Random Thoughts Thread

[ragnarok]

That makes sense. Overlords were designed to help out the cerebrates, just as the cerebrates were designed to help out the Overmind.

I guess the hierarchy of "control" for the Zerg is first and foremost the Overmind keeping all the Zerg unified. Without the Overmind, the Broods led by their respective individual Cerebrates are more susceptible to attacking each other or perhaps decide to work together in some lesser capacity (inter-Brood conflict). Without the cerebrates, the Overlords within each brood would have smaller zones of control but be more susceptible to attacking each other or perhaps deciding to work together in an even lesser capacity (intra-Brood conflict). Without the Overlords, individual Zerg would be more susceptible to attacking each or perhaps deciding to work together at some capacity (essentially a free-for-all).

Interesting. Do you think the Cerebrates would have been constantly jockeying for power positions if the Overmind allowed them to do whatever they wanted?

[Nolanstar]

So, any thoughts on the upcoming comic series?

[Turalyon]

Interesting. Do you think the Cerebrates would have been constantly jockeying for power positions if the Overmind allowed them to do whatever they wanted?

Why would the Overmind ever allow them to do "whatever they want"? Under the Overmind, all the Zerg are unified in purpose with each cerebrate (and every zerg minion for that matter) fulfilling their respective roles and working together efficiently. Letting them do whatever they want, like letting them fight amongst themselves, would be counter-productive and pointless. With the Overmind present, the Zerg have no need to fight each other and gain nothing from fighting each other since all of them are under the Overmind's control anyway.

[Mislagnissa]

^- it’s not that hard. Overlords retain control and might not be aggressive towards other Zerg, but they obviously don’t always “team up”, since feral Zerg fight each other. Also, you haven’t demonstrated any retcons. Or at least, I’m not going to buy your retcon inducing fan theories when the game makes sense without them.

Gradius! I am shocked by how blase you are taking this, considering that you are the architect of the Origins custom campaign that ignores the SC2 retcons except where it can force new concepts to fit into the old canon (e.g. Abathur).

It is not "fan theories" when stated directly by the canon. I can provide citations if you don't believe me. The writers cannot keep their stories straight and have introduced inconsistencies for as long as the series has existed. Even the SC1 manual has minor inconsistencies due to undergoing multiple drafts and less than perfect proofreading (e.g. is the Overmind bodiless or not? are Zerg controlled by the Overmind or cerebrates? were gargantis proximae present on Zerus or assimilated after leaving? why are queens stated to relay orders like overlords when this is not their in-game function? are khydarin only found on Aiur or anywhere where xel'naga tread? if the protoss are carnivorous hunters and keep their mouths somewhere else, why do they have huge featureless jawbones/chins that serve no purpose? etc).

The way feral Zerg behave in canon is contradictory. Depending on which source you read: they become frenzied berserkers that cannot tell friend from foe, behave like predators that hunt and eat other animals, go literally insane, revert to the instincts of their core genus, or behave as if nothing is wrong. Taken collectively their behavior seems more random than anything else, behaving more like a form of unpredictable mental illness (or lobotomy) than a simple lack of orders from a higher intelligence. In fact I still cannot determine whether it is due to genetic lobotomy by Overmind, a mental break from the void magic assault, or a combination thereof.

The closest creatures to the original Zerg insectoids are the Zerg Larvae. Although their size and toughness were greatly boosted by the Xel’Naga during their experiments, they still possess the two traits that originally intrigued the ancient masters: genetic versatility and psychic sensitivity.

All Zerg are telepathic: capable of perceiving, sending and receiving psychic waves analogous to radio waves. The fact that Zasz literally picked up radio waves would suggest that psychic waves are radio waves, so we can apply the logic of radio waves to psychic waves to get a better handle on how telepathy behaves. Before you state that "it is space magic and space magic does not need to make sense," I would like to remind you that said rebuttal is nothing more than an excuse for bad writing and every single writing course says so. Whenever you introduce magic or super science, it must follow rigidly defined rules that are known to the writer but not necessarily to the audience. The hallmark of a well written magic/science system is that the audience can take what little the narrative explains about the rules to make predictions about where the plot is going.

Therefore, Zerg telepathy needs to have rigidly defined, self-consistent rules that cannot ever be broken. Of course Starcraft was written by hacks who constantly make stuff up depending on the needs of the writer that are impossible to predict just like the plot of The Last Jedi, but that is bad writing and we should ignore it because otherwise we cannot hold a logical argument because logic by definition cannot be self-contradictory.

Attempting to waylay the potential hazards of differing egos, the Xel’Naga structured the collective sentience of the Zerg into a unified, amalgamated ‘Overmind’.

The Overmind
Bodiless Entity, age Unknown
Master of the Zerg Swarms
Created several millennia ago by the enigmatic Xel’Naga, the Overmind represents the collective consciousness of the Zerg race

The Overmind is composed of the collective Zerg minds, which is where its name derives. The Overmind is the "hive mind" mentioned elsewhere. The cerebrates are part of it because it is composed of them. For all intents and purposes, the Zerg Swarm is its body.

Yes, I know the Tiamat brood bio states that it protects the Overmind. Well, no, it states that the brood is rumored to contain the Overmind even though this contradicts the statement that the Overmind is a bodily entity composed of the collective minds of the Swarm. The manual cannot decide if it wants to be an omniscient narrator or an in-universe document written by Terran scientists, and it clearly underwent a few rewrites that left remnants not caught by proofreading. In the game itself the Overmind states that he needs the magic crystals to become "manifest" (i.e. physically incarnated) which would indicate that he lacks a dedicated body at the time he says this; even so this makes no sense since the Swarm is already his body... but screw logic because the writers needed a deus ex machina to justify defeating the Zerg because they were too incompetent or pressed for time to think of anything better.

The Zerg Overmind maintains a constant psionic link with its servants, but in order to issue commands on an individual level, it must use Overlords to relay its orders to the other Zerg breeds.

Since the Overmind is a gestalt consciousness, the psychic link must be decentralized and shared between all Zerg. The psychic link (i.e. exchanging brain function to produce the Overmind) and relaying orders constitute two distinct forms of communication. This statement is also copied verbatim in the SC2 manual, except with Kerrigan replacing the Overmind.

The Zerg chain of command lengthened as new races were incorporated into the swarm. Cerebrates began to use secondary agents to communicate their orders as well. For the defense and productivity of the immediate Hive, the Cerebrates turned to Queens to further extend their control over the swarms. The Queens oversaw Drone activity throughout the resource lines of the Hives and kept a vigilant watch over the budding spore colonies of the collective.

The Queen has no natural armament of her own and since her lightly armored body leaves her vulnerable to attack, she usually stays near the central hive to watch over maturing Zerg.

Queens oversee the spawning of new Zerg, the logistics of resource harvesting, and the defensive structures of hive clusters. Queens and overlords answer to their cerebrates, not to one another. Therefore exchanging command of minions must be mediated by a higher intelligence, such as between broods (e.g. a spawning brood providing warriors to a military brood, or Daggoth giving you hunter-killers in Episode 2) or between queens and overlords (e.g. a larva maturing into zerglings and then sent into battle). This would also explain why cerebrates are giant brains, since micromanaging this sort of stuff is certainly a subconscious process.

Therefore, overlords (and queens and infestors) should not be able to team up without cerebrates unless they have developed their own miniature overmind to let them coordinate without a cerebrate. Again, overlords in particular should not be able to take command of new minions without first coordinating with the queens who manage the production and control of maturing Zerg, which they cannot do without a cerebrate or overmind.

Either the Zerg are controlled by a group intelligence that allows them to team up, or they are controlled by higher organisms that they cannot function without. Either feral Zerg die out because they cannot coordinate, or they thrive because they develop a new mini-overmind. You cannot pick one or the other depending on the needs of the current story.

Taking the manual at face value, an overmind is the only way to explain any feral brood that stabilizes. Because of the xel'naga's engineering, which is fundamental to the Zerg's nature, any Zerg in telepathic communication will exchange brain function and their collective minds will unify into an overmind. The new overmind will progress exactly as it did on Zerus and consume everything around it, including any other overminds it encounters.

So, any thoughts on the upcoming comic series?

There is a new comic? I am not excited. As it stands the Starcraft story sucks and has nowhere to go.

[TheEconomist]

There is a new comic? I am not excited. As it stands the Starcraft story sucks and has nowhere to go.

The overarching story is ruined and beyond repair. It must be destroyed and rebooted.

However, there's definitely fertile ground for smaller, more focused stories if the feel can be made right. StarCraft was better before everything was reduced to an overarching plot anyways.

[Gradius]

It is not "fan theories" when stated directly by the canon. I can provide citations if you don't believe me. The writers cannot keep their stories straight and have introduced inconsistencies for as long as the series has existed. Even the SC1 manual has minor inconsistencies due to undergoing multiple drafts and less than perfect proofreading (e.g. is the Overmind bodiless or not? are Zerg controlled by the Overmind or cerebrates? were gargantis proximae present on Zerus or assimilated after leaving? why are queens stated to relay orders like overlords when this is not their in-game function? are khydarin only found on Aiur or anywhere where xel'naga tread? if the protoss are carnivorous hunters and keep their mouths somewhere else, why do they have huge featureless jawbones/chins that serve no purpose? etc).

It's fine if you think something didn't make sense, but the manual can't retcon itself. And basically, you've presented most of your gripes as false dichotomies. Not everything is mutually exclusive. The Overmind for example has a brain, but it's more than just the brain. It's sharing consciousness with every other zerg and isn't relegated to any one vantage point. It's bodiless, which according to Merriam Webster is:

bodiless - having no body or material form; incorporeal; disembodied.
disembodied - separated from or existing without the body

The Overmind is disembodied because it can be separated from its own brain/shell, especially if it dies, at which point it can morph a different one. The way they use the word is not incongruent with how the Overmind is presented, so if you're going to nitpick semantics, then so am I.

are Zerg controlled by the Overmind or cerebrates?

It's not one or the other. It's a top down hierarchy with shared consciousness. Zerg warriors are controlled by Overlords. Cerebrates control Overlords. The Overmind controls all zerg.

were gargantis proximae present on Zerus or assimilated after leaving?

They were on Zerus, but for some reason their genetics didn't allow the Overmind to go into space. The spacefaring behemoths on the other hand did.

why are queens stated to relay orders like overlords when this is not their in-game function?

Watsonian reason: because gameplay has nothing to do with lore and/or I don't know, maybe queens' purpose was changed over several millennia.
Doylist reason: because the manual seems like it was written way before the game and wasn't edited to fit better

are khydarin only found on Aiur or anywhere where xel'naga tread?

I assumed everywhere. Why, does it say somewhere they're only on Aiur?

if the protoss are carnivorous hunters and keep their mouths somewhere else,

They...don't have hidden mouths. That would make no sense, and they can absorb sundrop & plant spores through their skin. So they basically use their skin for everything.

why do they have huge featureless jawbones/chins that serve no purpose? etc).

Watsonian reason: the jawline is a vestigial feature. They evolved from a species which once had a mouth/jawline yet no longer do.
Doylist reason: it fuggin looks cool.

The way feral Zerg behave in canon is contradictory. Depending on which source you read: they become frenzied berserkers that cannot tell friend from foe, behave like predators that hunt and eat other animals, go literally insane, revert to the instincts of their core genus, or behave as if nothing is wrong. Taken collectively their behavior seems more random than anything else, behaving more like a form of unpredictable mental illness (or lobotomy) than a simple lack of orders from a higher intelligence. In fact I still cannot determine whether it is due to genetic lobotomy by Overmind, a mental break from the void magic assault, or a combination thereof.

First, off, the game gives us very little info on feral zerg. The only thing the game is consistent on is the fact that feral zerg will still attack you and are dangerous. They're not insane, they revert to their overly aggressive base instincts. You haven't spotted any actual contradictions.

All Zerg are telepathic: capable of perceiving, sending and receiving psychic waves analogous to radio waves. The fact that Zasz literally picked up radio waves would suggest that psychic waves are radio waves, so we can apply the logic of radio waves to psychic waves to get a better handle on how telepathy behaves. Before you state that "it is space magic and space magic does not need to make sense," I would like to remind you that said rebuttal is nothing more than an excuse for bad writing and every single writing course says so. Whenever you introduce magic or super science, it must follow rigidly defined rules that are known to the writer but not necessarily to the audience. The hallmark of a well written magic/science system is that the audience can take what little the narrative explains about the rules to make predictions about where the plot is going.

Therefore, Zerg telepathy needs to have rigidly defined, self-consistent rules that cannot ever be broken. Of course Starcraft was written by hacks who constantly make stuff up depending on the needs of the writer that are impossible to predict just like the plot of The Last Jedi, but that is bad writing and we should ignore it because otherwise we cannot hold a logical argument because logic by definition cannot be self-contradictory.

No, just no. Just because Zasz or the zerg can detect radio waves doesn't mean that psychic waves are analogous to radio waves. Zasz could be using psychic waves to help translate radio waves, or radio waves could be a subset of psychic waves, or a dozen other options. In SC: Evolution the zerg just build a biological radio receiver.

Yes, I know the Tiamat brood bio states that it protects the Overmind. Well, no, it states that the brood is rumored to contain the Overmind even though this contradicts the statement that the Overmind is a bodily entity composed of the collective minds of the Swarm.

1) I still don't know where you're getting the idea that it can't both have a body and sense/control the whole swarm, which is a false dichotomy.
2) Just because it's rumored doesn't take away from the fact that either terrans or the omniscient narrator seem to think it can have a body. The writer does this again when he says it was rumored that the exiles were forced to draw from the void after having their nerve cords cut off. Both things end up being true. There'd be no point to put that in otherwise.

The manual cannot decide if it wants to be an omniscient narrator or an in-universe document written by Terran scientists, and it clearly underwent a few rewrites that left remnants not caught by proofreading

Yeah, that part gets a bit iffy, but I can't say I'm ever confused or get thrown out of suspension of disbelief.

In the game itself the Overmind states that he needs the magic crystals to become "manifest" (i.e. physically incarnated) which would indicate that he lacks a dedicated body at the time he says this; even so this makes no sense since the Swarm is already his body... but screw logic because the writers needed a deus ex machina to justify defeating the Zerg because they were too incompetent or pressed for time to think of anything better.

The cinematic implies that his body was delivered to Aiur by the meteor that crash landed.

Manifest - readily perceived by the eye or the understanding; evident; obvious; apparent; plain:

He comes out of hiding by putting his body on Aiur. Says nowhere he didn't or couldn't have a body beforehand. You're drawing more false conclusions out of nowhere.

Since the Overmind is a gestalt consciousness, the psychic link must be decentralized and shared between all Zerg.

The link is. The control of the swarms is not.

The psychic link (i.e. exchanging brain function to produce the Overmind) and relaying orders constitute two distinct forms of communication.

Again, that's not how it works. The Overmind has his own personality. It didn't change after he lost Zasz and the Garm Brood.

This statement is also copied verbatim in the SC2 manual, except with Kerrigan replacing the Overmind.

Which statement?

Therefore, overlords (and queens and infestors) should not be able to team up without cerebrates unless they have developed their own miniature overmind to let them coordinate without a cerebrate.

That's a non-sequitur. They can't work together and agree not to kill each other (for mutual benefit) just because they're not being controlled by a higher consciousness? Why?

Again, overlords in particular should not be able to take command of new minions without first coordinating with the queens who manage the production and control of maturing Zerg, which they cannot do without a cerebrate or overmind.

No, it just means the feral brood can't expand. Or that they're less efficient.

Either the Zerg are controlled by a group intelligence that allows them to team up, or they are controlled by higher organisms that they cannot function without. Either feral Zerg die out because they cannot coordinate, or they thrive because they develop a new mini-overmind. You cannot pick one or the other depending on the needs of the current story.

Obviously this isn't true and I don't buy the mental gymnastics that you used to arrive at yet another false dichotomy.

Taking the manual at face value, an overmind is the only way to explain any feral brood that stabilizes. Because of the xel'naga's engineering, which is fundamental to the Zerg's nature, any Zerg in telepathic communication will exchange brain function and their collective minds will unify into an overmind. The new overmind will progress exactly as it did on Zerus and consume everything around it, including any other overminds it encounters.

You keep presenting fanon speculation as fact. The Xel'Naga created the Overmind themselves, which then coalesced into a personality later. None of this was natural.

[Nolanstar]

I'm with Eco on this, its one of the reasons I found NCO to okay was because it was on the smaller scale that denotes itself better then the overarching continuous mess that is the main trilogy. Smaller short stories tend to be actually good, whereas longer novels get bogged down. Hopefully the artists does their research though...

[ragnarok]

So, any thoughts on the upcoming comic series?

So far it looks meh, I saw nothing interesting on it. Did you?

I'm with Eco on this, its one of the reasons I found NCO to okay was because it was on the smaller scale that denotes itself better then the overarching continuous mess that is the main trilogy. Smaller short stories tend to be actually good, whereas longer novels get bogged down. Hopefully the artists does their research though...

Is that how you felt regarding the Evolution book when you first read it?

[Turalyon]

I assumed everywhere. Why, does it say somewhere they're only on Aiur?

Yeah, it says so on the description of the Pylon: "Carved from the sacred Khaydarin crystals found only on the Protoss Homeworld...".

On the other hand, in the Protoss History it also says: "The Crystals, left behind by the Xel'Naga..."

Taken together, one can surmise that Khaydarin is not and cannot be exclusive to Aiur as the Pylon description suggests. It must mean that Khaydarin maybe wherever the Xel'Naga may have left them in their travels and that it maybe rare because it seemingly isn't found easily.

[Gradius]

Welp, the lore is ruined. I quit StarCraft.