The Great Overmind Roulette

[FanaticTemplar]

Thanks for the reply FT.

I'm not too hung up on one particular part or another since you can explain away every individual part, but all of them happen so precisely together and coincidentally that for me it makes it hard to believe it was possible. You mentioned something about "essential coincidences" and I understand that things do need to happen a certain way, otherwise there's no story (or point) at all. Are you saying that all these small coincidences (and by that I mean everything that has happened is seemingly meeting the real OMs ancient goal of freeing the Zerg) are just a part of one large "essential coincidence"? Even if you don't suffer from 'coincidence fatigue', that's a tough pill to swallow.

No, I just meant about the Swarm stumbling upon the Terran species. It's part of the premise of the story, calling that 'luck' is a bit pointless, if it hadn't happened the story wouldn't exist.

I don't know, it's a question of opinion, and if you feel it is incredible, then all I can say is that I don't feel that way, it's not like it can objectively be demonstrated to be correct or incorrect. Like I said the only reason I interjected was because I objected to the use of 'Xanatos Gambit' as casting undue aspersion on the Overmind.

Hmm. I think you could make the case that Arcturus Mengsk's rise to power also relied on a lot of 'chances' that were beyond his control, for example.

[Turalyon]

Like I said the only reason I interjected was because I objected to the use of 'Xanatos Gambit' as casting undue aspersion on the Overmind.

Hmm. I think you could make the case that Arcturus Mengsk's rise to power also relied on a lot of 'chances' that were beyond his control, for example.

I am glad in a sense that what the Overmind has been doing can be not be construed as a Xanatos Gambit. I never wanted to think of the Overmind's 'ultimate plan' as one in the first place, but when I read that on the trope website I reacted in a similar way as Zeratul did when Tassadar showed him the Overmind's vision and thought "Great (sarcastically)! Another thing to potentially hate about SC2's story direction..."

Please share your thoughts about Mengsk's rise to power being potentially due to chance. Do you mean about the Psi Emitters and about Duke being suddenly "available" for Mengsk to find and use to finally get rid of the Confederacy? I wouldn't mind ragging on something else for a change - Sc1 is a good enough place to start, I suppose.

[FanaticTemplar]

I am glad in a sense that what the Overmind has been doing can be not be construed as a Xanatos Gambit. I never wanted to think of the Overmind's 'ultimate plan' as one in the first place, but when I read that on the trope website I reacted in a similar way as Zeratul did when Tassadar showed him the Overmind's vision and thought "Great (sarcastically)! Another thing to potentially hate about SC2's story direction..."

Please share your thoughts about Mengsk's rise to power being potentially due to chance. Do you mean about the Psi Emitters and about Duke being suddenly "available" for Mengsk to find and use to finally get rid of the Confederacy? I wouldn't mind ragging on something else for a change - Sc1 is a good enough place to start, I suppose.

Well, even dismissing the chance of birth - being born into an important family with the means to give him good education and fam8iliarity with power, he never would have started his rebellion had his father not protested against the Confederacy, had the Confederacy not assassinated him. Then to move into the more truly lucky parts - he was spared the assassination that befell his entire family because he was estranged from them and away from the planet, and he was also away when the entire planet was nuked. He was lucky that the Zerg and Protoss conflict taxed the Confederacy's resources (which includes his opportunity with Duke - a general who defended Tarsonis in over thirty major battles, enabling the attack on the Confederate homeworld - which came about because he happened to be the Confederate in charge of the revolt on Antiga, who happened to be shot down by the Zerg yet also happened to survive), because he happened to recruit the Magistrate and Raynor on Mar Sara which enabled the raid on the Jacobs Installation which happened to contain the schematics for the Psi Emitter, which happened to give Mengsk a weapon of mass destruction unlike any other.

'Course, when you take them individually it's all ok, but when you separate them and put them by themselves, they sound a lot worse .

[Turalyon]

Well, even dismissing the chance of birth - being born into an important family with the means to give him good education and fam8iliarity with power, he never would have started his rebellion had his father not protested against the Confederacy, had the Confederacy not assassinated him. Then to move into the more truly lucky parts - he was spared the assassination that befell his entire family because he was estranged from them and away from the planet, and he was also away when the entire planet was nuked. He was lucky that the Zerg and Protoss conflict taxed the Confederacy's resources (which includes his opportunity with Duke - a general who defended Tarsonis in over thirty major battles, enabling the attack on the Confederate homeworld - which came about because he happened to be the Confederate in charge of the revolt on Antiga, who happened to be shot down by the Zerg yet also happened to survive), because he happened to recruit the Magistrate and Raynor on Mar Sara which enabled the raid on the Jacobs Installation which happened to contain the schematics for the Psi Emitter, which happened to give Mengsk a weapon of mass destruction unlike any other.

'Course, when you take them individually it's all ok, but when you separate them and put them by themselves, they sound a lot worse .

I guess we can take the fact that Arcturus was able to survive all this time because he was rubber stamped as an "important character" and his great fortune at eventually ridding the Confederacy through those chain of events were all because they were 'essential coincidences'. Do you agree with that?

I think also think that individually, the 'coincidences' (if that's what they really are) of the Overmind's actions are defensible too but when taken into a whole especially in regard to it's ultimate goal ("or separate and put them by themselves" as you've said), they sound... strange. I know they're two different things and you can't really compare them, but how do you think the nature of the uncanny sequence of events of Mengsk's rates/compares to the nature of the sequence of events of the Overmind's plan?

[FanaticTemplar]

Stories must by default verge on the incredible, because the credible is so often tinged with the mundane. There is little interest in reading about or watching mundane events, it is the incredible that attracts our fancy. The threat, of course, is from crossing the line between what seems incredible and what is incredible. That point where you simply cannot accept that what is happening could do so in any logical universe. Where that is exactly is up to the individual to decide.

So I'm perfectly fine with Mengsk's story. Sure, it's filled with chance, but really, everyone who achieves greatness has a good deal of fortunate circumstance behind them. It's why the Platos and Caesars and Einsteins are far outweighed by the people whose names we don't know.

I regard both Mengsk's and the Overmind's fortunate plans in the same way. Less than one in a billion chance of ever happening, but I'll never hear about the stories of the rest of that billion, and it isn't something I consider impossible, or beyond credibility.

[Turalyon]

Stories must by default verge on the incredible, because the credible is so often tinged with the mundane. There is little interest in reading about or watching mundane events, it is the incredible that attracts our fancy.

The threat, of course, is from crossing the line between what seems incredible and what is incredible. That point where you simply cannot accept that what is happening could do so in any logical universe. Where that is exactly is up to the individual to decide.

True. I should expect that since the whole SC universe itself is somewhat 'incredible' (in the strictest sense) to begin with I should expect anything, everything and nothing that may happen in that universe. On the other hand, it might've been easier to swallow had it been written a bit more clearly/better. I guess I must have a low threshold on my BS detector or something.

Less than one in a billion chance of ever happening, but I'll never hear about the stories of the rest of that billion, and it isn't something I consider impossible, or beyond credibility.

If this ain't baiting for the following question I don't know what is.

Hypothetically speaking, what would you consider to be just "beyond credibility" in the SC universe based on what we know about it already? (aside from obviously ridiculous off-the-wall things like revealing Raynor is actually a sapient, compressed Class B planet in human form - then again, who really knows? It was never really said he wasn't at the start. )

[FanaticTemplar]

Hypothetically speaking, what would you consider to be just "beyond credibility" in the SC universe based on what we know about it already? (aside from obviously ridiculous off-the-wall things like revealing Raynor is actually a sapient, compressed Class B planet in human form - then again, who really knows? It was never really said he wasn't at the start. )

I assume you're speaking strictly of coincidences - I generally have a problem with contradictory or irrational things, like how the UPL/UED was supposedly monitoring the Koprulu Sector, or how they learned of the Second Overmind (or even the first) but knew nothing about Kerrigan or Raynor.

As far as coincidences, I think I accept them more readily when they're sequences, like the Overmind/Mengsk examples we've discussed. In those cases, an unusual coincidence occurred which allowed the situation to progress to the next state, and then an opportunity arose there, and so forth, such that they're more a sequence of events to my mind. What I don't tolerate are when I have difficulty finding some credible logical connection behind the evnts.

Take the Xel'Naga Artefact, for example. It's largely an unoriginal reuse of the Shakuras Temple, which I hated already at the time. Now, the Shakuras Temple, while narratively appears conveniently as the Zerg are arriving on Shakuras, in the context of the setting, the Dark Templar settled Shakuras centuries ago because of it. So the events are linked - Shakuras is the Dark Templar homeworld because the Temple is there, the Zerg come to Shakuras because they were following the Aiur Protoss, who came because it was the Dark Templar homeworld. So while it may all be narratively convenient, it proceeds logically.

The Xel'Naga Artefact however can not be explained by anything other than narrative convenience. Sure, finding one piece of the Artefact during the storyline could have been an acceptable coincidence, but five? It's already incredibly unlikely that you should happen upon one of those Artefact fragments, but again, interesting stories are built around unlikely events. However, that same event has to reoccur four other times, for no connected reason. You know, they could have given some technobabble excuse for this, that the fragments resonate with each other or something, giving a way to find the others, but they didn't. Somehow Moebius managed to find all these artefact fragments scattered across the Koprulu Sector in a matter of weeks.

Same goes for the Tal'darim, incidentally. As far as I know, that group was created by Ulrezaj in the four years between the Great Wars, when did they come across those fragments and decide to start worshipping them? Again, we could have had some excuse in that the Tal'darim found the complete Artefact and chose to scatter it themselves, then all the Terrans would need to do was track the Tal'darim to find the various fragments. But that can't be the reason, since one of the vfragments was buried in Mar Sara. That planet's been a Terran colony since before the Tal'darim existed, they never would have hidden a fragment there, and there was no sign of Tal'darim there guarding the fragment either.

Possibly the most ludicrous is the one on the Xel'Naga Worldship. The Terrans found the Worldship by searching for the Artefact fragment. That's like discovering Australia because you were looking for a marble you'd lost somewhere on Earth. How do they even go about something like scanning deep space? Space is ridiculously vast. Being able to find it makes us wonder how they could have spent so many years unaware of the Protoss. If they can find a Worldship in deep space in an uninhabited quadrant of the Koprulu Sector (or is Sigma Quadrant even part of the Koprulu Sector) it's kind of difficult to imagine them never finding Aiur or any other Protoss world throughout the many years the Terrans have lived in the Sector, secret though its location may be.

Another example would be the Psi Disrupter. But that part is largely contradiction. We are told that Arcturus Mengsk searched for the Psi Disrupter but was never able to find it, but the UED spot it by just flying by. How does something like that happen? Not even going into how there's no reasonable basis for its functioning at all. Then there's the fact that even though it is clearly available modern Terran technology, nobody ever rebuilds one.

[DarthYam]

If Narud is a xel'naga of some sort (opposed to Duran) he may have chosen this point in time to activate it. He may have had pre knoweldege. Still, it is only guess work, but heart of the swarm may yet shed some light on the subject

[Turalyon]

I assume you're speaking strictly of coincidences - I generally have a problem with contradictory or irrational things, like how the UPL/UED was supposedly monitoring the Koprulu Sector, or how they learned of the Second Overmind (or even the first) but knew nothing about Kerrigan or Raynor.

As far as coincidences, I think I accept them more readily when they're sequences, like the Overmind/Mengsk examples we've discussed. In those cases, an unusual coincidence occurred which allowed the situation to progress to the next state, and then an opportunity arose there, and so forth, such that they're more a sequence of events to my mind. What I don't tolerate are when I have difficulty finding some credible logical connection behind the evnts.

Take the Xel'Naga Artefact, for example. It's largely an unoriginal reuse of the Shakuras Temple, which I hated already at the time. Now, the Shakuras Temple, while narratively appears conveniently as the Zerg are arriving on Shakuras, in the context of the setting, the Dark Templar settled Shakuras centuries ago because of it. So the events are linked - Shakuras is the Dark Templar homeworld because the Temple is there, the Zerg come to Shakuras because they were following the Aiur Protoss, who came because it was the Dark Templar homeworld. So while it may all be narratively convenient, it proceeds logically.

The Xel'Naga Artefact however can not be explained by anything other than narrative convenience. Sure, finding one piece of the Artefact during the storyline could have been an acceptable coincidence, but five? It's already incredibly unlikely that you should happen upon one of those Artefact fragments, but again, interesting stories are built around unlikely events. However, that same event has to reoccur four other times, for no connected reason. You know, they could have given some technobabble excuse for this, that the fragments resonate with each other or something, giving a way to find the others, but they didn't. Somehow Moebius managed to find all these artefact fragments scattered across the Koprulu Sector in a matter of weeks.

Same goes for the Tal'darim, incidentally. As far as I know, that group was created by Ulrezaj in the four years between the Great Wars, when did they come across those fragments and decide to start worshipping them? Again, we could have had some excuse in that the Tal'darim found the complete Artefact and chose to scatter it themselves, then all the Terrans would need to do was track the Tal'darim to find the various fragments. But that can't be the reason, since one of the vfragments was buried in Mar Sara. That planet's been a Terran colony since before the Tal'darim existed, they never would have hidden a fragment there, and there was no sign of Tal'darim there guarding the fragment either.

Possibly the most ludicrous is the one on the Xel'Naga Worldship. The Terrans found the Worldship by searching for the Artefact fragment. That's like discovering Australia because you were looking for a marble you'd lost somewhere on Earth. How do they even go about something like scanning deep space? Space is ridiculously vast. Being able to find it makes us wonder how they could have spent so many years unaware of the Protoss. If they can find a Worldship in deep space in an uninhabited quadrant of the Koprulu Sector (or is Sigma Quadrant even part of the Koprulu Sector) it's kind of difficult to imagine them never finding Aiur or any other Protoss world throughout the many years the Terrans have lived in the Sector, secret though its location may be.

Another example would be the Psi Disrupter. But that part is largely contradiction. We are told that Arcturus Mengsk searched for the Psi Disrupter but was never able to find it, but the UED spot it by just flying by. How does something like that happen? Not even going into how there's no reasonable basis for its functioning at all. Then there's the fact that even though it is clearly available modern Terran technology, nobody ever rebuilds one.

I think I know where you're coming from. As long as there is, at least, an 'in-universe' hint or acknowledgment of why something may potentially be there (especially if it just happens to appear as if out of thin air) then everything's fine, right? As for the Psi Disruptor (as much as I dislike it too), I'm pretty sure a logical explanation and reasoning for its existence can be created. If that was so, would you accept it then or still cast it off as narrative convenience?

On that point though (about properly explaining things that come out of the blue), I was wondering then about the additions and revisions to the SC lore's history. Namely, this 'cycle' business about the Xel'Naga since it was supposed to explain why the Xel'Naga did their experimentation. The reason why, I thought was clear enough when I read the Sc1 manual - they were scientists. What better explanation is there beyond that? There was no other reason to ask why further - yet they did and they came up with the 'cycle' stuff. Now we have all these things and questions that contradict established events ie: If the Xel'Naga are supposedly gods with the perfect union of form and essence, shouldn't the Zerg be more than perfect already since they assimilated them already? I find that this sort of thing also makes SC beyond 'credible' because instead of informing/fleshing out the history, it undermines through incoherency.

[FanaticTemplar]

I think I know where you're coming from. As long as there is, at least, an 'in-universe' hint or acknowledgment of why something may potentially be there (especially if it just happens to appear as if out of thin air) then everything's fine, right? As for the Psi Disruptor (as much as I dislike it too), I'm pretty sure a logical explanation and reasoning for its existence can be created. If that was so, would you accept it then or still cast it off as narrative convenience?

Yes, the reason for its fabrication is probably the most minor of the annoyances there. Interestingly enough, a good while back when I had this whim to try to rewrite Brood War, and since I was trying to keep as much of the original as I could when I thought it appropriate, I did come out with an alternate Psi Disrupter. This one was going to be built by the Dominion directly, using their archived blueprints of Kerrigan's neural patterns to mimic her control over her Broods. In this way it served a bit as the UED-controlled Overmind too, providing the Terrans with some dominated Zerg. Still human Kerrigan wasn't able to control the Zerg, so her neural patterns shouldn't be able to do so either, and even then how do you translate the patterns into orders for the Zerg? Both of these I would handwave away using Protoss magic technology provided by Ulrezaj, which would also explain why a new Disrupter was not built - without the Protoss cooperation, the Dominion couldn't do it alone.

On that point though (about properly explaining things that come out of the blue), I was wondering then about the additions and revisions to the SC lore's history. Namely, this 'cycle' business about the Xel'Naga since it was supposed to explain why the Xel'Naga did their experimentation. The reason why, I thought was clear enough when I read the Sc1 manual - they were scientists. What better explanation is there beyond that? There was no other reason to ask why further - yet they did and they came up with the 'cycle' stuff. Now we have all these things and questions that contradict established events ie: If the Xel'Naga are supposedly gods with the perfect union of form and essence, shouldn't the Zerg be more than perfect already since they assimilated them already? I find that this sort of thing also makes SC beyond 'credible' because instead of informing/fleshing out the history, it undermines through incoherency.

Well, since it's now said that the Protoss could not be assimilated by the Zerg, I imagine we must assume that the Xel'Naga, who were formed in part by a species similar to the Protoss, also shared that resistance.

But yeah, retcons frequently create incoherencies.