This is gonna be the thread where we talk about stuff

As a lover of robots, especially giant robots, and especially giant robots that fight, and especially giant robots that fight and that look as if they're actually moving the right mass, I am definitely going to see Pacific Rim. I might even spring for 3D - I've had pretty good visual experiences with the last 3D movies I've seen (World War Z and The Avengers), and the 3D trailer for Pacific Rim looked fantastic when I saw it in the theater prior to World War Z.

I just overheard the boyfriend watching a review, and i was already excited but now i NEED TO SEE IT WOW

eh

guess i have to see it now

alone

Wow what a coincidence im literally too hype for this movie because im alone in the theater an hour early whoops

Hah! Tell us all about it afterwards, Sol :3 I mean, about how good it was, no spoilers obv.

Caved and saw it

Verdict: It was everything I expected it to be, which is to say it was absurd, over-the-top and fun. It hit every kaijiu + giant mecha trope I was hoping for. And visually it was gorgeous, not just in terms of special effects but in terms of shots and design. Definitely a solid action movie.

Yea I liked it a lot and the robots and monsters all looked super good!!!

THere were also a lot of scenes that had a lot of thought put into them, I felt? Like a lot of the dialog told you something that had a lot more implications than you first thought and it doesn't just shove it down your throat???

Man it was so weird seeing Charlie Day as not Charlie from Always Sunny though.

Also i disliked that i saw a few EMOTIONAL TEARJERKER SCENES coming AND THEN I CRIED ANYWAY ;A;

I felt like I was watching Attack on Titan but with giant robots.

(Also hello how is everyone?)

Okay I saw Pacific Rim.

I guess it was okay.

Thoughts and spoilers below!

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SpoilerA lot of it felt like a giant Eva fanwank, which it honestly is, while paying some good homage to kaiju movies. It also introduces a lot of interesting concepts (for example, Drifting) but seems a little scared to play with them too much, leaving us with a sense of unfulfilled potential. Or maybe I have the emotional sensitivity of a rock.

That said, most of my emotional sensitivity was used up on seeing my home city and suburbs that I personally know get crushed and destroyed horribly. THAT SHIPPING CONTAINER YARD WAS MY CHILDHOOD no it really wasn't, but it was still painfully familiar to see that red crane and the walkways over Wan Chai...wait, how did they get from there to Wan Chai?! That's like across the entire harbor! >:C

Also if I hear them pronounce the name hong-KONG again, I will personally slaughter someone. It's TWO. STRESSED. SYLLABLES. HONG. KONG. And that's not even close to the Cantonese pronounciation.

Finally, let me leave you with this little story:

The world is ending. The sun is red, and soon it will die. Your people have been waiting on a miracle. Eons and eons ago, a great technology was discovered, that would let you escape your world and into another, to escape the inevitable death of your universe. But the destination was not ready, as they say, and no other could be found. Still, your ancestors bided their time, waiting for the time they could survive the world you were to escape to.

That day was some time ago now. Your people sent over tools, biological machines that were to finish the job of reforming the world to your needs. But they were pushed back by - by the existing inhabitants, it seemed, who wielded enough power to destroy your emissary by force. It was so unfair, you remember thinking. You had waited so long!

So you sent another, and another, and your people began to notice that the inhabitants had crafted new and better ways to destroy what you sent. So you adapted, and built tools that could better withstand the assault weapons they were pitted against.

Then, in a flash, it happens. Your people's hive mind is infected with a stranger. A different mind altogether. One of theirs, and it holds terrible and strange secrets. Half of what is there makes no sense, but something comes through. The inhabitants are trying to destroy the portal. They will send a little sun into it, which will explode, destroying the link and dooming your race.

This is unacceptable, but what can you do? First off, you need to confirm all this. So you send two of your best creations to date. One to fight off the defenses, the other to find this mind and see that it is actually alien, instead of simply one of the many damaged pieces of brain all around that plane screaming insane, lobotomized gibberish. One of the sent is even a mother, in the classical sense, in the hope that the inhabitants will recognize your desperation and hold their fire.

It does not work. You confirm that the new mind is alien, but lose both creations, and the child. With that, you confirm the plan to destroy the portal. The portal that your race has spent its last hopes and energies on. The portal that must not be destroyed, at any cost, or else your people will die.

You bring forward some of the latest and last biological constructs, and send them across. This time, they do not attack, nor change the land, nor ascend into the air. They simply defend the future of your race.

But of course they come to you. Two of them, crashing along the seafloor with glacial slowness, while your creations flit about them as easy as creatures built for the water. This will almost be too easy, you hope. But no luck. There is a spirited battle, but two of your three are destroyed when one of their weapons detonates the..."bomb". The last one fights bravely, but both fall into the portal. Still, it can't be that bad. The "bomb" is gone, so nothing will destroy your salvation...right?

As the strange weapon drops into your world, too late you remember a scrap of what you gleaned from the strange mind, then minds, that joined yours. The weapon itself is a..."bomb". You have time to see bits of the strange metal machine return through the portal, before the strange metal machine is gone in a flash of heat and light...

...and then so are you, and your race, and your people, and your future.

Genocide.

I think Ender's Game means something else to young aspiring logicians. Whenever I hear or participate in Ender discussion it's not about his persecution or his war crimes or really anything about the Wiggin family in general. It's about problem solving. Probably the most quoted line from the book is "The enemy's gate is down." People use this book as a launching point into alternative style solutions. Can't figure things out? Try realigning your entire frame of reference. Faced with an opponent of superior resources? Find new ways to use yours to undermine them.

Ender himself is not that interesting a character, and it really shows in the sequels where he goes diplomasizing everywhere instead. But the problems he faced, and the cutthroat ways he solves them, are what really draw readers into the book.

I saw Pacific Rim.

Seeing WILDCARD get to be apart of the Kaiju Resistance was just a top draw for me. I was waiting for him to bust out some Kaiju Law.

As another kid who grew up reading Ender's Game:

Granolaman has it right, I think - the biggest appeal of the book is the left-field way that Ender approaches problems. The game sequences are genuinely gripping, and I can't wait to see how the upcoming movie handles them. But the critics definitely have a point - Ender is pretty much an amoral Gary Stu that Card showers praise on. And from what I'm told the sequels aren't nearly as enjoyable as the original book. (though I've heard good things about spinoff series Ender's Shadow)

Also Card's personal politics are gross, as you mentioned. idk how much that affects his later work but it's not really noticeable in Ender's Game. (though I might reassess that if I read it now)

All in all it was as great book for 15-year-old me, and a good entry point into SF, but I dunno if I'd wholeheartedly endorse it. You want classic SF, read Dune or Neuromancer or something.

Ugh, Neuromancer was a slog for me (though the plot was pretty interesting and clever), and I couldn't even get past the first couple chapters of Dune due to its impenetrable prose.

Dune definitely has its flaws (Herbert's prose gets hilariously pompous in the later books), but I still like it. I'm a sucker for anything with POLITICAL SPACE INTRIGUE and EXOTIC ALIEN CULTURES. Plus it's just unique and weird. But again, there's also a certain amount of nostalgia there for me.

I'ma wholeheartedly stand behind Neuromancer, though. Gibson is one of those SF authors that I'd recommend as a great literary writer, not just a good genre fiction writer. I think my biggest problem with Neuromancer was that since it's been imitated by so many people since, it's hard to appreciate how revolutionary it was at the time.

On the subject of classic SF, though, I will never like the Foundation series. It just reads like the world's blandest history textbook - no character development or scene-setting whatsoever. It's the perfect example of why people usually dislike genre fiction. Same with Ringworld.

I liked Foundation just fine, but Asimov did have his writing quirks that didn’t quite sit right with me. Like, it’s been years since I sat down and read an honest-to-god fiction book, but at least my impression of Asimov’s writing from grade school was that he tended to write dryly at times (yup, not really enough character development for sure), and also had a tendency to jump straight to these far-reaching philosophical abstract concepts without looking close enough, for my satisfaction, to the nuts and bolts of how they work, or without leading up to them through the process of trial-and-error that defines most of how humans acquire knowledge. These concepts are great to talk and think about, but a bit of a slog to read.

I had Stij's Foundation problems with my one attempted foray into the Culture series. I enjoyed all the worldbuilding and the introduction of all the cool alien species (Xinthian Tensile Aeronauthaurs <3), and completely lost interest with whatever eras-colliding political curmudgeoning went on after that.

That's a good way of putting it. I think that hits on the fundamental disconnect between SF and traditional literary fiction - SF tends to be more focused on big macro-level concepts rather than the minutia of people's lives. And that's not necessarily a bad thing! For instance, Iain Banks's Culture series is total grand-scale SF, but he does it well and it's enjoyable. But when those big concepts aren't conveyed compellingly, you're left with a novel without strong characters OR a strong plot, and that's why I think "genre" fiction has such a negative connotation. (most of these observations apply to the other two big "genre", uh, genres, fantasy and horror).

I dunno. I have Complex Opinions on SF because I love it and I think it gets needlessly shat upon by a lot of literary critics (see: just about any college writing class), but at the same time, it can definitely have its flaws, and I think as I've gotten older I've started to see them more.

EDIT: lol, and Schazer posts about the Culture series just before I post this. good example of how SF can be so divisive I guess!

I think part of it is what I attempt to get out of reading SF is different from what I'd ask of "literary fiction". I go to SF when I want something alien, that attempts (usually) to actively distance itself from our reality. Case in point with the Culture series setting - Shellworlds, a Culture of Involved species/races that forces earlier-stage civilisations to join the intergalactic platform under their own steam, eccentrically self-appellated spacecraft, and general other fun fuckery.

The entire point of having humans in a setting like that is that it's not meant to be relatable. They're not to meant to have problems I can relate to, because more often than not the kind of crises that occur in literary fiction have a clash of scale against intergalactic wars and galaxy-spanning politics.

If you want me to relate to and feel empathy for literary characters, I'm gonna have to be a hardarse and ask for, at most, one tweak to Reality As I Know It (I say that because Vonnegut is probably my favourite author). I'll still enjoy SF for the romp to far-flung places, but I'm just not capable of the same degree of empathy with its protagonists.

Haha me saying words like I even know for certain what my opinion is on theset hings

Corollary that would've followed on from that second paragraph:

Not to mention, your SF protagonists are gonna be royalty or other socially high-ranking positions, or Marked For Cosmic Significance. I get that they'll have problems like balancing internal affairs of state with negotiations with Involved races and handling your wilful brother/sister/daughter/head of Local Religion or whatever, but I don't empathise for the character in the same way I would a protagonist in more typical fiction. The whole SF genre at large puts me in "dispassionate observer" mode, I guess?

Re: part 1: Yeah, I feel like most "literary" SF is closer to reality than space opera SF is. Fair point. "Science fiction" does encompass a pretty huge range of material, from Vonnegut to Asimov, and maybe it's not fair to lump all of it together.

Re: part 2: I hadn't thought about that, but you're right, a disproportionate number of SF protagonists tend to be elites in their society. I guess that cyberpunk was kind of a reaction to that, what with its druggies and hackers and thugs and general lowlife protagonists. But in general SF protagonists tend to be, well, powerful white dudes, and that's a problem the genre has never fully resolved.

One reason I like Banks is because his protagonists tend to be unconventional/boundary-crossing, like you'd expect an egalitarian super-advanced society to actually be.

I imagine SF protagonists tend to occupy positions of privelege because then they can directly apply all these cool toys you have made up rather than merely experience their effects

SF is usually going to be about / aimed at early technological adopters

I remember in more than one grade school English class, we had class discussions on what a “classic” was. I don’t actually remember much about those discussions, but I think the class consensus more than once was basically “old enough that people are pretty sure it’s good”. In other words, what Internet video essayist Bob Case (MrBtongue) calls “Scholarly Consensus Lag Time”.

This was an introduction for studying a good deal of things that had, even in living memory, been genre fiction, including a lot of science fiction short stories. By 12th grade, we even got to learn a little bit about the genres that “literature” was, back in the day (with the side effect being that Anne is now my favorite Brontë because I never had to read her in class). Hey, sometimes the public school system is okay I guess!

Still got a D in that class, though.

Oh, and space opera. Wow. Thinking back on some of the more loved episodes of Star Trek[1], a lot of them were some combination of a neat tech/what-if puzzle and something touchingly human. You might be able to factor out the tech and come out with a story of similar or identical impact, but really it was the proper integration of the two that made it good SF as opposed to good anything else.

A lot of fans of these TV shows stereotypically like to obsess over the gizmos and special effects and all that, and yeah, it’s a good draw, seeing some fistfights and explosions and good-looking actors. But I think what made that particular franchise’s better shows was when it kept its focus on people problems (and when it did it well, obviously). Just that some of these people problems were only possible thanks to the far-flung SF environment[2], where for the most part, people are still people, and the only thing that’s changed is what’s now possible for people to do.

[1] For reference, a short, biased selection of these which I also think stand pretty well on their own—you know, for people wishing to remain only casually familiar and snootily avoid overmuch genre-ness:

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Spoiler(Original Series) “The City on the Edge of Forever”, “A Private Little War”
(movies) Star Trek II [optionally a trilogy, but III is merely okay and IV is more lighthearted], Star Trek VI;
(Next Generation) “The Best of Both Worlds” + “Family”, “Darmok”, “The Inner Light”;
(Deep Space Nine) “Duet”, “The Visitor”, “For The Uniform”, “Far Beyond the Stars”, “In the Pale Moonlight” (okay so maybe you can tell which series I like the most);
(Voyager, Enterprise) [I’m drawing blanks, plus it’s hard to tell which eps only looked good because of all the bad ones].

[2] Other than the existence of the Borg, I didn’t really catch anything profound these 21 seasons of TV had to say about our near-future issues of transhumanism and “the impending privaciless dystopia barreling towards us” [which is not a phrase I made up, but I already mentioned the guy who said it and I like that turn of phrase so why not]. It’s not hard to sympathize with this from a writer’s perspective, though; they vetoed it for relatability reasons. From the very beginning of the writer’s guide from TOS, they state “[...] believability of characters, their actions and reactions, is our greatest need and is the most important angle factor.” The same guide advised,

AND SO, IN EVERY SCENE OF OUR STAR TREK STORY...

... translate it into a real life situation. [...] Would you believe the people and the scene if it happened there?

IF YOU'RE ONE OF THOSE WHO ANSWERS: “THE CHARACTER ACTS THAT WAY BECAUSE IT’S SCIENCE FICTION”, DON'T CALL US, WE'LL CALL YOU.

I guess this is a good place to stop typing. I probably shouldn’t be allowed to type for this long.

So, a little late at the Pacific Rim talk but, i don't know if it's just me but i think people get too excited about so little. Yes, the robots, giant monsters and all that junk was great fun, but everything around that was so Hollywood-cheesy and not in a good sense; i literally cannot think about a more boring protagonist, a more cliché ending (WHOOPS SPOILERS I GUESS). It feels like a transformers movie but with actually interesting action scenes, 'unno man maybe i'm just bitter.

I said in the middle of the movie that I hoped they go back to adventures of Charlie (Okay, Newton) and Chau because it seemed so much more interesting than anything that wasn't the fights.

newton was the best