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[spoilers] DANGER: Potential Plot Bunny Detected!
12-23-2009, 01:24 PM
Well, after studying the official Wiki for James Cameron's Avatar, one thought comes to mind...
Do you honestly think that the RDA is going to just stop after that?
Sure, the Na'vi, against all odds, beat them back and then sent them packing. But now that I have seen what the RDA is (a quasi-governmental entity that
has a monopoly over all interstellar resource gathering) I can't help but feel that the RDA will be back, and with more guns.
Are the few scientist left behind smart enough to realize this, and can they help the Na'vi build an effective defense mechanism that gives them the edge?
Because if the last battle came at great cost, then what will the next one do to them?
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mmm, not a whole lot, still, maybe deserves a a spoiler warning 
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Whoops! Sorry, I'll go ahead and tag that sucker.
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It might also help to put what it's a spoiler *for*. '.'
-Morgan, can't comment on the idea, hasn't seen the movie...
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Griever mentioned to me when we discussed it on IM (I haven't seen it, he has) that the body swap mechanism offers functional immortality if it can be
replicated. That alone would probably be justification for another effort by someone to be back.
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
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Let's see. Hypertech colonialism vs non-tech natives. Yeah. Been there, done that, seen the Ghost Dance fail.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
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Said body swap (bio)tech would be a significant reason for peacefull diplomacy. As it seemed to take a significant effort from the na'vi to make it work.
-Terry
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"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy
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For antigravity? Im surprised it wasnt a military operation from the get-go.
It makes me wonder about the state/government of earth that is not.
There is no evidence of the earthers having the tech for it, the potential benefits would seem to be enough to make it a strategic priority.
On loose ends: What happened to Norm? Last I saw he had been kicked out of his avatar and had proceeded to grab a rifle and mask and go back out. I dont recall
what happened after that.
Exactly what will the great-mother/gaia-mind be up to now that it has presumably absorbed the knowledge of a phd. Granted, her specialty in botany is probably
useless to something thats evidently been gengineering its own bioscape for centuries. How much other general and non-specialized knowledge is going to fill
unknown gaps in its understanding though?
A PHD in the botany of year 2145 probably knows a lot about the general physics of things like advanced instrumentation and space travel, too.
Thoughts on the setting:
Cold sleep and six year journeys to pandora. Does that mean ftl or no-ftl? Ship is spidery and long long long. Is it a *ram scoop*?
That may mean pandora has up to six years to prepare before earth is even aware of events, and 12 years before any response can come back.
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I'll have to pay more attention on a second viewing about the travel/ship tech. But I would assume FTP of some sort. Anything within 3-6 lightyears of
earth would be much better known. And keep in mind that this wasn't their first trip there. They had already set up schools in an attempt to convert the
navi. I had a feeling that resuply shuttles, while expensive enough, were a common thing.
As for the time untill a second offensive: yah at least 6 years. It's going to be interesting to see if they make it a prequal or sequal (and I know I just
slaughtered the spelling on that)
-Terry
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"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy
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Evidently "Word of God" is that the ships are .7 non-ftl and Pandora is at Alpha Centauri
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Also, ships are obviously nuclear - check out those glowing radiator fins. Reminds me of how the Discovery was described in 2001: A Space Oddesy when she is at full power - something along the lines of a dragonfly with red glowing wings.
With this in mind, the only things that would be coming on regular 'supply' runs would be more men and what few parts/equipment they can't manufacture on site. Keep in mind - it's a mining operation, and for that reason the command center is probably all-but-self-sustaining.
Norm... I thought I saw him somewhere in there. I'd have to watch it again. Downloading a 'filmed' version to use until it comes out on DVD/BluRay.
As for Dr. Grace being in there... *Grins* I bet that had something to do with their Goddess hearing Jake's plea for help.
Body-swap tech? Heh. It simply doesn't end there. These plant fibers could be genetically re-engineered to be replacements for damaged nerve tissue. And can you imagine the applications for IT? Definitely grounds for peaceful co-existence, but I still think that when the Earth people have mentalities such as this then it's going to take a while to sink in.
Another thing to bear in mind is that, from what I'm given to understand, things on Earth suck hard. It's overpopulated, the forrests are virtually non-existant, and the place would be on the verge of collapse if not for the efforts of the RDA - hence why they're not just a corporation, but a quasi-governmental body.
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Hold the Phone!
12-24-2009, 03:39 PM
I just had a plot bunny come bouncing through the door!
Okay, so these trips to Pandora must be pretty tough to implement. They're friggin' nuclear powered sleeper ships - that AIN'T CHEAP. Now, not
all the people on Earth can all be that bad, so what if word got out about what REALLY happened on Pandora (because you know the Company is gonna try and spin
it another way) and a group of humans who are organized enough stage a mutiny on one of the sleeper ships? Instead of a boatload of Marines, they get a
boatload of scientists, builders, and A Few Good Men on the first ship to return to Pandora after the Na'vi Revolution. Oh, and they brought their
families. And some of them would like to become card-carrying, blue-skinned Na'vi. 
What'cha think? If I get my Brothers in on this (it won't be that hard to do so) I'll probably have a good outline going in a few days.
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Except with most of the passengers packed away via coldsleep, you probably dont get to pick a new set of passengers in-transit.
Also, a ramscoop would take a LONG time to get up to speed, so its likely they could be easily intercepted.
Not to mention the nature of a ramscoop as a nuclear rocket probably means crew is filtered quite carefully.
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Oh nononononono... BEFORE the ship launches. After all, who said anything about there being only ONE governing body on Earth?
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Theorem: Another of the reasons that the RDA is at least quasi governmental is that they have control over the ships.
therfore you have to figure out how this 'crew' of willing independants are going to get their hands on it since I'm sure that the RDA will be
trying to control access to them out of fear of loosing such a valuable asset, especially after the Na'vi 'incident' if not before....
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children
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One thought that might be interesting is that there is probably a ship or several already *in transit* to pandora.
Six years is a hell of a turn around time, and I doubt they are only using a single ship.
edit: upgraded to "probably" after some more thought.
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correct, but they have no clue what they are getting into.
The na'vi have the element of surprise for quite some time. So what can they do with ~6 years of supply runs (until the people coming into the system know
what to expect)?
-Terry
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They would presumably have some idea. The other ship returning to earth would be able to radio them what happened.
Depending on how they did it, the might even be planning on not returning to earth directly, but instead turning back once out of site or just laying doggo
within the system until reinforcements arrived.
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Quote: Star Ranger4 wrote:
Theorem: Another of the reasons that the RDA is at least quasi governmental is that they have control over the ships.
therfore you have to figure out how this 'crew' of willing independants are going to get their hands on it since I'm sure that the RDA will be
trying to control access to them out of fear of loosing such a valuable asset, especially after the Na'vi 'incident' if not before....
Indeed, I had actually been thinking of that. It seems to me that these independents would be staging a raid the likes of which has not been seen
since the days Piracy ran rampant in the age of tall ships. 
As for multiple ships being used on the same route... Well, I would imagine that Radio would be somewhat effective as it's traveling at c and the
ships do 0.7c. I also imagine that with the time delay in messages and the amount of time it must take to decelerate one of those monsters, at least one is
gonna be caught unaware. I also don't see these guys slaughtering the marines once they hit the dirt - the Na'vi don't strike me as the type to
stoop to their level.
The others I can imagine they would sit and wait, keeping everyone frosty in cryo. They'll need all the additional personnel if they want to get the place
up and running again (it's not just the marines that rotate out).
Finally, there's one other thing I don't believe we've covered - what the RDA would do once they got their ducks in a row. Currently, they
aren't allowed to possess WMDs. However, I don't see that stopping them from dropping rocks on Pandora - a cheap and effective weapon for wholesale
destruction. After all, they've shown that they don't give a rat's ass about the other treasures of Pandora - all they want is the unobtainium,
which won't be anymore difficult to get at once you've turned the place into a smoking cinder. (The atmosphere was already toxic to begin with - mostly
CO2 with a bit of ammonia and some other things.)
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Another thought I just had:
Are the Nav'hi even native to Pandora?
Every other species had split fore-limbs. Even the "lemurs" that would presumably be more closely related to the Nav'hi.
But the Nav'hi do not.
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That's something that others have been noticing as well. One person has even called bullocks on the whole thing, feeling that everything on the planet
evolving a planet-wide neural network was a bit far-fetched for his liking.
My thoughts on the matter: the planet did evolve that way, but the Na'vi aren't really indigenous. Hell, it kinda bugs me that you've got these
guys that resemble humans not more than a few light-years from Earth! Even better yet, they got iron-oxide based biochemistry! How much you wanna bet they can
breathe an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere as well?
Even their DNA is compatible with Human DNA. Although, the Avatars have five digits on each limb whereas the Na'vi have four (bet that surprised the
Omatacaya once they noticed) I think that just goes to show you just how compatible they are. *Wonders if Jake and Ne'ytiri could produce a viable
offspring*
Anyhow, as for defending their world... I couldn't help but notice that those sleeper ships would make dandy rail guns. Stick some properly aligned
unobtainium magnets into the frame, hook it up to the reactor, add in some fire controls, and viola! Instant boom-stick.
It'd take a hell of a workforce. So, I'm imagining Na'vi, with suits made from naturally occurring plant materials, helping out with the work in
orbit - maybe even crewing these things. I bet you can even engineer portable organic computers to go with the suits that the Na'vi can tap into. It'd
be a hell of a paradigm shift, but one I think the Na'vi would be willing to make since they had a taste of what Human military can do.
Heck, if you want to convince the Na'vi about the whole dropping rocks thing, just tell them about the Dinosaurs, and the reason why something like that
hasn't happened since then is because Humans learned how to move space rocks wherever they damn well please.
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Ah! Another One!
12-27-2009, 05:16 PM
... They're starting to breed.
Somebody posted a rather interesting, if a bit fast-moving, Avatar fic where Tom never got shived on Earth and went to Pandora as planned. And that got me
thinking...
Tom and Jake were pretty close. What if Tom got Jake involved with the Avatar business from the get-go as a means of getting him his legs back? Seeing as
they thought that having a Marine in an Avatar was a good idea when Tom was killed, I can't see them not buying into it when Tom throws it in their faces.
And Jake could be there to stop Tom from getting shived.
I'm having fun ideas about Jake and Tom teasing Neytiri whenever she mixes the two up.
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Quote: blackaeronaut wrote:
Well, after studying the official Wiki for James Cameron's Avatar, one thought comes to mind...
Do you honestly think that the RDA is going to just stop after that?
Sure, the Na'vi, against all odds, beat them back and then sent them packing. But now that I have seen what the RDA is (a quasi-governmental entity that
has a monopoly over all interstellar resource gathering) I can't help but feel that the RDA will be back, and with more guns.
I haven't seen the movie yet, but this is a plot element/hole that comes up quite often in fiction.
1) Starwars -- The Empire has tens of thousands of ships, millions of stormtroopers, and controls the vast majority of habitable worlds in the galaxy. How
exactly does taking out the Deathstar II, the Emperor, and Vader put them out of business? The only real hope for the rebels is for the Empire to split into
multiple factions in the following power struggle, and a four-way or more galaxy-wide civil war isn't exactly "happily ever after".
2) Avatar: The Last Airbender -- The Fire Nation has been at war for a century. That's 100 years in which the social order, political power structure,
economy, and infrastructure have most likely come to revolve around the war. One-hundred years of propaganda and social conditioning of the population. And
they were winning, which which means the military and political structure are going to be full of folks like Admiral Zhou, who aren't going be inclined to
give up just because a couple of disgraced nobles and a bald kid from 100 years ago say so.
The examples continue. A lot of stories that revolve around defeating an Evil Overlord (or in this case an isolated military force) overlook the fact that
such figures or groups usually have some sort of support structure and organization that can and often will carry on if the guy at the top or one set of
soldiers goes down. In the real world, in 1944, the British didn't carry through with a plan to take Hitler out with a sniper, because they weren't
sure if that would actually help them, or just replace him with someone more competent in military affairs.
----------
No, I don't believe the world has gone mad. In order for it to go mad it would need to have been sane at some point.
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For Example 1, there was supposed to be a THIRD trilogy that wraps that all up in a nice and tidy bow. Too bad George Lucas doesn't want to tackle that one, but given the example of the Star Trek reboot, I'm wondering if he still can't be persuaded - he always did seem to follow Gene Rodenberry's lead (i.e.: his initial feelings about fanfiction), and I hope that he will do so now with the franchise being under 'new management' as it were.
And Example 2, that's just poor writing there - most likely because Nickelodeon wouldn't give them a budget for a third season.
This is part of why fanfiction exists in the first place, after all.
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