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The Expanse
- Thread starter Goatface
- Start date
Cybsled
Avatar of War Slayer
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Ya, they never really explain it. It is just sort of left at "this alien race was millions, maybe billions, of years more advanced than us...we can't figure this shit out". The whole Issac Asimov "super advanced tech = indistinguishable from magic" and all that.
Merrith
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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They were definitely billions plus, b/c the PM was sent to our solar system 2+ billion years prior to us finding it.
kaid
Blackwing Lair Raider
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Its all been derelict for a long time before being kicked active by ghost miller presumably other failsafes failed to stop the explosion and what kicked in was the more dramatic "full room fire extinguisher" kicked on.
khorum
Murder Apologist
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That was Arthur C Clarke. But he was talking about tight Perl code so we'll let it pass.
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Book two done and again the show elevated the source material. The cool moments were just handled far better in the show like Amos & Prax, having scenes from the perspective of the side characters like the admirals, and other elements. I liked book Bobbie & book Avasarala better though. There was just some small touches that made the characters stand out compared to the TV versions. For example, the 4th season issues between Avasarala and her husband have a lot more weight for the book version compared to the TV one.
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pharmakos
soʞɐɯɹɐɥd
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i'm just a show watcher, not a book reader, but i keep thinking there's going to be some big reveal that the protomolecule somehow orchestrated the whole thing from the start, down to picking Holden to be the "hero" from birth
chaos
Buzzfeed Editor
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pharmakos
soʞɐɯɹɐɥd
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lots of little things had me thinking it as i watched this latest season. can't remember all of them exactly right now, but the train of thought started because i was trying to wonder if all these mentions of Holden;s multi-parent genetics being relatively unique is a sort of Chekov's gun thing. it's been dropped a few times through the show, and thus far i haven't been able to figure out why it matters at all for them to have mentioned it so many times... there's so many other little world / character building details that have barely gotten a mention in a shot background news broadcast, y'know? so why has this been mentioned so much?
but then, i also am not entirely sure if Holden's multiparent genetics thing is actually all that rare. the conversation where i started thinking about this was when he was branstorming with the biologist about why he was immune to the alien microorganism infection... that conversation made it sound like he was the only one on Ilus that had multiparent genetics, so apparently it must be relatively rare among belters at least. but yeah, after a small amount of searching i wasn't able to easily find any more about it on the wiki and i got distracted before i could read too much and get a bunch of spoilers.
There has been a few moments in both the series and at least the first two books that made it clear the authors (two dudes, I was surprised) were trying to point out that there might be something deeper at play. Holden remarks on the chances of some things happening being so unlikely, and Miller seeing the hummingbird at times before the protomolecule had been in any position, which helped guide him onto his path. I think there's been a few more but my memory isn't quite digging them up at the moment.
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chaos
Buzzfeed Editor
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Yeah idk, I hadn't really considered that kind of an angle. I guess they could do it, clearly there's something going on with Holden but I had chalked it up to exposure to the protomolecule that may/may not be expanded upon. I thought the bird was just symbolism, not anything specific to the protomolecule. Could be though.
iannis
Musty Nester
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Yeah, my interpretation of that in the books is that it's a sly wink to the reader. A very mild kind of 4th wall breaking where the authors are letting you know that some things HAVE to happen because of plot. From what I remember, and it has been years, they didn't over use it.
Otherwise you'll wind up with what RR Martin ended up with, 500 character POV's and no actual story. Which, I mean, there's a place for that and it's fine on its own merits. It's not what they seem to want to be doing though.
Otherwise you'll wind up with what RR Martin ended up with, 500 character POV's and no actual story. Which, I mean, there's a place for that and it's fine on its own merits. It's not what they seem to want to be doing though.
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pharmakos
soʞɐɯɹɐɥd
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End of the day, the whole story is a retelling of a roleplaying campaign, yeah? So I mean, I could see it.
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So I finished all four seasons and really enjoyed it (especially the first 3 seasons).
Favorite character: Camina Drummer!
About season 4. did they throw everyone through a ugly factory before shooting? The men all had retarded looking beards, Nagata went from cool hair to ugly black boy hair, and Camina lost 99 percent of her awesome eye makeup. wtf?????
Favorite character: Camina Drummer!
About season 4. did they throw everyone through a ugly factory before shooting? The men all had retarded looking beards, Nagata went from cool hair to ugly black boy hair, and Camina lost 99 percent of her awesome eye makeup. wtf?????
Yes. The conceit of a consequentially-located POV/plot anchor is necessary because otherwise you don't get an engaging story. Think of it as survivorship bias among all possible ways the reader can experience the events. Who wants to read from the perspective of some schlub working in a fungus reclamation plant on the third moon of a system that doesn't see any action and only reads about it in the newspaper? (I mean, that's a valid thing to do, but not the kind of story they're trying to tell.) They keep the same characters from book to book because that makes it easy to keep the readers emotionally engaged. If they wanted it could be done with a sequence of one-off casts, but that's much harder to write.
This approach is as old as stories and shouldn't need justification.
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ShakyJake
<Donor>
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Same here. I don' t know why. She's not particularly attractive. Nice rack, though.
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