Cursed Silicon

@bri7 @pmc I guess? The way the show handled it, showing them (literally) dumped into the abyss and then *forgotten about* like garbage felt very...at odds with "these are people who formed deep, emotional bonds and now only carry memories of them"

Again, even Jax, after their own inability to form emotional bonds with anyone until they transformed is just sort of "allowed to stay, for now" according to what the characters say.

It's not that the characters aren't given satisfying resolutions so much as they're treated as literal monster allegories that need to be buried under the floorboards (despite Pomni finding out that no actually they're still very much 'alive' inside, still)

@bri7 @pmc I'm not cis, or trans. But a secret worse third thing as they say (some terrible flavour of non-binary and or raccoon)

Admittedly I didn't go into it with any expectations (or prior knowledge). It's just what I "picked up" from watching it.

I think the reason I found the writing so lacking was largely *because* it played with so many characters and ideas about them. Then just (literally) buried those characters in the void (except for Jax who I guess gets to sleep over until he becomes "a problem" given what Caine said???)

"Yeah we gave an NPC sentience, twice. But fuck that, (literally) delete them from the story"

"All those other people who were here? Yeah they're monsters now and forever. Don't think about it. Just be happy for who's left!"

@pmc @bri7 I think my biggest criticism (and I feel very unfair with it) is that it's the most brilliantly animated...

....poorly written show I've seen.

I call it a sci-fi show both because that's its initial "premise" and the show plays with sci-fi tropes *a lot* in its early episodes (thank god we all forgot about Gummigoo right Pomni?)

Looking at it through the lens of *the characters* though...

When Jax said the characters were "archetypes" I think that spoke volumes, and not in the way the show *intended*

Each of the characters feels very...one-dimensional. They're tent-poles of C-PTSD coping mechanisms (because that's what they were all going through)

Jax is the asshole because pushing people away is his "coping mechanism"

Pomni is the "normal person" trying to come to terms with everything

Ragatha is positive to a toxic degree

Gangle is broken and sad (literally)

Kinger is "forgetful" and comes off as just completely off his rocker because he's had the most trauma of the cast over time and has had to bury it

Zooble I'm probably stretching (and talking way outside my own lane as someone who isn't trans) but feels...very trans coded? At least that's how I read her struggling to "feel right" with her own "parts"

Caine despite being an AI goes through a bizarrely short (and IMO extremely ham-fisted) "redemption arc" where the characters just kind of shrug and say they'll tolerate him and learn to like him again within...days? despite how long they've ostensibly been tormented by him for.

*Deep breath*

I refuse to touch "the fandom" around this show (for my own sake) but I suspect that if folks are critiquing the whole "abstracted" premise, at least. It's kind of warranted.

The show ends very much on a "everyone is happy now and everything is good forever (Don't ask about Jax/Ribbit/Kaufmo though!)

@argv_minus_one @fivetonsflax @futurebird That one I'm surprisingly less familiar with why it's asymmetric, despite growing up with it in Australia

I'd defer to telco nerds on that ;-;

@argv_minus_one @fivetonsflax @futurebird *Puts hand up*

Hi, I have worked in the ISP space before.

Cable's asymmetry wasn't an intentional choice. But a design vestige of its history. Originally these systems were designed as a one-to-many (and one way) network. Radio waves were blasted down the wire and into the back of TV sets

The lacking upload speed is because the networks were never *designed* with the idea of broadcasts coming back up the pipe. DOCSIS was grafted on to cable TV networks as an afterthought and required major cleanup of the design of the networks to accommodate them

At this rate I should've just rebooted to the LiveCD and used that kernel to do the recompile

Christ alive

It's still building by the way. I didn't run make clean, I guess enabling SMP just touches everything

Also rebuilding a kernel with a single thread sure is a good time I *highly* recommend

Sitting around for like 30 minutes and wondering why the fuck Samba is taking so long to compile

Then realizing somehow I left out SMP support in my guest VM kernel. Oops

Important