting down and putting a huge amount of effort into "analyzing" things without any versus component at all. And half the time those turn into launchpads for discussions about other things, like military strategy or what the fuck is wrong with Baen books.

i lost interest in any vs discussions after about a year or two so . . . who knows?

[Jung]

Honestly, how many of the SDN people really even do that anymore, in actual versus threads?

Honestly I barely bother with vs. debates anymore so I wouldn't really know.

[starku]

Nobody does it because gigatons ended discussion
It's not really evidence of some sdn maturity rather than the horse simply being utterly dead

So why all about anything anymore lol?

[Questor]

what the fuck is wrong with Baen books.

I don't think Mike's server has enough space to cover this topic exhaustively.

[Shroom Man 777]

who is pieman anyway

curious minds

[starku]

Seriously does it matter
If he's from sdn let's just forget everything he did there
Because where does he shithead poster end and the shithead board begin

Let's make a clean break usergroup

[Shroom Man 777]

hmmm true that man

[adr-admin]

vs still amuses me

tho more to say "u teh st00pid" than to do my own gigatonz

then there's a lot of tech starting points for other stuff. i might put it in st vs sw but i actually want to talk about potential complications in the hard sci fi