23 KiB
[D][FF] Is anyone considering a transhumanist fanfic of 'Tangled' the Disney movie ?
-
Author: u/recursiveAI *
-
URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2nizmv/dff_is_anyone_considering_a_transhumanist_fanfic/
-
Score: 10
-
Created: 2014-11-26T23:38:41
Post:
I simply love the movie 'Tangled'. But the plot is so blatantly anti-transhumanist. I am surprised that this is not mentioned more often in /r/rational OR /r/hpmor, as far as I'm aware. I enjoyed the rationalist fanfic of 'Frozen' by /u/alexanderwales. Hoping someone writes it for 'Tangled'. There is so much potential in the character of Mother Gothel, the most (dark) rationalist person in the movie.
Comments:
u/alexanderwales [+12] Time flies like an arrow (46 minutes later)
If I knew how to structure it as a story, I would probably do it. There was this reference to Tangled in A Bluer Shade of White:
“Did you know,” he said as she came in, “That the princess of Corona had the power to heal people with her hair?”
“I did,” said Elsa with a nod. “She lost the power when her hair was cut, if I recall.”
“And yet it raises so many interesting questions, doesn’t it?” asked the Duke. “How did the magic know what a healed person was like? How did it know what to fix and what to leave as it was? If a person lost a finger, would the magic have known what to make a new finger look like? It was fabled to even have the ability to reverse aging, yet how did it know to remove the wrinkles and tighten skin? It suggests either that the magic could read the intentions of the princess, or that there is some true platonic ideal which the magic was hewing to. The princess wasn’t a surgeon of course, and yet it’s claimed that she could heal a broken bone or even internal injuries without knowing the specifics of what was actually wrong.”
And it would be easy enough to pontificate on healing hair, and how it works, and what to do with it, but that's not actually a story. My first instinct would be to take it in the direction of The Jesus Machine (a part of Ra that's somewhat disconnected from the plot), in that the inevitable result of someone with magical hair that heals people is that you try to maximize for total healing in a day and end up having to somehow limit people, given that the need for healing is greater than the ability to heal, especially when that extends to old age, and doubly especially when the cure for old age isn't permanent - it takes constant treatments or the anti-aging therapy wears off. To some extent you can have Queen Rapunzel sitting on her throne with her hair spread out into healing chambers that people are run through as quickly as possible (with the power always "on"), but even then, it's not really that exploitable, unless you can find the magic flower that made it possible in the first place.
Anyway, I don't know what you'd make the plot if you don't want to do a retread of the movie. And it's something that I've considered, but don't feel like writing, mostly because none of my ideas really grab me all that much. Maybe you do it as a character study of a (more) rational Mother Gothel whose motives are slightly more acceptable than vanity and a fear of her own death? Maybe I'm just not in the mood for a super dark rationalist at the moment. Either way, you have to set it when Rapunzel has her magical healing hair, which means during her captivity, during her adventure, or possibly in some alternate world where the plot of the movie is resolved without her cutting off her hair.
Rapunzel's character arc is that she's a naive girl who's curious about the world and does some growing up on her adventure. It's a compelling (if easy and well-worn) story. To make your own version of Tangled, you'd need some story that's equally compelling, but I just don't know what that would be. If you follow the pattern of serial escalation, then the story ends with everyone's disease being cured for all time, and the eradication of death from the world, but putting enough roadblocks into the way to make a reader interested is the big challenge.
u/recursiveAI [+1] (2 hours later)
I did notice the Tangled reference when I was reading A Bluer Shade of White. In fact I was just thinking that the "platonic ideal" that the Duke refers to is obviously the individual's genome interpreted to an undamaged adult state.
I acknowledge that the 'most-good' implementation of Rapunzel's healing would quickly lead to a bottle neck and the inevitable corruption of the healing being prioritized towards the royal/noble families.
I will have to think about how to make the plot interesting. I am leaning towards a point-of-divergence where Flynn Rider stumbles on Rapunzel's tower and a much more formidable Gothel. Thanks for the outlining the challenges.
u/alexanderwales [+3] Time flies like an arrow (9 hours later)
In fact I was just thinking that the "platonic ideal" that the Duke refers to is obviously the individual's genome interpreted to an undamaged adult state.
I like the intuition model better, and I'll tell you why:
Let's say that there's a polydactyl baby born with six fingers on each hand. At the age of ten, the local chirurgeon amputates the boy's extra fingers, which don't have full extension and besides that make him a social outcast. At the age of twenty, he gets a deep cut across the palm of his hand, whereupon Rapunzel comes across him and uses her hair to heal him.
If we're following the genetic model (and assuming that her power can regrow body parts) he would incidentally end up with the new finger. Hell, if he had an appendix taken out, healing him might put it back in.
If we're following the intuition model, he would be healed, and perhaps the scar on the side of his hand would fade away to nothingness. And once she realizes that she's not bound by what someone is born with - that there's no need to add a finger back on - the natural progression is talking to this polydactyl man seeing whether she can use her power to remove his extra toes that never seemed like they were worth the bother. And once she's figured out that she can remove extra toes, then she can also figure out that maybe she can add extra toes, and the progression eventually leads to "healing" in a form that's as extreme and escalated as the story can handle.
If you use genetics, you have to do some interpretation when it comes to "undamaged" anyway, given the sorts of genetic abnormalities that people can have (for example, Down's syndrome).
u/Timewinders [+3] (13 hours later)
Anyway, genes don't have all the information necessary to determine development. A lot of the development is guided by transcription factors produced by the mother during pregnancy. Some things, like the exact branching of minor blood vessels, are partly random.
u/recursiveAI [+3] (23 hours later)
Precisely. By undamaged I meant without physical or age-related damage. Genetic abnormalities manifested before, say 18 years, wouldn't be fixable in this scenario. Personally I shy away from the intuition model, because apart from being over-powered, I cannot imagine a coherent model of how that would work. Rapunzel apparently doesn't possess any genetic/medical expertise to consciously direct such reshaping. Intuitive super-healing by a layperson almost implies a super-intelligent subconscious. The information has to come from somewhere.
u/None [+7] (11 minutes later)
As I have to mention every time someone asks about making a specific rationalist fic: You could always write it yourself. It's a lot of work, but if you have such a passion to see it done, then you would probably be the best person to make it.
u/None [+3] (36 minutes later)
Doesn't even have to be a lot of work. "Cranked out in one sitting" is still better than nothing at all.
u/eaglejarl [+5] (5 hours later)
Cranking a ridiculous hackjob version in five minutes or less can be a great starting point that can get you moving on the real version. Here's my 90-second version:
"Holy crap, I just realized: my hair can heal people!" said Rapunzel.
"Yes, dear, I know," Gothel responded. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm feeling pretty old. Get with the singing, would you?"
"Nonono," Rapunzel said, pacing furiously. "I mean, sure, I knew that it could heal people. But I just realized, the world must be full of people! And from what you've told me it's a terrible place where everyone is always fighting and scared and sick. What if they didn't have to be fighting and scared and sick? What if my hair could heal them and keep them young? If they were potentially going to live forever, they'd have an incentive to be peaceful and not get in fights. My hair could heal the world!"
"..." said Mother Gothel.
"Come on, we need to pack!" said Rapunzel, as she raced upstairs to grab her valise and usher in utopia.
u/None [+7] (7 hours later)
I doubt that'll work. Rapunzel is being emotionally abused by Mother Gothel. If you don't somehow incorporate that in the story, you're probably doing it a disservice.
Just a bit of brainstorming:
- Mother Gothel's manipulation becomes a lot better.
- Rapunzel knows about the methods of rationality from all her books (she reads and re-reads several per day, this is canon), but doesn't have a lot of actual knowledge about the world (and a major blindspot towards Gothel)
- Flynn is all about being instrumentally rational, but bad at coming up with worthwhile goals (he somehow really thinks that "an island that I own, tan and rested and alone, surrounded by enormous pikes of money" will actually make him happy.)
I think those can be worked with.
u/eaglejarl [+3] (15 hours later)
And thus is revealed the usefulness of 90-second crackfic as a means of jumpstarting a real story. My work here is done. ;>
u/syberdragon [+1] (11 hours later)
I really like this concept for Flynn. I feel like I could really relate on a lot of levels. Having trouble with finding direction and worthwhile goals seams very real to me.
(Not claiming I'm to good with the tools.)
u/None [+3] (9 hours later)
As I have to mention every time someone asks about making a specific rationalist fic: You could always write it yourself.
If I had gone and written every damn story I'd ever thought of, the following would exist:
- Dune's Butlerian Jihad: Prescient Mutant Superhumans vs UFAI
- Basically Following the Phoenix, which someone else actually did write, thankfully.
- The Communist Manifesto with Spiral Power (free energy is invented: this breaks physics and logic almost as badly as you think it does, and breaks society about as thoroughly as your average uncontrolled technological singularity... though every time they try to build AI it explodes, just to keep that particular easily-abusable power out of the story). I swear I'm gonna get to this someday.
- Jojo's Well-Reasoned Adventure
- Chaitin's Number Ω and How to Weaponize It (will only ever exist conditional on Chaitin's Constant actually being usable as a weapon)
u/Roxolan [+2] Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager (4 hours later)
The Cyclopean monstrosity that is Adventures in Effulgence has a Tangled section (the one that starts with "a book or maybe two or three". (It's not exactly rationalfic because it's not exactly a story.) The female main character is extremely rational, as usual - though starting with the handicap of zero life experience. The transhumanist potential of magic is considered.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+2] Utopian Smut Peddler (10 hours later)
Remember, this is a medieval, pseudo-feudal society in the movie, so a "rational" view of it is historically accurate, not filled with rational and well-educated actors. Rather the opposite.
And remember too that her power was passed on genetically and included both uncut hair and wow. So maybe Gothel will be darkly rational, but she certainly won't be darkest, and might not be the most coldly rational either. There are certainly darker and more...functionally optimal fates than being locked in a tower for someone with the genetic code to immortality stuff to suffer.
I only have one compound word to say about that world made accurate and filled with intelligent people:
Grimdark.
u/E-o_o-3 [+2] (a day later)
I'm pretty sure it was actually just exposure to the super-flower as a fetus, not genetics.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+2] Utopian Smut Peddler (a day later)
It isn't clear how that magic works. If the flower just affected fetal development to magically add those enchantments to perfectly normal hair and other things, then it is less grim.
But it seems likely to be a magical genetic mutation, like red hair was at one time, given how hair growth physically works and what happened to the hair that was cut when she was an infant. There are also the other abilities, which also support this genetic claim. The strongest point here is that normal hair grows for a time, stops growing, and then naturally falls out.
Neither the uncut super-hair or the brown, natural hair seem to act like baseline human hair does. This suggested the hair follicles themselves are enchanted, and remain so even after the hair is cut.
Note that normal maximum hair length is based on how long (over what period of time) hair grows until it naturally falls out during hair growth rest, or telogen, and that how long it takes to reach this point in the hair follicle cycle is a genetic trait.
First, we have to either assume normal hair growth with individual hairs eventually falling out doesn't happen here since there are no examples of shed super-hair, or that falling out is the same as being cut to the shed hair itself but not to the hair follicles that would need to pick up growing enchanted hair again.
Otherwise, after 4-6 years of life, all her hair would be brown. Or she'd be bald.
And if it fell out and did not count as being cut, there would be piles of blond super-hair everywhere that should, given available information, function perfectly well for the magical song.
Some confirmation from canon: as Gothel doesn't carry around skeins of shed super-hair, it would follow that either she is not a very intelligent actor, or that shed super-hair doesn't exist.
As an easy check against this, but by no means strong evidence, the hairbrush we see appears to have no shed hair on it -- at least, no good shots of hair on the brush were found in a very brief [oh god don't make me study this in-depth] viewing of low-res video of various...hairbrush related scenes in the movie. There are also no long brown hairs shown, of which there would be many if such absurdly long hair was ever shed and lost its properties.
I think the simplest assumption is that her hair never falls out as super-hair, and never enters the rest state, growing in anagen forever except when cut. There is still a problem here. That would mean either the brown hair is also invincible and never falls out but merely stops the follicle growth phase, or that it has been magically altered to, after cutting, always grow to that length (rather, for the same amount of time to reach that length) for all hair originating from those specific hair follicles from which enchanted hair was grown and later snipped. Either case involves additional magical changes to the hair follicles.
The never-falls-out super-hair scenario also implies that either all hair she now has was from enchanted hair she had in the womb, or all hair grown after the in utero enchantment from the flower cure was also enchanted bit by bit as it emerged from the hair follicles. Infants are not generally born with the same thickness of hair that they will have later in life (this would result in absurdly thick baby hair, which does happen rarely), though they are born with all the hair follicles they will ever possess. This again suggests that it is the hair follicles that are enchanted.
In both cases, consider that new sections of her existing hair (new hair growth on existing strands) has the enchantment, even though those are completely new molecules, generated (one assumes) from food eaten after the enchantment went into effect. This suggests it is the hair follicles that are enchanted to produce new molecules of the enchanted proteins.
The hair cut as an infant remains the same length, and her late, post-plot shots take place with her still having short hair. It seems to be physically different from normal human hair in that way, as it is shown after the Dramatic Haircut always at the same length, just like the infant haircut. This points towards the non-super-hair being odd in some way.
Shed hair, or rather its lack, and the continuing growth of hair that maintains the enchantment strongly supports the hair follicle enchantment hypothesis. New super hair continues to grow in all places except where the enchantment is broken, at which point all existing hair and any more that is grown there (if any is, this is not clear) has different attributes that are still abnormal in growth period (either never falling out, or only growing short).
As we see no next-generation (the movie ends at that point), this isn't really something that can be approached. But the hair is still interesting.
From a story standpoint, having even the cut hair be strange is likely the most interesting angle. If I were plotting a rational story, I'd make shed hair occur, and have it become normal hair when it is lost. Have hair follicles from cut hair remember the length it was cut to when the enchantment was broken, and have it only grow for long enough to reach that length again. This is most interesting if the change is at the genetic level, changing how hair follicles work in a complex way, rather than just a "magic did it" cop-out. After all, functionally new cells of the hair follicles were grown from a magically altered genetic template, which could be passed on.
The origin would be hair follicles magically changed in utero. I'd make her nails not grow either, as they were all cut at some point and now have the same properties as the cut hair. And, given the twist at the end, the other genetic change was something in the protein-based prolactin or adrenocorticotropic hormone being enchanted. Those are hormones present in tears, but much more so in tears produced from emotional distress, as opposed to normal output. Strange but true.
I'd go with the first.
Prolactin is secreted from the pituitary gland in response to eating, mating, estrogen treatment, ovulation, and nursing.
That one is also present in breast milk, btw.
Or it changes the second, possibly in addition to the magic effects making ACTH production have more or less umph, which might mean she has either Addison's disease or Cushing's Disease. Ouch. Interestingly enough, Addison's has coma as a symptom. So maybe it is genetic, affects ACTH, and sleeping beauty is her daughter. Sleeping Beauty has long (though not absurdly long) blond hair as well.
It all fits.
cough
u/recursiveAI [+2] (3 days later)
Good analysis. Thanks
u/E-o_o-3 [+1] (a day later)
The hair cut as an infant doesn't necessarily remember the same length. She might have just been cutting that hair for aesthetic reasons since it didn't matter anyway.
However, yeah - there's lots of cases for it not being normal hair beyond the healing. The hair can pull up heavy objects and restrain people so it's apparently super strong. It might have other properties as well, depending on how ridiculously athletic we decide Rapunzel is. She's either really good at throwing it to grab objects because such things are possible in cartoons, or it is vaguely prehensile. It also doesn't seem to weigh her head down at all, and she uses it to carry objects that someone of her size and frame should not be capable of carrying. (Then again, Rapunzel is ridiculously good at everything for someone locked in a tower and there are horses who understand speech and make complex inferences, so this might just be a case of all heroes being hyper-competent...)
So there's a good case for "it's pretty darn strong and so rarely sheds unless cut", but the whole prehensile thing also makes a case for "it has some some mechanism to deal with normal shedding, but cutting hurt it in the same way it would harm you if I cut off your arm but not if I rubbed it with a pumice stone".
u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)
Hm. I wonder if her hair would work for the cable on a beanstalk?
u/Kuratius [+1] (3 days later)
Nah, a space elevator is where it's at. Just have to get her into high orbit and wait a few million years.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (3 days later)
Beanstalk.isa(space elevator)? => #t
There's other kinds of space elevators; a beanstalk is just the classic version.
u/Kuratius [+1] (3 days later)
I admit that I didn't know what a beanstalk was until now. For some reason your post made me think of a space elevator with cables and all that.
But why do we need to call a space elevator a beanstalk? Are there other even remotely economical types with notable differences?
u/eaglejarl [+1] (4 days later)
As I understand it, gravity whips, ring fountains, and a few other things are included under the 'space elevator' rubric. google...although, apparently Wikipedia disagrees with that.
Anyway, we were on the same page -- I was asking if her hair could be used as the cable for a beanstalk / space elevator.
u/E-o_o-3 [+2] (a day later)
Well, for one, you wouldn't feed the flower to a pregnant lady. You'd just use the flower to heal her, and then try your damned hardest to get more flowers / a large vine shooting off the flower.
But...
7 billion people * 4 seconds to sing the "flower gleam and glow" song = 28 billion seconds to sing to the whole population.
Singing non-stop, it will take about 900 years to sing the entire population once, so you can't outrun death. However, if you can heal 100 people simultaneously, you can outrun death if each song completely re-fills the life meter. (It doesn't in canon AFAIK though)
u/jbluphin [+1] (a month later)
I just finished a story which touches on this, at least, or tries to! A Single Drop of Sunlight.
u/libertarian_reddit [+0] (5 hours later)
Oh yeah, that one's been sitting on the back burner for awhile. /s