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self_made_human  amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi  6mo ago (open.substack.com)   1836 thread views

Avatar's Dirty Secret: Nature Is Just Fancy Infrastructure

open.substack.com

What if Avatar isn't actually about environmentalism vs. technology, but about recognizing superintelligent infrastructure when you see it? A deep dive into why Pandora's "natural" ecosystem looks suspiciously like a planetary-scale AI preserve, complete with biological USB-C ports, room-temperature superconductors growing wild, and a species of "noble savages" who are actually post-singularity retirees cosplaying as hunter-gatherers.

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Its a hell of a vehicle to create tense action scenes showcasing cool-looking scifi military materiel vs. equally cool-looking fantasy creatures.

And from a writing perspective, coming up with clever-yet-plausible ways for the technologically inferior faction to win over the industrialized and heavily armed invaders (that isn't just Zerg rush tactics) is a fun exercise.

Its a hell of a vehicle to create tense action scenes showcasing cool-looking scifi military materiel vs. equally cool-looking fantasy creatures.

Now I wonder what a movie adaptation of Leviathan would look like... Hey, wait a minute, there is an anime adaptation! I did not know this; I'll have to check it out.

My favorite entry in this particular genre has to be the Anime Miniseries Blue Sub No. 6, where you have advanced submarines duking it out with mutated whales and weird hybrid creatures.

And the morality occupies a bit more a gray area than Cameron dares portray.

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