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edenfalling1) Have been singularly uninspired this week. Nevertheless, I wrote about 300 words of "Guardian," 1/3 of "Lemonade" chapter 4, and another 600 words or so of "Finding Marea," bringing that to 7,150 total at the moment.
2) Am still unemployed. *sigh* Am still applying for jobs. Have even lowered my standards enough to try part-time minimum wage clerk positions. We shall see how this goes.
3) Tried to work on "Secrets" and realized I'd lost the flow of the story. Must reread chapters 1-9 soon, so I recall the right 'feel' for chapter 10.
4) Spent far too much time yesterday trying to figure out a workable solar system model and planetary environment for Trigun. Eventually concluded that Yasuhiro Nightow has no fucking clue about anything technical that doesn't involve guns (with the possible exception of motor vehicles). Also concluded that there must be other energy sources besides the Plants, and liquid water somewhere underground. Although the Plants, as written, must use whacked-out physics theories to draw energy from extra dimensions or something, because otherwise the power conversion rates are scientifically impossible.
Furthermore, the political system makes no sense either. If people live in a bunch of city-states, who the hell has the authority to rescind Vash's bounty? And if there is a central government of some sort, why does it never seem to appear except in the form of bounties and the occasional throwaway 'federal' marshall?
If I think about this too hard, I get pounding headaches. *sigh*
2) Am still unemployed. *sigh* Am still applying for jobs. Have even lowered my standards enough to try part-time minimum wage clerk positions. We shall see how this goes.
3) Tried to work on "Secrets" and realized I'd lost the flow of the story. Must reread chapters 1-9 soon, so I recall the right 'feel' for chapter 10.
4) Spent far too much time yesterday trying to figure out a workable solar system model and planetary environment for Trigun. Eventually concluded that Yasuhiro Nightow has no fucking clue about anything technical that doesn't involve guns (with the possible exception of motor vehicles). Also concluded that there must be other energy sources besides the Plants, and liquid water somewhere underground. Although the Plants, as written, must use whacked-out physics theories to draw energy from extra dimensions or something, because otherwise the power conversion rates are scientifically impossible.
Furthermore, the political system makes no sense either. If people live in a bunch of city-states, who the hell has the authority to rescind Vash's bounty? And if there is a central government of some sort, why does it never seem to appear except in the form of bounties and the occasional throwaway 'federal' marshall?
If I think about this too hard, I get pounding headaches. *sigh*
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 04:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 08:01 am (UTC)He knows guns???
Date: 2006-01-29 07:53 am (UTC)I never wondered about energy sources or water or government. I always wondered what those people did for food. And clothes. And pretty much everything that didn't need earth to be made.
I do hope you get the chance to watch the series. I saw it first, and even if the setting doesn't make a lot of sense, the series is very fun and nice animated. The anime does leave out a bunch, so I understand (haven't read much of the manga,) things like when Vash's hair changes, and it takes a lot longer before they start explaining what Plants DO.
Sorry for rambling, good luck with the rest!
WeatherMarmalade
Re: He knows guns???
Date: 2006-01-29 08:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 08:31 am (UTC)Anyway, yeah, the Plants are almost certainly drawing off of zero point or core tap type power sources. Gunsmoke's civilization does use at least one type of generator beyond them - one of the towns shown in the anime is basically built around a truly huge-ass wind turbine.
Astronomy... Well, I haven't got the sources on hand to run the actual numbers (nor the energy to go looking, at the moment), but I think that what's seen in the anime, at least, can be rationalized under certain assumptions:
- That Gunsmoke's primary stars are of spectral class G or K
- That their relative seperation as seen during the series is, in fact, the farthest apart that they ever seem (that is, that a line from Gunsmoke to the system's center of gravity will be roughly perpendicular to a line between the stars)
- That the sizes of moons, as shown on screen, are exaggerrated for effect - which happens a lot in anime and is actually kind of hard to avoid doing. Therefore, all we really know is that there are at least five, and that they appear to be different sizes when seen from the planet's surface. Catherine Asaro details an even more complex system she created in one of the appendices of her novel The Moon's Shadow, so this isn't reallly an 'illusion breaking' question, just one that needs some thought.
(I'd reccomend her books in general, BTW, but I wouldn't start with that one - her chronology features a lot of people doing a lot of interacting things over varying periods of time, and each person pretty much has their own novel, none of which were really written in order. TMS is a pretty direct sequel to The Radiant Seas, though, which is a direct sequel to Primary Inversion, which is a good starting place. There aren't any bad ones, come to that - she's pretty good about explaining what the audience needs - but Inversion was the first written, and assumes the least.)
The desert planet thing has been addressed comprehensively in at least two different places that I know of - Herbert's Dune, of course, and Dream Pod 9's Heavy Gear RPG setting.
If people live in a bunch of city-states, who the hell has the authority to rescind Vash's bounty?
The people who offered it, of course. ^_^ Presumably, in the absence of a central government, that would be Bernardelli Insurance, or some company of comperable scope.
The marshalls, though... well, maybe they're all there is to the federal government?
Ja, -n
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 11:33 pm (UTC)(I've read Catherine Asaro's books. I tend to skim the more military sections, but I love the bizarre physics and mathematical theories she uses to justify telepathy and whatnot.)
The problem with the desert planet issue is that Nightow doesn't show how the ecology functions. I can think of three native animals offhand -- sandworms, thomases (weird mix of mule, elephant, and camel), and toma (cross between chicken and vulture). There don't seem to be any native plants, though, and no surface water. So how do the animals survive? And if they can find water, why aren't there towns built near those sources, or giant pipelines carrying water to the cities? Clearly, there's a lot that Nightow isn't showing.
I think that Meryl says it's the government that rescinded Vash's bounty.
Anyway, once I realized there were two suns, I kept wanting him to do interesting things with double shadows and so on in the artwork, but he didn't make use of that. Also, I started wondering if the planet has a strong magnetic field, since when Meryl and Millie get lost in the first chapter, Meryl tries to establish directions from the suns' positions, not by using a compass. (This could be because she's not used to traveling and didn't think to bring one, but it's fun to speculate about things.)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-30 05:23 am (UTC)Quite possibly they all do - even just casually checking an overview of the Solar System (http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/nineplanets/nineplanets/overview.html) turns up that, out of the seven largest moons in these parts, six are tidelocked - so it's a fairly common thing.
(I've read Catherine Asaro's books. I tend to skim the more military sections, but I love the bizarre physics and mathematical theories she uses to justify telepathy and whatnot.)
Well, personally, I actually like watching things explode, but the best part, for me, has always been knowing that she knows exactly what she's talking about, you know? With the repeated insulin shocks falling in a close second...
The problem with the desert planet issue is that Nightow doesn't show how the ecology functions. I can think of three native animals offhand -- sandworms, thomases (weird mix of mule, elephant, and camel), and toma (cross between chicken and vulture). There don't seem to be any native plants, though, and no surface water. So how do the animals survive? And if they can find water, why aren't there towns built near those sources, or giant pipelines carrying water to the cities? Clearly, there's a lot that Nightow isn't showing.
Or, quite possibly, even thinking about. Resolving the issue...
My immediate guesses would be that -
1.) the plant life is non-photosynthetic, although it does give off oxygen, and spends its entire life-cycle deep down out of reach, where the water is. As you go higher up the food-chain, though, you start getting closer to the surface - I'm picturing the primary herbivore as something of about the same size and habits as a golden mole - cold blooded, and it comes to the surface to breath or to breed or something, out away from the real competition down in the deeps, at which point thomases and other surface dwellers start gleaning their numbers...
2.) photosynthesis takes place in the upper atmosphere, from floating algae-things, which are brought down to the surface with dew and frost when the temperature plummets at night.
3.) Gunsmoke's native plant life is ahydrous - water, in quantities above trace, poisons it - and so you never see any of it in the parts of the planet that humans have settled on.
4.) The local plants don't use clorophyl, and their substitute doesn't work at temperatures below about fifty, sixty degrees centigrade - which means that humans (who would, naturally, want to live someplace a lot cooler), still wouldn't see it.
I don't remember seeing any bird-things in the anime, but the sandworms looked like pure predators (unlike their Arrakian counterparts, which were filter-feeders) and the thomases... honestly remind me of bipedal anteaters.
Anyway, once I realized there were two suns, I kept wanting him to do interesting things with double shadows and so on in the artwork, but he didn't make use of that. Also, I started wondering if the planet has a strong magnetic field, since when Meryl and Millie get lost in the first chapter, Meryl tries to establish directions from the suns' positions, not by using a compass. (This could be because she's not used to traveling and didn't think to bring one, but it's fun to speculate about things.)
IIRC, the absence of a magnetosphere would be perfectly plausible - I'm pretty sure Earth's the only solid world that has one worth noting - and make things like solar flares pretty significant news, with real repercussions for the people living there.
The anime never mentions Vash's bounty being dropped at all, so I can't help you there. ^_^;
Ja, -n
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-30 06:01 am (UTC)The toma appear in the manga, when Meryl and Milly hitch a ride with a guy who's transporting a truck full of them. IIRC, he mentions that they're farmed. The sandworms really ought to be called sand-dragons -- that's clearly what the head designs are based on!
I started coming up with theories where a lot of the basic life -- bacteria and other single celled creatures -- are sulfur based (like some earth organisms that live around deep sea vents) or leach energy from geothermal processes deep within the earth. I also started thinking that maybe some of the 'animal' life is photosynthetic to some degree. Like, say, maybe the sandworms have photo-sensitive areas (normally covered, for protection as they burrow), which they can expose while resting. That would explain how they can get so large in such a resource-poor environment, and would fit in nicely with reptile basking behaviors as well, if they display those in the anime or later in the manga. :-)
Or, quite possibly, even thinking about. Resolving the issue...
Clearly, the issues can be resolved. It's just kind of sad that it takes so much work and handwaving to do so. I'm biased toward authors who explain some of this stuff within their stories; it lends a certain weight of realism to the plot.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 02:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 11:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-30 03:03 pm (UTC)Might as well check it out.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 09:33 pm (UTC)I'm trying to find a job too, but no one wants me and I refuse to work in food...I'd never eat again if I had to resort to that.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 11:25 pm (UTC)Then again, I'm the kind of person who used to read ingredient lists on synthetic foods to my friends during school lunches, and proceed to gross them out when I then ate the food product in question. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-30 12:36 am (UTC)It's been a few years since I watched Trigun, but there was an episode dedicated around a man who was controlling a vast underground water source and a few other moments that implied that there is water, you just have to dig for it. Another episode dealt with a family that had successfully terraformed a good sized chunk of land into a very fertile area.
I got the impression that things on the surface should be much more livable but between human greed and Knives interfering wherever he could, life is much, much rougher than it should be.
::Relurks::
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-30 03:29 am (UTC)I got the impression that things on the surface should be much more livable but between human greed and Knives interfering wherever he could, life is much, much rougher than it should be.
Word.
Another episode dealt with a family that had successfully terraformed a good sized chunk of land into a very fertile area.
If you're talking about "Little Arcadia," I seem to recall the explanation for the area of fertile land was that a Plant had been buried there, and was converting the sand to soil in some fashion. But that definitely required help from the family -- and it made the land very valuable, and thus put the family in some danger. Which goes back to the issue of human greed and violence. *sigh*
So it seems that the setting can be explained. I can't help feeling, though, that fans shouldn't have to work so hard at this -- it should be clearer in the source material. Then again, I am a world-builder and a systematizer, so I'm doubtless biased. *double sigh*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-01 06:48 am (UTC)About the idea of a federal government, references imply there is one, but considering how little we see of it, I'd say it would be safe to assume that it has very little power or resources. Which really makes sense considering the isolation of the towns involved. It wasn't until the telegraphs and railroads that the federal government had any real power in the 'Wild West', after all. In an entire planet where towns are seperated by large stretches of land that no one wants to cross, I'm surprised there's a central government at all, really. But since Trigun is modelled to some extent after said 'Wild West', I'm assuming that the parallells include a federal government with little power to actually control much or protect anything.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-01 06:35 pm (UTC)I would not be nearly this grumpy about the whole thing if I didn't find the story and characters fascinating. I gripe most about what I love. :-)