#QuestionOfTheDay What's something (a trope, plot point, character type, twist, technology, magic, decision, conceit of the genre/world, whatever) in fiction that you just can't buy.

@bikubi @ami_angelwings i was under the impression that they tried doing this by replacing electrons with muons to do fusion at really low temperatures but the muons decay too quickly (? there was some limiting factor) so as far as anyone can tell it's guaranteed never to produce energy

but it's still concerning that if you shrank too much you might fuse at room temperature

@nazokiyoubinbou @bikubi I like the next generation episode "The Next Phase" because it's a great character episode about Geordi and Ro, but nothing about it made any sense to me, even as a child, I was like how do they breathe! why aren't they falling through the floor? shouldn't they just phase through everything and be left behind by the Enterprise as it flies around?

@MorningSong @ami_angelwings The Holodeck at least made sense. It had safety mechanisms to keep what happened from actually killing a person. But if the safeties go off, then it would affect you via normal physics or whatever.

But the other things... Yeah, they just have to tack something on. Like for dying in VR to make sense the system itself has to shock your heart into stopping or something on purpose. That's not even a mechanism that makes sense... For the Matrix to kill a person it has to actually kill their body separately on principle... (That one bothered me especially because they were supposed to be using it as a system of supposedly getting power from people in the system. By letting people die the Matrix was decreasing power capabilities...)

#QuestionOfTheDay What's something (a trope, plot point, character type, twist, technology, magic, decision, conceit of the genre/world, whatever) in fiction that you just can't buy.

i.e. you get that it's fiction, & that it's a thing that happens, or that in the fictional world it's accepted, justified, or explained, or fans love it, etc. It's not that you don't understand it, it's just that you don't buy it, it doesn't work for you, you just can't accept it or take it seriously, etc...

This is a judgement free zone (at least from my end) so if you're like "when space magic shows up I can't take it seriously" or "ppl being able to fly makes no sense to me" etc that's totally fine.

#fiction #Television #TV #manga #anime #film #movies #books #CCGs #ttrpg #videogames #comics #comicbooks

@MorningSong @ami_angelwings The Holodeck at least made sense. It had safety mechanisms to keep what happened from actually killing a person. But if the safeties go off, then it would affect you via normal physics or whatever.

But the other things... Yeah, they just have to tack something on. Like for dying in VR to make sense the system itself has to shock your heart into stopping or something on purpose. That's not even a mechanism that makes sense... For the Matrix to kill a person it has to actually kill their body separately on principle... (That one bothered me especially because they were supposed to be using it as a system of supposedly getting power from people in the system. By letting people die the Matrix was decreasing power capabilities...)

@nazokiyoubinbou @bikubi I like the next generation episode "The Next Phase" because it's a great character episode about Geordi and Ro, but nothing about it made any sense to me, even as a child, I was like how do they breathe! why aren't they falling through the floor? shouldn't they just phase through everything and be left behind by the Enterprise as it flies around?

@estelle @ami_angelwings wait, who? whose muons?
but yes, sounds plausible

@nazokiyoubinbou @MorningSong when I first saw the matrix and they said if you die in the matrix you die in real life I was like that doesn't make sense, and I really really thought the ending would be that Neo realizes it doesn't make sense and that's how he survives death by not believing in it, mind you I also thought he would basically just live as a consciousness in the Matrix without need for a body at the end

@nazokiyoubinbou @ami_angelwings Yeah, there's a reasonable watsonian explanation for holodeck malfunctions, but a well-reasoned plot isn't a *good* plot, and it means that with like... three exceptions i can think of over the entire 90s trek era, every holodeck malfunction episode is basically exactly the same.

@nazokiyoubinbou @MorningSong when I first saw the matrix and they said if you die in the matrix you die in real life I was like that doesn't make sense, and I really really thought the ending would be that Neo realizes it doesn't make sense and that's how he survives death by not believing in it, mind you I also thought he would basically just live as a consciousness in the Matrix without need for a body at the end

@5easypieces @ami_angelwings Banking would be possible with compensating lateral thrusters though. That's already a thing in modern ships. The real issue there is the mechanism of somehow compensating so people standing up or not strapped down thoroughly don't go flying against the walls. Star Trek definitely didn't care.

I don't know about shields. I've seen some things talk about concepts like really powerful electromagnetic fields being utilized and theoretically that could do somewhat maybe, possibly. Or other ideas like manipulating some actual physical material? Definite scifi trope, but maybe not impossible.

Having an alarm system does make sense though and red would definitely be the critical alarm color. That's pretty much a non-scifi thing.

@ami_angelwings Time travel models that don't at least try to answer the question of "why not go back in time again and fix your previous time travel fuckup?" Whenever I replay Chrono Trigger, I just want to go back to an earlier point in one of the eras and un-do something.

There's so many ways of addressing that, like Link Click handles it by having the concept of an "anchor," or there's other stories that just run with "yep, you can!" It's always weird when that question is left hanging.

@ami_angelwings @nazokiyoubinbou So I know people defend the Matrix sequels on a number of principles, but they're just so unsatisfying from a worldbuilding perspective and also like, looking on from 25 years later, the ending is so unsatisfying. The humans traded their one bargaining chip for a chance at a peace that can easily be unilateraly broken by the machines at any time.

@xerozohar I liked that they kept Thomas Riker, that was fresh to me, but I hated that they didn't do anything with him but bring him back for one ratings baiting early season DS9 episode (they even advertised it as Riker guest stars in DS9) and then have him just be thrown in a Cardassian gulag somewhere forever I guess

#QuestionOfTheDay What's something (a trope, plot point, character type, twist, technology, magic, decision, conceit of the genre/world, whatever) in fiction that you just can't buy.

i.e. you get that it's fiction, & that it's a thing that happens, or that in the fictional world it's accepted, justified, or explained, or fans love it, etc. It's not that you don't understand it, it's just that you don't buy it, it doesn't work for you, you just can't accept it or take it seriously, etc...

This is a judgement free zone (at least from my end) so if you're like "when space magic shows up I can't take it seriously" or "ppl being able to fly makes no sense to me" etc that's totally fine.

#fiction #Television #TV #manga #anime #film #movies #books #CCGs #ttrpg #videogames #comics #comicbooks

@MorningSong @nazokiyoubinbou I defend nothing, not the Matrix sequels, not the Star Wars prequels, if it's bad it's bad and I'm not going to spend brain energy trying to rehabilitate them just because they're in a franchise I liked the original things in

Like I always say when people constantly revisit the prequels to find new meaning in them or talk about the newest mid Star Wars thing and how actually...

"Would we be spending this much energy trying to justify how it all makes sense if it wasn't named Star Wars?"

@nazokiyoubinbou @ami_angelwings To be clear, I've got no problems with red alerts. We should have alerts and they should be red.

It is just funny to me that in scifi, shields just kind of...exist. We have collectively decided that if you have a spacecraft, that spacecraft will have shields. That repel particles and energy. That can be "weakened" somehow by repeated pummeling by said particles and energy.

I'm okay with Uhura falling towards the turbolift, but shields? Impossible!

@5easypieces @nazokiyoubinbou it was always weird to me that shields could be weakened by phasers but also by photon torpedoes which did even more damage to weaken them. Like I thought maybe you could drain the shields with phasers and then use the photons on the actual ship. Also that shields can be specifically weakened in certain areas by concentrating on them and they don't just work as a single energy field. And yes I have the TNG technical manual I know how it's "supposed" to work and I know why it's done that way for tension reasons, and it doesn't ruin Trek for me, I am happy to live vicariously in that world and go "oh no, you better redirect energy from the aft shields to the front!" but still, it is really weird

@ami_angelwings Time travel models that don't at least try to answer the question of "why not go back in time again and fix your previous time travel fuckup?" Whenever I replay Chrono Trigger, I just want to go back to an earlier point in one of the eras and un-do something.

There's so many ways of addressing that, like Link Click handles it by having the concept of an "anchor," or there's other stories that just run with "yep, you can!" It's always weird when that question is left hanging.

@ami_angelwings @5easypieces The Elite Dangerous game handles this fairly intelligently. Shields are basically affected by thermal energy the most. Lasers/etc drain shields pretty fast, but explosives do very little damage (not zero, but then explosives do release thermal energy after all.) Then it's the converse for the actual hull material. Thermal damage is very weak on the hull while explosives are pretty high tier.

Kinetic damage is also fairly weak against shields, but for some reason it's super effective to add a mod that causes kinetics to produce a very tiny bit more thermal energy. (It's not even much, but I guess it adds up because all the PvPers use it.)

Also, if I were in Star Trek's world I'd probably sneak a torpedo around back when they shift their shields around...