Red Vs Blue Good Again!

[NonCon]

So, after what I considered to be a disappointing ending to the first series and a disappointing season following it, RVB is starting to gain my favor again.

I think the main reason is the reversal of roles this season, particularly between Simmons and Griff, and Caboose actually being useful. It manages to do this without changing the characters themselves, which is nice. I also like that this season has focused primarily on those role reversals, and far less on Burnie 'I-AM-THE-MAIN-CHARACTER' Burns being an AI the military drove insane so they could use its split personalities for the Freelancer Project. Cuz, I mean, I just could not take that twist even remotely seriously, and I don't mean that in a good way.

But yeah, I'm enjoying it! Anyone else?

[Hawk]

... I thought it was always good.

[NonCon]

I think Burnie is an excellent character writer, but that his plot writing needs a lot of work. Plus his seeming insistence on Church always being the 'main character' bothers me, as Church is less than my favorite.

[Kerensky287]

I thought it ended a while ago. I enjoyed it until that "ending".

Then they started making more serious side-stories and I got bored of them. It was good when it was funny. Is it funny again?

[NonCon]

It is funny again, but will probably go serious as we get closer towards the season finale. BUT! For the time being it is funny.

[SubZero]

I actually enjoyed the last season the most because it was actually a single coherent storyline from beginning to end, both well-thought out and paced with the humor effortlessly tied in. This was a huge comfort from the rambling incoherent messes of previous seasons, where the storyline was made up as it progressed.

I find it amusing that you can't buy that particular plot twist, yet have no problem accepting the massive retcon of them not actually being in the future from season five onwards.

Besides, it has always been more about the Blues as a whole being protagonists than just Church. He was cut out of most of season three except for his time traveling episodes, cut out of the main "quest" storyline of season four, and Tucker was clearly the primary protagonist of season five.

[NonCon]

I find it amusing that you can't buy that particular plot twist, yet have no problem accepting the massive retcon of them not actually being in the future from season five onwards.

You mean how they were in the future because Sarge said they were in the future, and everyone just rolled with it? I mean yeah, Vic said, like, one line that confirmed it but the whole future thing was never really relevant to the plot.

The thing about the earlier seasons, was that the plot was an excuse to be funny*. Then, Burnie thought he was good at writing plot, wrote a stupid plot twist, and tried to make a serious and dramatic season.


*Disclaimer: I do feel it kinda feel apart at the end of the fifth season, but that's largely because they tried to start making it serious and dramatic with no real preparation.

[SubZero]

You mean how they were in the future because Sarge said they were in the future, and everyone just rolled with it? I mean yeah, Vic said, like, one line that confirmed it but the whole future thing was never really relevant to the plot.

The thing about the earlier seasons, was that the plot was an excuse to be funny. Then, Burnie thought he was good at writing plot, wrote a stupid plot twist, and tried to make a serious and dramatic season.

And how Shelia said they were in the future. And how she had degraded over hundreds of years of decay, as commented by Tex. And how Vic said they were in the future without even knowing that they thought they were in the future. And how the bases in Blood Gulch had been altered over the years they were gone. And how the same blast that sent them to the "future" also sent Church to the past. And the graphical upgrade between Halo and Halo 2 that was used to show they were in the "future", and a graphical downgrade showed Church was in the past, which Tucker himself comments on.

But yeah, the explanation of Church being an AI as opposed to being a ghost was so much more abrupt and hard to accept. :rolleyes:

[NonCon]

But yeah, the explanation of Church being an AI as opposed to being a ghost was so much more abrupt and hard to accept. :rolleyes:

Yes, yes it was. It didn't make a big deal of the retcon, and the stuff they were retconning was part of that whole comedy over continuity thing. They spent an entire season devoted to Church being an AI, a twist I felt was uninteresting, stupid, and poorly executed.

I'll admit I was wrong and the time travel thing was a bigger retcon than I thought. Retconning it didn't really hurt the new season though, and making Church an insane, fragmented AI did.

[SubZero]

I disagree. Clearly we have reached an impasse.

[NonCon]

I'm afraid so. I can't compete with you physically, and you're no match for my brains. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EkBuKQEkio&fmt=18)

[SubZero]

*Sigh* Inconceivable...

[Hawk]

I agree with Suby here. I loved that plot twist. It actually made sense, and I didn't see it coming, even though it should have been more obvious to someone who's watched the entire series 2-3 times.

In my book, that's a good twist.

[NonCon]

I didn't see it coming

That's because he made it up that season. It wasn't particularly foreshadowed or planned ahead, he just found ways to try and make it work using previous events.

[SubZero]

Despite your continual protestations, you haven't given a single valid reason for why you think it didn't work. Are the only plot twists you enjoy the ones that you see coming?

[NonCon]

Because "We drove the AI crazy so we could harvest its split personalities" is stupid. Reasons?

1. Well... Retconny, which you bitched about the retcon of the time travel, except this isn't ditching continuity for comedy, it's doing it for drama.

2. The whole fragmenty AI whatever thing doesn't really make any sort of sense if you look at it even remotely closely. You can basically look at it one of two ways- Way One: It's just like a human developing split personalities. Split personalities don't work like that. An AI isn't going to develop split personalities in response to 'stressful scenarios', and those split personalities would fragment into archetypes. The other way to look at it is that it is nothing like split personalities and it fragmented into emotional archetypes because Burns says that's what happened so it did.

Plus it just sounds silly. :P

[Hawk]

1) How exactly is it retconny? At no point in the entire series did they ever explain where the AIs came from until that point, so by now explaining where the AIs come from it doesn't retcon shit. In fact I'd say that by explaining where they came from it actually explained a whole lot more, such as why Omega was evil (being based around anger and hate), why Delta was essentialy good (being pure logic) and why Gamma was such a trouble maker (being deception). By saying they came from a single mind and were all different aspects of another personality it actually made more sense.

2) The AIs were a single human mind, copied into a computer and then subjected to a wide variety of unique and unimaginable tortures. Who's to say what would happen? Humans who've experienced extreme torture have, as you said yourself, suffered a wide variety of mental issues afterwards, either by shutting down and segregating parts of their mind (such as memory of the event (Epsilon)) or by developing split personalities. The difference here is, most humans who've suffered like that have still been confined to their biological brains, not been downloaded into a computer as software which could be further manipulated, copied, transfered, packaged and shipped off as an operating system in some hi tech fictional future world.

So yeah, actually, it does work.

[NonCon]

1. It's retconning the ghost thing. Tex was also a ghost, even though they'll probably say she was actually an AI being possessed by another AI. You also had Sarge and Church encountering each other in the afterlife.

2. PEOPLE DON'T SEGREGATE PARTS OF THEIR MIND. EVEN IF THEY DEVELOP SPLIT PERSONALITIES, THOSE WORK IN NO WAY LIKE THAT AND YOU GENERALLY HAVE TO BE A CHILD WHEN EXPERIENCING THE TRAUMA FOR SOMETHING LIKE THAT TO HAPPEN. Furthermore, an AI is just data, a series of zeros and ones, so they should have been able to take the parts of it without stupid bullshit thing, or even better just copy paste it.

[SubZero]

You're cute when you try to apply real world logic to something that doesn't exist. ;)

But regardless, a sentient AI is essentially a human mind in digital form, not merely an intelligent program. Programs only follows a series of preordained commands, thus every action of said program is decided ahead of time. The AI of RvB and the Halo universe clearly have free will and contain someones actual mind. Such a entity with actual free will could not be reproduced in code form, since all code is based off of complex algorithms that cannot possible recreate the free will of a human being, and thus could not be copied.

We have never been able to "copy and paste" a human brain. Why would the fictional AI that come directly from Dr. Leonard Church's brain be any different?

[NonCon]

Then how did they copy/paste his brain to make the AI?

It is a program. The nature of the program does not change that fact. To be able to function as an AI it would have to be comprised of code. Otherwise it could not interface with machines and all that jazz.

Furthermore, I'm applying basic logic to something that the how expected me to take seriously, and I could not take it seriously as it falls apart into little bits of retard when you try to apply any pressure to it.

[SubZero]

See, that's thing though; I enjoyed the plot twist, so I'm not trying to apply any pressure to it. I treat it as fiction, based off fictitious concepts, yet concepts with clearly established rules. Under said established fictitious rules, the plot makes perfect sense.

You didn't enjoy the plot twist and you don't like the character of Church, so you continually apply pressure to it. You treat the fictitious concepts of the plot twist like real world facts and disregard the fictional established rules just so you can apply real world logic to them.

So of course it falls apart when you apply real world logic to them; they're entirely fictional concepts. You might as well spend hours arguing why bubble shields and beam sabers can't possibly exist either.

[NonCon]

I don't have anything against the character of Church, I just feel his is more important more frequently than I'd like him to be, and that his voice actor is the writer for the show is probably the cause of that, and that bothers me.

So you're arguing that it's okay that it makes no sense and functions entirely according to Burn's made up imaginary rules that he makes up on the spot because it is fiction and you liked it and thus it doesn't have to make sense. Riiiiiigh'.

[Flarecobra]

Then how did they copy/paste his brain to make the AI?

It is a program. The nature of the program does not change that fact. To be able to function as an AI it would have to be comprised of code. Otherwise it could not interface with machines and all that jazz.

Furthermore, I'm applying basic logic to something that the how expected me to take seriously, and I could not take it seriously as it falls apart into little bits of retard when you try to apply any pressure to it.

Taken from Halopedia's AI article. (http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/AI)

The process of creating an AI is different to what most people realize. Instead of simply "programming" an AI, the AI matrix is actually created by sending electric bursts through the neural pathways of a human brain which are then replicated in a superconducting nano-assemblage. This destroys the original brain tissue however, and so the brain being used could only be obtained after the host had died. However, in some instances, as in the case of the A.I. Cortana, the candidate brain was flash-cloned and had its memories transferred to the receptacle organs so that the host, in this case Dr. Catherine Halsey, could remain alive. However, this is extremely inefficient. In the case of Cortana out of twenty of Dr Halsey's cloned brains, only one took.

From what this tells us, AIs in the Haloverse are about as complex as our brains are, because they were developed from human brains. And as to the "ghost" scene? For all we know, it could be something in the imagination of one of the characters.

[NonCon]

So it just violates the laws of psychology and logic, rather than the laws of the Haloverse. Duely noted.