47 KiB
[D][RST] What's the rationalistest show you know?
-
Author: u/DataPacRat Amateur Immortalist*
-
URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2gw7cr/drst_whats_the_rationalistest_show_you_know/
-
Score: 16
-
Created: 2014-09-19T20:42:57
Post:
The medium almost works against the very idea of rationalism - but a lot of people are much more willing to watch a movie, or a TV series, rather than open a book. Can you suggest any that come within spitting distance of being Rationalist Fiction?
I have a mild preference for HSF, so I'll propose a couple of movies as lower bounds: 2001 and Moon. If you can think of any visual media that are more rationalist than those, then feel free to suggest them. :)
Comments:
u/alexanderwales [+14] Time flies like an arrow (49 minutes later)
Death Note comes within spitting distance, but has some flaws, and sometimes seems to be pretending at rationality rather than actually being rational. I'm fairly sure that there are other anime series that come close as well, but I'm not a huge anime fan.
Movies ... some of them at least touch on the themes that I like, but I wouldn't say that they're rational unless I really lower the bar. The Man from Earth was, for the most part, a nice, rational exploration of the concept, but I remember it falling down near the end (though I can't quite recall why). I really liked Her, because I thought it was one of the best treatments of A.I. I've seen in a long time. But again, that's spitting distance, not actually rational. Oh, and obviously Primer.
u/comport [+2] (3 hours later)
u/Saffrin-chan [+3] (4 hours later)
u/alexanderwales [+5] Time flies like an arrow (9 hours later)
I think that must have been what I didn't like. In the movie Men Who Stare At Goats there's this whole "is it real" thing that gets built up over the course of the film, and then, in the last three seconds before the credits roll, Which seems to defeat the whole point of everything that came before it.
u/None [+4] (22 hours later)
The whole movie is supposed to be a comedy of sorts, where the premise is based on real experiments meant to prove something that obviously doesn't exist. is just the last joke. I thought it was pretty funny, and it's not like the movie asked the audience to take its own universe seriously.
u/FeepingCreature [+2] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (11 hours later)
I actually really love that they had the balls to do that. I mean, three seconds of cutting. That's gotta be deliberate. I don't know, I guess ambiguity can get old.
u/comport [+8] (2 hours later)
What about The Lost Room series. I don't know if I'd call it completely rational fiction, but it does have the same feeling of rationally investigating a world of seemingly inscrutable effects that you get from some rational fanfics, trying to expose the underlying mechanics, and using logic to kind of munchkin around the limitations of different powers and things. Its a good series anyway, so if you watch it and decide its not really rational then you won't feel too bad.
u/Pinyaka [+4] (4 hours later)
Good mini-series, even if the protagonist does fall into the "literally nothing matters as much as getting my daughter back" trope. I really wish they'd turned that into a proper series.
u/Terkala [+9] (12 hours later)
I think Game of Thrones is actually quite rationalist.
All of the characters have complex backstories and reasons for their actions. It avoids the trope of cackling madman for all of the main characters (and for the supplemental characters, you never see enough of them so it may just be one aspect of their personality).
The characters act according to their own best interest, and are rarely saved by deus ex machina. All sides define themselves as the good side (and there are certainly more than 2 sides).
The rules of the world are actually sane and consistant. The reason so many "unknown" magical things are happening is because the world has a high/low magic cycle, where it goes through a period of thousands of years of low magic before going through a few hundred years of high magic. So the lack of knowledge about fundamental rules of their world can be explained by poor record keeping and lack of a true education system.
Though it does have a significant advantage over other shows. For Game of Thrones, characters have the weight of the book backing up their characters, and many of the examples above are not well portrayed as rationalist in the tv show. But they are well portrayed in the books.
u/Terkala [+3] (12 hours later)
A second thought (started as another reply to keep the discussion separate):
Farscape seasons 1-3 are more rationalist than most tv shows. The main character has motivations and actually is extremely out of his depth for most of the show. He lacks knowledge of things that are basic fundamentals for other characters in the show (including not knowing how to brush his teeth with their tools).
He tries to use reason to solve his conflict with the Peacekeepers (though they refuse his reasoning due to their different viewpoint).
u/comport [+4] (2 hours later)
How about Avatar: The last airbender series.
The characters are introduced as typical good/evil, but this is deconstructed through the series into believably complex characters and politics.
Everything in the plot is character driven, and there are no deus ex flashbacks to retcon character driven causes onto events that seem arbitrary at the time.
Although its hard to show characters problem solving without an internal monologue, to the extent that its possible the characters get around problems by coming up with plans, working things out and building contraptions. Note: there are also occasional calls to mysticism to fix problems, so its a mixed bag.
There are only a couple of moments of rational exploration of the magic in the world, and they're heavily laced with the mysticism of the universe, but the rules of the world are for the most part set out explicitly and followed.
There aren't really any puzzles for the viewer to follow, and there are no description of rationality, but you wouldn't expect that in the medium.
u/DaystarEld [+17] Pokémon Professor (8 hours later)
Well, yes and no. Airbender is one of my favorite shows ever, but about half the main badguys are pretty much just pure sociopath/megamaniacally evil. Which is fine, not every bad guy needs to be complex: some people really are megamanical and sociopaths. But when the MAIN antagonists are, it does detract a bit from the overall story, I think.
On top of that, the ending was a total deus-ex-machina. Not just Aang getting hit back into the rock in the exact spot that somehow unlocked his Avatar state again and lets him kick Ozai's ass, but also the whole concept and execution of "spirit bending," as cool a concept as it was.
One of my favorite scenes of whole series was Aang's conversations with his past selves, where he kept asking what he should do about killing Ozai, and they kept responding, indirectly and then directly, about how sometimes you have no choice but to kill. I actually teared up a little when he was talking to the past air nomad:
Yes, all life is sacred...
I know, I'm even a vegetarian! I've always tried to solve my problems by being quick or clever, and I've never used violence except in self defense, and certainly never to take a life!
Avatar Aang, I know that you are a gentle spirit, and the monks have taught you well. But this isn't about you: this is about the world.
But the monks taught me that I have to detach myself from the world so my spirit could be free!
Many great and wise air nomads have detached themselves, and attained spiritual enlightenment. But the avatar can never do it, because your sole duty is TO the world. Here is my wisdom for you: selfless duty calls for you to sacrifice your own spiritual needs, and do whatever it takes to protect the world.
This was a beautiful bit of dialogue, and was incredibly well thought out way to introduce what's usually a family-unfriendly, but still very true, aesop into the show. Sometimes you just don't have any good choices. Sometimes, a death is the lesser of two evils. And when you're facing an incredibly powerful magic emperor who will never stop until he rules the world in a fight to the death, that's kind of one of those moments (unless you want to cut his arms and legs off, cauterize the wounds, and keep him in a jail cell until he dies of old age, which is really just torture combined with murder). The lion-turtle even said something like "the pure heart can weather the shadow without being consumed by it," which I took to mean "You can kill without being tainted by it if you do it for the right reasons" or some such.
But, because it ultimately WAS a kid's show, and having the child main character kill the bad guy would have been a no-no, they pulled spiritbending out of nowhere and got a nice and peaceful and happy ending, with no character development or harsh compromises or sacrifices.
/rant over
So yeah. I love the show and ultimately agree with you that it's really well written and rational, but it does fall prey to some bad writing tropes, in my view.
u/comport [+3] (11 hours later)
Yeah, it's a shame they had to , I think the last four episodes are all a little weak in terms of writing and voice acting of incidental characters.
The was a bit of an ass-pull, but I also appreciate that someone on the writing team was keeping track of these things and realised that they needed something to do that. I wouldn't necessarily expect a tv series, especially a kids tv series to be so dedicated to continuity.
Also, spoilers :o
u/None [+2] (a day later)
The lion turtle thing needed to be foreshadowed more, certainly. LoK Spoilers
But I would say that Azula and Iroh's characters, and Zuko's inner journey under their influence, are two pretty good examples of different aspects of rationality and the painful process of becoming more rational. And other things, of course.
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (a day later)
True, Korra definitely tackles mature themes with less flinching. I actually just recently finished season 3, and enjoyed it quite a bit.
u/None [+2] (a day later)
Okay, someone needs to sit down and take the time to explain to me just what they found appealing about season 3. I feel like I'm the odd man out in one of those conformity experiments.
u/DaystarEld [+3] Pokémon Professor (a day later)
Well I was very careful not to talk to anyone about Season 3 until I could watch it all at once (I hate knowing anything about new shows/seasons before I watch them, at all), so for me conformity had little if any influence.
So that's why I enjoyed it. There are other things too, like the lack of heavy-handed romantic subplots and the more dangerous/lethal tone to the story.
What did you dislike about it?
u/None [+1] (a day later)
I disliked, Spoilers
u/DaystarEld [+3] Pokémon Professor (a day later)
[Spoilers](#s "Er. I agree with none of that. I mean some of it's more subjective than others, personally I'm not sure why you think the dialogue was horrible, but saying there was an "absence of plot" seems objectively false. There were two very clear plots from the beginning: Korra and Tenzin's quest to find Airbenders, and the villain's quest to unite his former allies so he could capture Korra. Eventually the two plotlines merged into one. That there were other episode-to-episode plots and conflicts along the way is kind of how every episodic show works, including the original Airbender.")
[Spoiler] (#s "So maybe you WERE watching a a different show than everyone else XD")
u/None [+2] (a day later)
THAT'S NOT PLOTS ONE'S A GOAL SPOILER AND THE OTHER'S AN IDEA SPOILER GRAWBRAA GRIPE GRIPE
sigh...i'm still debating the wisdom of writing a hundred page essay about the terribleness of season 3. "don't do it" says my brain, but my heart says, "everyone needs to know why your opinion about this children's cartoon is right"
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (2 days later)
What on earth do you mean those aren't plots? They most certainly are. You seem to have a very narrow definition of "plot." Taking the part I happened to mention literally and exclusively without context would be just a "goal," yeah, but as you watched the show I was assuming you'd know the rest of the details that made it a plot. Namely, the conflict and obstacles that got in the way of the goal, and the character development of the protagonists along the way to help them reach their goal. They were plots.
As for the second spoiler, honestly I'm not even sure what you're saying. I enjoy comedic shouting as much as anyone, but this was a bit incoherent :P What was the "most inexplicable decision in writing history?" What "twist" are you referring to?
Normally I'd be merely interested in such an analysis, but your perspective is so strange I'm fascinated XD
u/None [+1] (2 days later)
I don't want to do this whole post in spoiler tags, so, you know, s3 LoK spoilers....
The problem with the airbender plot is pretty simple: it goes nowhere and affects nothing. It's a sidequest; you get bonus exp and gold for it, but you can skip it. Take the airbenders out of the season, what happens? Well...Kai and Opal are gone, so that's good. Zaheer needs a different way of blackmailing Korra and different bullshit powers, and some other plot device is needed to beat Zaheer at the end.
That's it. All of the ways in which the airbender plot tie into the main plot are highly substitutable; it wouldn't take much work to write them out entirely. It doesn't merge with the Zaheer plot; it gets totally eaten by it. But the Zaheer plot doesn't replace the airbender plot. It runs out of steam entirely on its own accord. It just...isn't going anywhere. There's no narrative force sustaining it. There's nothing concrete and immediate to accomplish once the airbenders are gathered, gathering them doesn't seem to affect anything, Korra doesn't really care, no one is trying to hurt them except Zaheer, and Zaheer doesn't actually care about them at all; they're just a plot device to get to Korra. So it's a sidequest. You do it, get the bonus exp and gold, flesh out the world a little...but it's eminently skippable.
There's nothing wrong with sidequests in particular. A:TLA had some good ones. The other problem with the airbender plot is that no one cares. Korra doesn't care. She goes on the adventure because she has nothing better to do. So our main character doesn't care at all. That's not good. But Tenzin...well, Tenzin has been frightfully boring for 2 seasons, and his Close Fatherly Bonding Relationship with Korra is primarily informed. So Korra doesn't care that Tenzin cares, and the audience doesn't care because seriously, if Tenzin was written out of the show, what would change? Remember, all of this is happening before the fight in "Ultimatum," the first and only good Tenzin scene. It's a good Tenzin moment, no doubt about it, but it comes way too late to make us care about what the character cares about.
But suppose it were Aang. We care about Aang, and we probably think we care about the Air Nomads because Aang cared about them, but that's really us just caring about Aang. Yet I think even if it were Aang on this sidequest, not Tenzin, it wouldn't go very far. The simple fact is, Restoring an Ancient culture is boring. If you read about a real-life version on the news, you would think it's neat but not really care. A fictional version is even more boring. Perhaps this problem could be solved by showing how it would affect the rest of the world, but the show doesn't even try. So...the main character doesn't care, the primarily involved character no one cares about (at least, they shouldn't because he's objectively boring, flat and mostly irrelevant to everything), and the audience has no intrinsic reason to care and aren't given a related reason to latch onto like Restoring Balance or whatever. Also, Kai. Kai is so bad. He's even worse than Wan. I don't know how the people behind such great characters like we had in A:TLA can make such bland, forgettable, irrelevant characters like we get in LoK.
As for the Zaheer plot, it doesn't work first of all because it depends on keeping Korra out of the action. Neutralizing your main character and only interesting facet of the show because writing around her superpowers is hard is a bad idea, but that's not really the problem. The real problem is WHY WOULD YOU KEEP THEIR MOTIVES A SECRET OH GOD.
This blows my mind. The airbender plot I can see happening. Someone has what seems like a good idea and only later do they realize it goes nowhere and does nothing, by which point it's too late. But keeping the Red Lotus's goal with regard to Korra a secret? That...that...is just...so wrong...I can't...my brain....
The Red Lotus lose all their strength as bad guys because we simply have no idea what their goals are. Are they bad guys? We don't know! Is Korra in danger? /shrug, no idea! What will happen if the Red Lotus wins? Your guess is as good as mine!
The bad guys don't need to state the details of their evil plan, and of course you want to save a twist for the end, but we need to have some sense of their motives and the consequences of the different possible outcomes of the conflict. Otherwise, there's no tension and we don't care because we're not presented with anything to care about. The Red Lotus got Korra with paralysis dart things they never use again and how did they get those anyway--oh no! ...Right? Because...something bad will happen...probably. I mean, they've got to be the bad guys, right?
The Red Lotus suck anyway, but that's just the usual bad writing that is LoK's standard. The choice to obliterate the tension they can create in the scene and the threat they pose by not telling us if and what threat they pose is just...so wrong.
Also, keeping the ostensibly main character, Korra, completely uninvolved with the plot because writing around superpowers is hard ruins the plot anyway. Watching the villains run around while the main character pouts and says, "Gosh, I'm angry!" is not gripping. But that's a whole 'nother can of worms.
Also, neither of the plots involved Kai being gruesomely murdered by a gang of rhinoceros bears.
This is all just off the top of my head, and there's so, so much more wrong with season 3 (some of which isn't the fault of season 3, like the horrible problems with Mako, Bolin and Asami's characters, which come from seasons 1 and 2).
I notice that most of your comments about what you liked about the season were world-building things, not story or character things. There's nothing wrong with that, but Cool World Building isn't the same as A Well-Told Story with Engaging, Sympathetic Characters. You did mention liking the Red Lotus, but what no that is just no. None of them had personalities except Zaheer the Serious Boring Flat Guy worthy of Tenzin. Gazan's non-character was utterly ruined in his final confrontation with Bolin and Mako, and P'li or however you spell her name awkwardly vomits up exposition about her Tragic Backstory so that when she gets fridged for Zaheer's development the writers might be able to trick themselves into thinking it's gripping stuff.
I do agree the ending scene was cool. LoK has some cool ideas. The execution, however, is consistently abysmal.
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (2 days later)
You're making a ton of subjective claims and treating them as common-sense. It's okay if you're just explaining your preferences, but that's not the tone of criticism you originally took, so I'm going to answer it in that respect, since you're also just making a ton of objective statements that have no backing:
The problem with the airbender plot is pretty simple: it goes nowhere and affects nothing. It's a sidequest; you get bonus exp and gold for it, but you can skip it. Take the airbenders out of the season, what happens? Well...Kai and Opal are gone, so that's good.
This assume you'd WANT to remove the airbender plot. I had no problems with Opal and Kai. I liked Kai more than Opal, she was kind of flat, but I don't see how removing them is automatically "good." He's not a Tier 1 character, but he's not a BAD one either, he just doesn't get enough screen time to really be interesting. They peform the roles they're there to perform: not everyone is going to be a fully fleshed out and intricate character. There are just too many of them, and not enough time.
And the airbenders as whole were not a distraction or a "side quest." It was core to the season: "Change." I enjoyed it. I think it was interesting and compelling and worth watching and set up a whole new branch of lore in the world of Avatar, namely the role of the new airbender nation being wandering monks acting for balance, like jedi knight errants.
It runs out of steam entirely on its own accord. It just...isn't going anywhere. There's no narrative force sustaining it. There's nothing concrete and immediate to accomplish once the airbenders are gathered, gathering them doesn't seem to affect anything, Korra doesn't really care, no one is trying to hurt them except Zaheer, and Zaheer doesn't actually care about them at all; they're just a plot device to get to Korra. So it's a sidequest. You do it, get the bonus exp and gold, flesh out the world a little...but it's eminently skippable.
It does not run out of steam at all. If the airbenders hadn't been there, Zaheer would have just gone around killing more world leaders, maybe kidnapped someone else Korra cared about to try and get her to come to him. Maybe that would have been more interesting. I would have been happy if that's the path the story took, personally, but I'm fine with what it did instead. Again, still tied to the core theme of the season: The Red Lotus are agents of "Change," this time in a not so great way.
Korra doesn't care. She goes on the adventure because she has nothing better to do. So our main character doesn't care at all. That's not good.
You said this earlier too, but... what do you mean "Korra doesn't really care?" What exactly makes you so confidently assert such a thing? She gave herself up to save them. How is that not caring?
The Red Lotus lose all their strength as bad guys because we simply have no idea what their goals are. Are they bad guys? We don't know! Is Korra in danger? /shrug, no idea! What will happen if the Red Lotus wins? Your guess is as good as mine!
Why do you need to know their motives right away though? Isn't it okay to not know? The tension comes partly from not knowing. If someone tried to kidnap you, would you have no tension because you didn't know if they were going to kill your or give you ice cream? No, you assume they're not friendly until you have reason to think otherwise. Makes perfect sense to me.
And isn't it interesting to have a period of time where you wonder if they're actually not bad guys? If they'd told you from the beginning that they wanted to end the cycle of the Avatar, they would have been far less interesting, to me. I liked the ambiguity: I liked that moment in the spirit world where maybe, just maybe, Zaheer was going to give an explanation that turned everything on its head and made Korra turn away from the White Lotus.
And once you DID know why they wanted her, it fit perfectly with their anarchist worldview that if they want to end all rulers and make everyone equal, they'd do away with the Avatar.
Also, keeping the ostensibly main character, Korra, completely uninvolved with the plot because writing around superpowers is hard ruins the plot anyway. Watching the villains run around while the main character pouts and says, "Gosh, I'm angry!" is not gripping. But that's a whole 'nother can of worms.
Okay, this is the first thing in your post I really actually agree with. I don't like Korra much. I think she's too stupid to be interesting, and the writers are giving her the idiot ball on top of that low intellect. I remember in the first episode of season 3 when the guy on the bridge was like "I don't want to be an air bender! Make it stop!" and she said "I'm sorry, I can't do that," and I said out loud "Um... yes you can, Korra. You can do that." Unless losing Aang meant also forgetting how to fix people's chakra points and/or spiritbend
Also, why she didn't depose the Earth Queen is just beyond me. Like... she was KIDNAPPING AIRBENDERS and forcing them into a secret army, and she LIED TO THE AVATAR ABOUT IT! Totally abusing her power is a bit more fuzzy in terms of what crosses the line between "maintaining balance" and "being kingmaker," but the airbender kidnapping was exactly the kind of thing the Avatar is meant to stop! AND SHE JUST LEAVES. Like "OOooh, if I ever see her again I'm gonna [something unspecific]!" But she just leaves with the airbenders. HEY KORRA, YOU KNOW SHE'S JUST GOING TO CONTINUE KIDNAPPING AIRBENDERS RIGHT?!
GAH!
/calms down.
So we agree on that, more or less. Moving on:
You did mention liking the Red Lotus, but what no that is just no. None of them had personalities except Zaheer the Serious Boring Flat Guy worthy of Tenzin. Gazan's non-character was utterly ruined in his final confrontation with Bolin and Mako, and P'li or however you spell her name awkwardly vomits up exposition about her Tragic Backstory so that when she gets fridged for Zaheer's development the writers might be able to trick themselves into thinking it's gripping stuff.
First, I disagree that Tenzin is boring and flat: not every character is going to be open minded and progressive and into excitement and adventure, and it makes sense for him to be the way he is. It would be better if his "stodginess" were due to being more rational rather than more traditionalist, but that doesn't make his character a bad one.
And I liked Zaheer as a Dangerous Idealist. He showed how an airbender can take their culture/ideals of freedom and detachment and crank them up to 11 to become a villain. The rest of the Red Lotus sadly didn't get enough screen time to really flesh them out, but that leads me to my main criticism of Korra, which is kind of in line with yours:
I do agree the ending scene was cool. LoK has some cool ideas. The execution, however, is consistently abysmal.
I think it's really a matter of being too short. The first season's plot was almost perfect up until the very end, where they seemed to have crammed a whole extra season's worth of content and reveals and character arcs into 2 episodes. I HATED what they did with who Aman really was (though that might just be because it differed from what I had in mind: the world's first pure spiritbender) and how Korra got Aang-ex-machina'd all better. (though I did hear a cool fan interpretation that makes the ending to season 1 actually better: when Korra stood at the edge of the cliff and started crying, she was about to commit suicide, and that's what Aang meant by "When we reach our lowest point, we are open to the greatest change."). So I think those issues would have been better if the season was longer.
Same with season 3. I definitely think the story would have been better if it was longer: if we had more time to get to know the Red Lotus characters, if we had more time to see the impact the of the returning Air Benders, if we had more time to get to know Kai and Opal, if we saw the world thrown into chaos by Zaheer going around and killing world leaders, etc.
But for what it was, I think it was done well. I think it's fair enough to say that I enjoy the worldbuilding more than anything in the story, but I didn't find the story repellent, and I did like the dialogue and characters overall: Asami is no Sokka unfortunately, but Mako and Bolin work well together... far better than either of them do alone like in season 2.
u/None [+1] (9 days later)
Okay, let me try this another way. Maybe saying s3 had no plot is too strong. But most of the main characters are devoid of character motivation. What drives Korra over the course of the season? How about Beifong? Asami? The Earth Queen? The Red Lotus? We learn Zaheer's motive in the finale, which is too late, but we never learn about the others.
The reason Tenzin, Mako and Bolin end up feeling like the main characters of season 3 is that they had some motivation and purpose. Tenzin is rebuilding the air nation, Mako and Bolin are reuniting with their family and trying to protect Korra.
The lack of motivation from some of the ostensibly most important characters in the season, Korra and Zaheer most damagingly, is what creates the feeling that the show has no plot.
Kai and Opal suck because they can be removed from the show with the barest superficial changes. It's like General Iroh from season 1 again. Or Asami from all 3 seasons. Or Bumi and Kya from season 2. Suyin is the same, actually. I expect the Fire Lordess in s4 will be just as pointless.
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (10 days later)
What drives Korra over the course of the season?
Bringing back the Airbenders. Everywhere she looks there are people blaming her for messing the world up. She brought the spirits to the world, but no one's particularly happy about that. She can't send away the giant trees in Republic City. She even lost the past avatars! She pretty much sees herself as a failure.
But! At the very least, one good thing that's come of everything is that now the airbenders are back. After almost 200 years, the world will have all four nations again, instead of relying on the descendents of one family who, if wiped out, would make them truly extinct again.
So her motivation is to make sure the airbenders are found and properly trained and join up with Tenzin so that she finally has a positive mark on her record of Avatarness. Bringing balance to the world is what Avatars are supposed to do, after all. This motivation carries her all the way through to the metalbender city, where she's almost kidnapped: after that it becomes a "find out what the badguys are up to and maybe beat them up" thing.
How about Beifong?
Pretty much just trying to protect the Avatar. The family drama at the metalbending city was a subplot, but her motivation is clear, if one dimensional.
Asami?
Prove herself as an Airbending Master, so her father treats her with respect. Getting her tattoos in the finale is the culmination of this.
Zaheer
Like I said, I liked that Zaheer's motives were secret for so long. It gave a sense of ambiguity and uncertainty to the story, the lack of which would have been mind-numbingly predictable otherwise. "Oh he wants to kidnap the avatar so he can kill her and end the cycle? Yeah, like that'll happen." At least when you aren't sure WHY he's gathering his friends and trying to kidnap Korra, there's some sense of mystery and suspense. I was really half expecting him to say something to Korra in the spirit world that revealed a sinister conspiracy of the White Lotus.
Kai and Opal suck because they can be removed from the show with the barest superficial changes. It's like General Iroh from season 1 again. Or Asami from all 3 seasons. Or Bumi and Kya from season 2. Suyin is the same, actually. I expect the Fire Lordess in s4 will be just as pointless.
Generally agree with all this except for Suyin. Her character actually felt fleshed out and interesting, and played a particular role in character development for Chief Beifong (who I kinda expect to die in Season 4 after so much character buildup).
u/None [+1] (10 days later)
Korra's interest in the airbenders is all tell, no show, and it's not even much tell. It seems to be more a function of getting evicted from Republic City than anything. Same with Beifong, whose actual effect on the course of the story is basically nil. Neither Korra nor Beifong function to move the plot whatsoever. This is not true of Tenzin and Mako, making them the main characters once more.
The problem with Zaheer's motives isn't that the details are secret, but that the direction, if you will, of the motives is secret. Did he want to hurt Korra? Who knows. Was he bad for the world? ...Hard to say. Zuko gave some painfully bad exposition amounting to, "He's a bad guy definitely a bad guy it's Zuko saying this so you'll believe it." But it's the barest telling and no showing.
Beifong didn't have any character development in season 3 being given a not-so-tragic backstory for no reason in order to resolve a relationship with her sister established in the previous episode for no effect whatsoever on the plot isn't character development. It's pure filler. Also: Lin teaching Korra metalbending for some reason other than "nothing better to do" rather than Suyin would have been so good. Surely someone must have suggested it.
Asami?
Prove herself as an Airbending Master, so her father treats her with respect. Getting her tattoos in the finale is the culmination of this.
Interesting take on Asami's character. I hadn't considered her as a secret airbender, communicating with her father through their spiritual connection. ;)
u/None [+1] (10 days later)
Somehow or another there's a way of objectively proving season 3 was barely a story.
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (10 days later)
Woops, read that as Jinora for some reason.
In that post you linked to, I mostly agree with /u/MagicBoats. I think the people who enjoyed this season enjoyed it for the world building, but there was still a plot: it just wasn't central to the season.
I don't like Korra as a protagonist. She's boring and dumb. But she still had a goal. You can assert that this goal was unimportant to you, but you cannot objectively say that the audience doesn't care about it, because I'm part of the audience and I did, as did /u/MagicBoats. Trying to argue that we only care about it because we cared about Aang is just silliness. I cared about it because I care about the air bender nation. Aang was just the face I associated with it in series 1, but he's not in this one, and yet I still care about it.
That's the problem with the half of your critique that I disagree with. If you found it frustrating that Zaheer's motivations were kept secret, that's fine. But that does not make it a bad writing decision, because I would have found him much more boring and predictable as a villain if they were not.
u/autowikibot [+1] (a day later)
#####
######
#### Asch conformity experiments:
In psychology, the Asch conformity experiments or the Asch Paradigm were a series of laboratory experiments directed by Solomon Asch in the 1950s that demonstrated the degree to which an individual's own opinions are influenced by those of a majority group.
The methodology developed by Asch has been utilised by many researchers and the paradigm is in use in present day social psychology. The paradigm has been used to investigate the relationship between conformity and task importance, age, gender, and culture.
====
^Interesting: ^Conformity ^| ^Solomon ^Asch ^| ^Social ^psychology ^| ^Normative ^social ^influence
^Parent ^commenter ^can [^toggle ^NSFW](http://www.np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=autowikibot&subject=AutoWikibot NSFW toggle&message=%2Btoggle-nsfw+ckocrht) ^or [^delete](http://www.np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=autowikibot&subject=AutoWikibot Deletion&message=%2Bdelete+ckocrht)^. ^Will ^also ^delete ^on ^comment ^score ^of ^-1 ^or ^less. ^| ^(FAQs) ^| ^Mods ^| ^Magic ^Words
u/None [+1] (a day later)
The lion-turtle even said something like "the pure heart can weather the shadow without being consumed by it," which I took to mean "You can kill without being tainted by it if you do it for the right reasons" or some such.
Ah, so you're a virtue-ethicist?
u/DaystarEld [+7] Pokémon Professor (a day later)
As far as I understand the term, yes. With a few rare exceptions (namely rape), I don't think any act is always an absolute evil. The consequences of an action are how I judge whether it was "good" or "bad," and the intentions of the person acting is how I judge whether they are "good," "bad," or "stupid."
And for that exception, the reason I consider it always evil is that there are no good consequences or intentions for rape. Even unlikely "repopulate the species" scenarios don't really work: if the breeding pool is so finite that you need to FORCE people to breed, rather than convince them to do so in order to further the species, then the gene pool is probably not diverse enough to be sustainable anyway.
u/ArisKatsaris [+4] Sidebar Contender (a day later)
Okay, no. I liked the show, but in no form and shape can I imagine that we can stretch the word "rationalist" in order to include it in that description. A show being good and a show being rationalist aren't the same thing by far.
EDIT: But I guess the original poster asked for just the most rationalist show, and since I don't really have any suggestions of my own that I would feel properly qualify for the title, I shouldn't have complained.
u/comport [+4] (a day later)
You made me realise that I probably misread OP.
I was answering "What's the most rational show" instead of "What's the most rationalist show". I made the assumption since it was on the sub for rational rather than rationalist fiction. TLA is pretty rational, but not at all rationalist.
u/mack2028 [+2] (an hour later)
house, though not all of it just the professional side, actually uses things like tests and evidence.
u/None [+3] (3 hours later)
Isn't it usually said that House is basically just Sherlock Holmes, but with medicine.
u/zdk [+12] (3 hours later)
Yes, but Sherlock Holmes (and House) is not really using rationalist methodology either:
But when you look at what Sherlock Holmes does - you can't go out and do it at home. Sherlock Holmes is not really operating by any sort of reproducible method. He is operating by magically finding the right clues and carrying out magically correct complicated chains of deduction. Maybe it's just me, but it seems to me that reading Sherlock Holmes does not inspire you to go and do likewise. Holmes is a mutant superhero. And even if you did try to imitate him, it would never work in real life.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/3m/rationalist_fiction/
Though its worth noting that Arthur Conan Doyle did use 'forensic' science (in the not-quite Holmesian sense) to exonerate two people: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Conan_Doyle#Correcting_injustice
u/None [+7] (16 hours later)
The other problem with Sherlock Holmes is that he lives in a very lawful universe/world and that his laws are always justified (even when they wouldn't normally be). For example, the only reason a watch would be several hours off is because of foreign travel. There's no way you just got the watch and haven't changed it yet. Or your kid played with it. No, foreign travel is the only explanation.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
u/DataPacRat [+3] Amateur Immortalist (a day later)
Probability Theory: the Logic of Science
Is there a video version of that?
u/MugaSofer [+1] (3 days later)
I found Continuum surprisingly rationalistey.
Fair warning, though, I've only watched part of the first season.
u/iemfi [+0] (10 hours later)
I liked the movie Oblivion. Mostly because the killer drones are the first I've seen of killer drones which actually make sense. The rest of the plot seems mostly rational too.