09-03-2015, 03:29 AM
Alright, Alright:
It’s been forever since I’ve been back here, but my attention was brought back to these forums again which are (for better or worse) at least on topic once more. Your criticism, SharpTeeth, is quite thorough, and frankly makes quite a number of very good points, some of which I personally agree with. However, there is an underlying problem with this analysis, namely that through focusing almost exclusively upon the mechanics of the race, you have missed the purpose of Ryuujin’s use of said mechanics.
To quickly point out what this analysis fails to take into account: intention, plausibility, and the willing suspension of disbelief. What I’m getting at is that you are not seeing the forest for the trees.
Have you looked at the Avali? Not trying to figure them out, simply looked at them? They are an incredibly attractive race: well designed, a blend of the familiar with the alien and strange; a cute appearance contrasted with a surprisingly predatory and cunning nature. You look at them from a standpoint of pure science and see a confusing mishmash.
Look at them from the perspective of a storyteller. They seem familiar, and so make us comfortable (this is the true function of the Avali eyes – without eyes they would be rather disturbing to the average person – the technobabble is an excuse for them to exist, not the reason for it, in the grand tradition of all science fiction since the era of the original Star Trek). They subvert clichés, and so intrigue us. If we really wanted what we read to be entirely plausible, with no room for doubt at all, we would read biographies. And yet we aren’t, we’re here, concerned with a fictional race. In order to create a setting that is different enough from our familiar experience to be interesting, we must diverge from the rules that we are familiar. And yet at some level, these rules must remain approximately real, or we are simply confused. More on this concept later.
The difference between fantasy and science fiction isn’t a hard division of impossibility and possibility, but one of plausibility. Would you begrudge science fiction faster-than-light travel? Very few people would, and for a very simple reason. It tends to make science fiction stories rather dull. We are not particularly interested in what happened to the 133rd generation of humans midway through their voyage on a sub-light colony ship.
Suffice to say, we permit flights of fantasy in our settings and reading because it delights us – just as the Avali delight us with the potential for fantastic stories that we can nonetheless tell ourselves have at least a chance of being possible. Perhaps you have a lower tolerance for such tale-telling, but to chalk these inaccuracies up to insufficient research or knowledge on Ryuujin’s part instead reveals a lack of appreciation for the building blocks of story on your part.
A Quick Note:
To begin with, I would like to venture a point of agreement; any human-created system, no matter how thorough, will always contain flaws. Especially in a network as far-ranging as an entire hypothetical intelligent species, complete with some form of biology, ecology, tools, mores, and politics. This is not to excuse sloppy mistakes; but to simply point out that while the project approaches ‘perfect’ accuracy, the increased complexity of the system increases exponentially to a degree that eventually becomes unreasonable to invent.
To put it plainly: any fictional system will eventually have to rely on approximations to familiar objects. Assuming we can all agree on this basic premise, we can proceed to the points you raise.
Specific Concerns:
You raise very good points about ammonia biology, but I must echo what has been already pointed out – the ammonia biology was only ever an experiment and a placeholder that slipped into canon more through lack of any concrete alternative than through intentional design. I do take exception to the final line however. “The biggest example of this? Making a species that would be chemically burned by water then placing them on a ball of ice.” Imagine the temerity of evolution placing humans – creatures that suffer tremendous thermal burns when they contact magma – on a planet made entirely of frozen rock. It’s almost enough to make you think the universe was created by an inexperienced trickster god, isn’t it.
Perhaps that doesn’t make my point clear enough, so I’ll state it more politely. Anything can kill an organism if it’s significantly outside the environment it was designed to survive in. Humans breathe oxygen but pure oxygen kills us. Humans are mostly water, but we can drown. What we have here is the first application of the approximation of detail. It is not an unreasonable assumption that the Avali have all the requisite developments to survive on their own homeworld. It is unreasonable however, to demand that all of these developments be listed, because Ryuujin is a single person with a finite amount of time to describe a potentially infinite amount of detail.
Your suggestions of alternate biologies have quite a bit of merit, and I think would've made an excellent post on their own. Following a valid point such as that with rather - shall we say 'less major' points - only hurt your argument and made you sound needlessly hostile.
I did find your point about Avali hearing, particularly their protective nerve impulses, positively amusing. You said: “At most it [protective nerve impulses] would protect them from long term damage from constant loud sounds but not instantaneous explosively loud sounds.” Ignoring the in-itself hilarious concept of the Avali evolving in an environment in which “explosively loud sounds” are so commonplace as to require adaptation; have you attempted staring directly into the sun recently? Let alone a laser pointer? We have practical, real-world experience with sensory organs that can suffer permanent damage from functioning in their intended environment, let alone the intensity of artificial stimuli. The Avali auditory 'twitch' impulse is comparable to blinking - which is hardly a cure for blindness, but still hardly a trivial reflex or one worthy of criticism (you think sound is fast relative to nerve impulses, try bright light!).
Your points on railguns are spot-on (discounting the fact that a swap to gauss carbines instead would immediately solve almost all the issues associated with internal damage). Your points on melee weapons, again are spot-on, but you make them out to be a much larger issue than they truly are. This is a distortion that has carried over from Starbound, in which melee combat is a significant component. A huge variety of impractical melee weapons was a necessity of gameplay, not a proper piece of lore (melee weapons, by the by, intended for hunting large, unarmored prey, not warfare).
Your comments on cybernetics, I find, are again an example of begrudging Ryuujin the right to describe function rather than specifics. Approximation of detail! It is reasonable that the Avali use a control format that actually works without inflicting crippling seizures. Neurosurgeons are a rare breed, and I think expecting Ryuujin to look into such a specialized field so far removed from the experience of the common audience member that to worry about it is a waste of a finite amount of time.
I agree quite extensively with your points on sociology!
I do think you over-estimate the degree of mental anguish inflicted by loss of a pack (most err in the other direction, so that’s a refreshing change), and you seem additionally to have read ‘polyamory’ as ‘indiscriminate mating’. I think you’ll find the intended interpretation was rather that the Avali lack human sexual taboos, not that they don’t have a courtship protocol (in fact, canonically males have brighter colors than the females specifically for this reason). Approximation of detail! It seems a reasonable assumption that clearly the Avali seek fit mates, because other wise the race would have died out. This is not a flaw, this is an area that hasn't been described. Otherwise I agree with your critique here, and have in fact voiced similar concerns in the past.
Final Words:
If you can watch Star Trek without puking, then you should definitely be able to appreciate the Avali even with minor problems (they’re not perfect, but I think you can agree they’re much closer to it than most other stories). If you can’t watch Star Trek without feeling violently ill, then you have my sympathy, because you are missing out on a lot of flavor in the world of science fiction.
I admire the amount of time you have spent on this. You are clearly a highly dedicated researcher and familiar with a broad spectrum of sciences.
But this, the Avali, this is not science. This is a work of fiction, one that draws and borrows from science because that is what its audience and creator finds enjoyable. I have seen Ryuujin’s work long enough to be fully confident in his understanding of the science of what he’s doing. What he recognizes though, and perhaps has a greater tolerance for than yourself, is the role of story. And sometimes telling the story you want takes precedence over telling it with accurate science.
You encourage Ryuujin to not be ashamed of the fantastic, while seemingly refusing to accept that perhaps the fantastic elements he has are exactly the ones he wants.
With all respect.
It’s been forever since I’ve been back here, but my attention was brought back to these forums again which are (for better or worse) at least on topic once more. Your criticism, SharpTeeth, is quite thorough, and frankly makes quite a number of very good points, some of which I personally agree with. However, there is an underlying problem with this analysis, namely that through focusing almost exclusively upon the mechanics of the race, you have missed the purpose of Ryuujin’s use of said mechanics.
To quickly point out what this analysis fails to take into account: intention, plausibility, and the willing suspension of disbelief. What I’m getting at is that you are not seeing the forest for the trees.
Have you looked at the Avali? Not trying to figure them out, simply looked at them? They are an incredibly attractive race: well designed, a blend of the familiar with the alien and strange; a cute appearance contrasted with a surprisingly predatory and cunning nature. You look at them from a standpoint of pure science and see a confusing mishmash.
Look at them from the perspective of a storyteller. They seem familiar, and so make us comfortable (this is the true function of the Avali eyes – without eyes they would be rather disturbing to the average person – the technobabble is an excuse for them to exist, not the reason for it, in the grand tradition of all science fiction since the era of the original Star Trek). They subvert clichés, and so intrigue us. If we really wanted what we read to be entirely plausible, with no room for doubt at all, we would read biographies. And yet we aren’t, we’re here, concerned with a fictional race. In order to create a setting that is different enough from our familiar experience to be interesting, we must diverge from the rules that we are familiar. And yet at some level, these rules must remain approximately real, or we are simply confused. More on this concept later.
The difference between fantasy and science fiction isn’t a hard division of impossibility and possibility, but one of plausibility. Would you begrudge science fiction faster-than-light travel? Very few people would, and for a very simple reason. It tends to make science fiction stories rather dull. We are not particularly interested in what happened to the 133rd generation of humans midway through their voyage on a sub-light colony ship.
Suffice to say, we permit flights of fantasy in our settings and reading because it delights us – just as the Avali delight us with the potential for fantastic stories that we can nonetheless tell ourselves have at least a chance of being possible. Perhaps you have a lower tolerance for such tale-telling, but to chalk these inaccuracies up to insufficient research or knowledge on Ryuujin’s part instead reveals a lack of appreciation for the building blocks of story on your part.
A Quick Note:
To begin with, I would like to venture a point of agreement; any human-created system, no matter how thorough, will always contain flaws. Especially in a network as far-ranging as an entire hypothetical intelligent species, complete with some form of biology, ecology, tools, mores, and politics. This is not to excuse sloppy mistakes; but to simply point out that while the project approaches ‘perfect’ accuracy, the increased complexity of the system increases exponentially to a degree that eventually becomes unreasonable to invent.
To put it plainly: any fictional system will eventually have to rely on approximations to familiar objects. Assuming we can all agree on this basic premise, we can proceed to the points you raise.
Specific Concerns:
You raise very good points about ammonia biology, but I must echo what has been already pointed out – the ammonia biology was only ever an experiment and a placeholder that slipped into canon more through lack of any concrete alternative than through intentional design. I do take exception to the final line however. “The biggest example of this? Making a species that would be chemically burned by water then placing them on a ball of ice.” Imagine the temerity of evolution placing humans – creatures that suffer tremendous thermal burns when they contact magma – on a planet made entirely of frozen rock. It’s almost enough to make you think the universe was created by an inexperienced trickster god, isn’t it.
Perhaps that doesn’t make my point clear enough, so I’ll state it more politely. Anything can kill an organism if it’s significantly outside the environment it was designed to survive in. Humans breathe oxygen but pure oxygen kills us. Humans are mostly water, but we can drown. What we have here is the first application of the approximation of detail. It is not an unreasonable assumption that the Avali have all the requisite developments to survive on their own homeworld. It is unreasonable however, to demand that all of these developments be listed, because Ryuujin is a single person with a finite amount of time to describe a potentially infinite amount of detail.
Your suggestions of alternate biologies have quite a bit of merit, and I think would've made an excellent post on their own. Following a valid point such as that with rather - shall we say 'less major' points - only hurt your argument and made you sound needlessly hostile.
I did find your point about Avali hearing, particularly their protective nerve impulses, positively amusing. You said: “At most it [protective nerve impulses] would protect them from long term damage from constant loud sounds but not instantaneous explosively loud sounds.” Ignoring the in-itself hilarious concept of the Avali evolving in an environment in which “explosively loud sounds” are so commonplace as to require adaptation; have you attempted staring directly into the sun recently? Let alone a laser pointer? We have practical, real-world experience with sensory organs that can suffer permanent damage from functioning in their intended environment, let alone the intensity of artificial stimuli. The Avali auditory 'twitch' impulse is comparable to blinking - which is hardly a cure for blindness, but still hardly a trivial reflex or one worthy of criticism (you think sound is fast relative to nerve impulses, try bright light!).
Your points on railguns are spot-on (discounting the fact that a swap to gauss carbines instead would immediately solve almost all the issues associated with internal damage). Your points on melee weapons, again are spot-on, but you make them out to be a much larger issue than they truly are. This is a distortion that has carried over from Starbound, in which melee combat is a significant component. A huge variety of impractical melee weapons was a necessity of gameplay, not a proper piece of lore (melee weapons, by the by, intended for hunting large, unarmored prey, not warfare).
Your comments on cybernetics, I find, are again an example of begrudging Ryuujin the right to describe function rather than specifics. Approximation of detail! It is reasonable that the Avali use a control format that actually works without inflicting crippling seizures. Neurosurgeons are a rare breed, and I think expecting Ryuujin to look into such a specialized field so far removed from the experience of the common audience member that to worry about it is a waste of a finite amount of time.
I agree quite extensively with your points on sociology!
I do think you over-estimate the degree of mental anguish inflicted by loss of a pack (most err in the other direction, so that’s a refreshing change), and you seem additionally to have read ‘polyamory’ as ‘indiscriminate mating’. I think you’ll find the intended interpretation was rather that the Avali lack human sexual taboos, not that they don’t have a courtship protocol (in fact, canonically males have brighter colors than the females specifically for this reason). Approximation of detail! It seems a reasonable assumption that clearly the Avali seek fit mates, because other wise the race would have died out. This is not a flaw, this is an area that hasn't been described. Otherwise I agree with your critique here, and have in fact voiced similar concerns in the past.
Final Words:
If you can watch Star Trek without puking, then you should definitely be able to appreciate the Avali even with minor problems (they’re not perfect, but I think you can agree they’re much closer to it than most other stories). If you can’t watch Star Trek without feeling violently ill, then you have my sympathy, because you are missing out on a lot of flavor in the world of science fiction.
I admire the amount of time you have spent on this. You are clearly a highly dedicated researcher and familiar with a broad spectrum of sciences.
But this, the Avali, this is not science. This is a work of fiction, one that draws and borrows from science because that is what its audience and creator finds enjoyable. I have seen Ryuujin’s work long enough to be fully confident in his understanding of the science of what he’s doing. What he recognizes though, and perhaps has a greater tolerance for than yourself, is the role of story. And sometimes telling the story you want takes precedence over telling it with accurate science.
You encourage Ryuujin to not be ashamed of the fantastic, while seemingly refusing to accept that perhaps the fantastic elements he has are exactly the ones he wants.
With all respect.