Aww! ;D Well, okay, but there was still a lot that I wanted to wrap up. Oh yeah, and in the past, I’ve been nice, and I’ve been diplomatic – diplomatic to the point where it could drive me crazy, lol.
…I’m not diplomatic in this post. At all. A person can only take so much, and if somebody doesn’t like it, well, boo-hoo. At this point, I really don’t care, and just about nothing anyone says can make me care. I’m shooting straight from my head this time, all the way.
QUICK NOTE:
Earlier, I recommended a sci-fi novel called
Ice, and said that I couldn’t remember the name of the author. The author’s name is Shane Johnson. You can find the book on Amazon. GO GET IT. IT IS SOOO GOOD.
Terilium. They spell it Terilium. ^^
Oh, and we ALL know that “Disney is a master at dodging lawyers”? …Forgive me if I didn’t even know this.
Did that sound irritated to anybody? Oh! Maybe just a little bit, because maybe I’m tired of EEZ not listening to me! I made several points that your posts never even acknowledged, let alone addressed!
*shrugs*
See? You’re not listening. I specifically said THIS:
On my own, I really couldn’t come up with a name for Zurg (though I’m no stranger to name-making)I TRIED ALREADY, DOGGONE IT. I COULDN’T DO IT.
(Although I did manage to come up with a name for Nana Zurg: Arazai. [AIR-a-zeye])
…And I like the way you use the name. That’s cool.
But could you please stop using the word “paradigm”? I don’t know, but for some reason, it grates my nerves. *shrugs* Your guess is as good as mine – I don’t know why! =/
And I have a reason for using an Earth language. Here’s a teeny bit
more history for you:
The galaxy started out with one language – now called Old Galactic – which is very similar to Hebrew. In fact, that’s where Hebrew came from. Over time, the races developed their own dialects, and some of the more autonomous races eventually came to speak their own languages.
Zurg was simply given a very, very old name from Old Galactic.
Oh, and I don’t even want to hear about choosing one real-life language over all the rest. Hebrew happens to be one of the oldest languages in the world, which is one of the reasons why I use it.
I think I actually
told you way back when, when you mentioned it in a review. I thought of it just days before reading your fic. I wouldn’t have used a plot device that you’d used without your permission
and a mention in the author’s notes.
At any rate, I should think that it would kinda be commonwealth, too – in fact, I’m surprised that no one else has ever used it.
Not only that, but when I started rewriting my story several months ago, I
changed that part because it was inconsistent with the timeline. I replaced the MTD with a wormhole-creator that’s sort of the predecessor of the MTD (“Rookie of the Year” occurs several months later in the timeline).
*laughs* My brother and I have a list of stuff we want to see “when we’re grown-up.” xD First and foremost are Stargate SG-1 and Babylon 5. ;D
*shrugs and sighs* I can’t say that I really agree… but whatever. At least be grateful that we have as much variety as we do, ‘cause it could be worse. And I’ve seen another fandom where it
is worse. It could be better, but it could be a lot worse.
I don’t
limit myself, thank you very much – I’m good at coming up with ideas on how to do what I want to do. And I don’t mean a
course course – I mean spending a good bit of time brushing up on things.
Plus, if you’ll recall, my online time is a bit LIMITED right now? It’s all I can do to keep up with this forum nowadays!
Not only that, but I waste enough time on the fandom already. I’m not going to waste even more time to look up something that would probably benefit me very little in the future IRL.
Will you quit with the Ohio business? I don’t live in Ohio, I’ve never even
been to Ohio! BG and SLWatson live in Ohio, not I, and – with all due respect to the wonderful women – if they want to broadcast their location to the world, that’s their business.
I, on the other hand, do NOT want my own location to be public knowledge in a place that anyone in the world with Internet can access! So don’t even
try to figure out where I live!
I’m studious, too – I’m just not scientific. I’m more… um… I think it’s the left hemisphere of the brain. Y’know, artistic. Eh, whatever – I’m like my mom. ;D …Now, my
dad… my dad is cool, ‘cause he’s both scientific
and artistic, and I don’t think that happens very often in people.
I know, I know, just chill. I was just saying that if you want to criticize somebody for adding hardcore stuff to their BLoSC storyline, you’d better be careful how you word yourself, because people
could rebound and attack.
Yes,
Mother. <.< And the only criticism that I really give a one-cent’s care about is the criticism that comes from people that I actually
know – like you. Otherwise, as far as fan stuff goes, I could care less.
Oh, and just how
young do you think I am, anyway? Do you have any idea how patronizing that sounded? And that isn’t the first time you’ve ever said something like “oh, that’s all right, but be careful to” whatever.
Stop it. Quit sounding so all-knowing.
No one is forced to undergo cyberization of the brain unless it’s required for some kind of medical or military emergency (or unless you’re out on the Zeta Fringe, which tends to be more dangerous than the Fringe anywhere else in the galaxy).
And so people today still oppose cybernetic implants. It figures. So what. …Don’t answer that; it was rhetorical.
They just have cold wars instead of real wars, lol.
Well
duh. You think I don’t know that?
Hello, I’m legally an adult, a home-school graduate, a history lover, a fantasy lover, a fantasy
writer – you think I don’t know that? Sheesh.
And OF COURSE there’s going to be conflict! You haven’t even heard about the Freedom Movement yet!
I think that Ckret said it all VERY well, so I don’t think I really have anything to add to that. You know what? It isn’t even necessary to improve, say, entertainment technology. We don’t need HD. We don’t need Surround Sound. Come on, you’re smart – you can figure this out.
Don’t say that, don’t you
ever say that – not even in jest! Improving things because you have a good heart… is what has brought us so many blessings in so many fields. People have been hurt, have
died, trying to help other people.
It isn’t silly. At all.
EEZ, I like you. In fact, I like you a lot. You’re a good artist, and you definitely have a gift with words, even if your grammar isn’t the greatest. When you’re being friendly, you’re a very fun, very nice person to be around online. And yet you can be one of the most
stubborn,
overbearing,
un-listening people I’ve ever known (and I’m including fictional characters here, too). Not only that, but despite the fact that you do have a very intelligent head on your shoulders, you persist in saying the most ignorant things and not following concepts all the way through to conclusion!
Now just for once,
please listen to me, and listen well:
No.
Absolutely
not.
Simply being non-human does NOT make a race more sentient in any way, shape, or form. If nothing else, I’ve yet to find a story in which a fictional alien race is more sentient than humans. And as I half-stated/half-hinted before,
sentience isn’t just thinking complexly - sentience is the ability to hope and dream; is having a conscience; is wisdom, dedication, honesty, love.…Now…
technology.
Let’s take a little look at Earth history, shall we? There’s this little thing that ran basically from A.D. 500 to 1000, and it was part of a longer thing that ran from A.D. 500 to 1500. What were they called?
That’s right – the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages respectively.
Why do you think the Dark Ages was called that? Mankind as a whole
was not moving forward. The Western/Middle-Eastern world stuck in a rut created by superstition, Roman Catholicism, Islam, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Arab empire (and other things, but those were primary). Africa and the Americas were ensnared even further by their people’s religions of fear. The Far East didn’t make much more headway than the West did, though gunpowder
was in use there long before it came West.
If the Dark Ages had not occurred, if the Middle Ages had been much shorter, we could have already been in Outer Space today. As it is, we’re not
in Outer Space – we’re still visitors and observers. We could very well have already had the kind of technology that we see in science-fiction; but we don’t, because we let ourselves get stuck in a rut that lasted for
one thousand years.
Just look at the 20th century, at how technology progressed at a phenomenal rate from the year 1900 to the year 2000. How far could we have come if we had had just
half a millennium of that kind of progress?
Just because I can see well enough without glasses doesn’t mean that I have perfect vision. I don’t. My eyes are still below-par. My glasses also protect my eyes from eyestrain, especially computer-induced eyestrain.
Do I need them? In some ways, yes.
Do I need them to actually
see, or to live? No, not at all.
What books, though? What are their titles? What do they talk about??
Ummm… No duh.
EEZ, this is a pure, perfect example of you
not listening to me. You completely ignored what I said in my last post. Therefore, I will repeat myself:
No, Flint was “mistreated” because the whole reason for his existence was to work. His manufacturers should have created a more mindless bot, instead of an android – androids don’t belong in that kind of 24-hour work because they’re too close to organics. Actually, I think (and I’m not alone in this) that Flint also exaggerated the facts in his mind – the same way a kid’s mind exaggerates his parents’ “unfairness” when he’s been punished. He was a machine, and his owners missed the fact that he had also gained a soul.I just watched Flint’s flashbacks again, and I really, REALLY DOUBT that he was as mistreated as he claims, or even as he remembers. Facts can be tainted by our perspectives when we remember them.
At any rate, his alleged “mistreatment” has
no bearing on the subject at hand whatsoever. Why? Because Flint is an
android, not a cyborg. You’re lumping two very different entities together.
Android: a machine that looks organic.
Cyborg: a person (originally 100% organic) that may or may not look mechanical.The first
might gain a soul; the second already has it. If you go about treating the two the same way, you’re already going in the wrong direction. Not only that, but they also have two very different purposes in life:
Android: organic-looking machine built to work.
Cyborg: person’s body enhanced (or person’s brain transplanted into new body) for medical, military, etc. purposes.Very different!
Yes, humans can be highly reactive to people different from them. However, it doesn’t follow as a matter of course that other races would be the same way, or even that the human reaction would have to be negative. Some humans can be
excited to meet different people. Some humans can have the
hunger to learn from different people.
Not only that, but
“fleshy glory”?? So… what, organics are gonna lord it over people in biomechanical bodies
just because they’re biomechanical? I know that people, as a rule, are stupid, but I don’t think they’re
that stupid. Where’s the sense in hating a person or not treating him equal just because he’s got a lot of wires instead of veins in his body? That is so incredibly
stupid, it… Holy cow, it was actually raising my heartbeat. No joke.
ALSO, I think that there are a lot of people today – young people, like 30 and under – who wouldn’t be all that judgmental about full-bodied cyborgs. Let’s say that suddenly became a reality. A lot of young people would probably think it’s cool. Weird, sure, but cool. And it’s young people that
are the future. It’s not improbable that in just a couple generations, full-bodied cyborgs could become a generally accepted – even acclaimed – reality.
And I just had a thought! You’re arguing against making full-bodied cyborgs a reality in my fic, for various nitpicky reasons. AND YET. You’re also arguing that full-bodied cyborgs wouldn’t be accepted in ANY situation, which is taking a swipe at a concept of science-fiction itself!
The fact is that most of your points don’t have that much to back them up, and it feels more like you just don’t like the idea – though whether just in my fic or in general, I can’t tell.
I never said that the galaxy agreed whole-heartedly; I merely said that criticism – as in, sharp words in the media, etc. – died out in a couple of generations. Maybe some people didn’t necessarily
like the idea, but they were
used to it, and what were they going to do about it, anyway? Mistreat full-bodied Zeta cyborgs, and there’d be strained relations with the Zeta Empire – something you
definitely wouldn’t want.
Another invalid assumption: “a new race.” WHERE did you get THAT? Who ever said that the Zetas were a new race?
Now, in my storyline’s history, all the races have known each other practically from the beginning of time – to be more specific, just a few generations after Creation.
And any galactic mainstream doctor who’s wise and knows that the best option for his patient is cyberization
is going to give the patient the choice and send him out to the Zeta Empire if he takes the chance.
When the third time came around, the media were still interested. Just as the whole world watched as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon, so the whole galaxy watched as the media covered the transplant.…That
does imply that Zetas have been on the galactic scene for a while now.
But anyway, who’s to assume that the rest of the galaxy
doesn’t know the Zetas? Sure, they could have kept themselves isolated, but they just as well could not have. That’s a 50/50 thing.
The Zetas don’t have to be outsiders, and in FG canon, they
aren’t.
Hmm. THAT was a pretty racist comment. “Alien hearts”?
And you know what? To be skeptical of somebody because they’re doing good – no matter how weird it is… is stupid. I’m sorry, but it’s stupid. Do people tend to be bad rather than good? Yes. Absolutely. But do people who have good
hearts tend to
do good?
Absolutely.
So,
no, the Zetas do NOT have a dark, ulterior motive. They don’t have to have a dark, ulterior motive for them to be realistic. It’s a
medical advancement, for crying out loud – a little something that you seem to keep conveniently overlooking.
And
yes, they’re doing it because they’re doing good. There’s no good reason in the universe why a person can’t do good to someone with whom they have no quarrel. And I’m sure you’ve heard of the Hippocratic Oath.
Umm, yeah. Whatever.
Okay, look, you can say whatever you want about
my points – I work to make mine good, but I will admit that I’m not the best in making them as clear and logical as possible. But my
brother has one of the most logical minds I’ve ever heard of, no joke. He could easily become the best lawyer, the best military strategist – whatever occupation involves critical thinking to such a high degree, he could do it. He does
not make merit-less points.
His point was that it indeed does NOT matter what the rest of the galaxy thinks about full-bodied cyborgs, because (answer below)…
That’s assuming a lot. That’s assuming the Zetas are dependent on interaction with the rest of the galaxy, that’s assuming that the other races wouldn’t care whether they offended the Zeta government or not, that’s assuming that the Zetas aren’t a superpower that can take care of itself, that’s even assuming that there’s a galactic government in existence!
And AGAIN, you are not
listening! Here’s what I said in my last round of posts:
The Zeta Empire has existed outside galactic government for five hundred years, and was still highly sovereign for hundreds of years before that. They’re independent; they’re self-sufficient. They don’t need other races; they don’t need other races opinions.Throughout the galaxy’s history, the Zeta Empire has been either completely independent of or highly sovereign in interplanetary coalitions and galactic governments.
Look at EARTH, for crying out loud. If there’s a galactic community out there, we’re TOTALLY isolated from it! And yet we’ve managed to survive on our own for millennia. Do
we NEED other races? Mm, we would BENEFIT from better technology and medicine, certainly, but is interaction with other sentient races NECESSARY for our SURVIVAL?
I am thinking…
no!Okay, back to the Zeta Empire. Do they interact with other peoples and cultures? Sure. Imports and exports are great, and you can learn a lot from people who are different from you.
But they’ve always been highly autonomic and self-sufficient. That produces some
major benefits. They’ve always had one of the best-trained, best-kept military forces. They have a strong sense of patriotism and national pride.
And benefits of independence aside, they’ve got some of THE
best technology out there.
Do they have to worry about another race (
another race, not a
higher race, thank you very much) coming in and wiping the Cosmos with them? No! If anything, it’d be the other way around! They could probably wipe the Cosmos with the GA!
Also I said before:
“And if other races would get nasty about cyberization, all the Zetas have to do is highly cyberize their military and go beat those races to a pulp. And they can do it, ‘cause they’d definitely have the advantage. They’d be stronger, faster, tougher, and quicker-thinking as a whole. So who really cares? It doesn’t really matter what other people think. If you’re better, you’re better – end of story.”
Now you’re just saying things because you don’t have all the facts. Admittedly, neither do I, but I have a
lot more facts than you do.
(Plus, I probably
do have a degree of idealism, but I hold no ideals regarding our own world. I know what’s going on out there, and it’s ugly. Anyone who says otherwise is being idealistic, ignorant, blind, or something worse. In fact, I could say some things that might surprise you because you never would’ve guessed that I could be so cynical.)
A. I never said that the Zetas
don’t want to conquer the galaxy. In fact, if you’ll click back several posts, you’ll find this “By the year 2000, with a galaxy heating up for war”… I specifically stated that there were Zeretanae on the “good-guy” side. What I
didn’t state was that these Zeretanae were
opposing their own tyrannical, hostile government. The Zeta Empire had leagued with a couple other superpowers in something like the WWII Axis.
Not only that, but Empress Zurg –
our Zurg’s Nana – was indeed evil. Her tyranny pushed her people into a civil war, the rebelling side led by none other than the Prince, Zuriel’s father. When the Rebels disappeared, the Empress turned her attention the GA and a conquest that had been in preparation for years. It was only through the work of a newly formed military force called Star Command that the Zeta Empire was held back from overrunning the GA.
B. “What kind of powerhouse doesn’t wish to destroy things!?” Hmm, how about a powerhouse with
ethical people in high places? Don’t laugh; it’s not funny. You need look no further than nineteenth century Great Britain and USA. Did they make mistakes? Sure, and lots of them. Were they, as a whole, destructive? Certainly not.
You’re making another incorrect assumption: that there aren’t ethical people in high places that don’t wish to conquer or destroy. The Zeta Empire has had a lot of bad Emperors and Empresses, Zurg’s Nana included. It has also had a lot of
good leaders, like Zurg’s father.
It depends on the heart of the man who sits on the throne. That is what all this will always boil down to: what is in that person’s
heart?
That determines
everything.
C. Also, there’s a word here that you seem to have overlooked.
Empire. What is an empire? …It’s a nation that controls other nations, whether by agreement or conquest. The Zeta Empire spans several worlds. They
have done their share of conquering, already.
Aw, thank you! …Even after all this?