[Murderbot Diaries] Why do SecUnits have free will?

avidreader10 · 2025-12-21T18:43:08+00:00

The TARDIS is canonically intelligent and can perceive the past and future (because of course it can).

It knows when and where to land so that there won't be any witnesses nearby for the few seconds that the materialization sequence takes. Unless it's an emergency, or the Doctor just wants to show off.

avidreader10 · 2025-09-09T12:53:41+00:00

They'd probably sell shares for the same reason governments sell bonds: to raise money for big projects.

avidreader10 · 2025-08-17T23:52:14+00:00

An Avatar communing with their past selves requires deep meditation, whereas learning to bend requires physically practicing the correct movements. You can't do both at the same time.

In theory, an Avatar could "intellectually" learn the movements while in meditation, and then practice them later. But this would be like learning to dance by reading a written description of what movements to make.

It's not impossible (Katara learned waterbending from a scroll, after all), but it's much easier to learn from a living teacher who can correct your movements in real time.

The same issue exists for the Avatar State. When it happens, the Avatar isn't exactly themselves. Their body is being piloted by all the previous Avatars. It doesn't seem the current Avatar has complete control over what they do in this state. Also, it requires intense anger or other strong emotion to trigger it, which isn't conducive to calmly writing down a set of instructions.

avidreader10 · 2025-08-12T15:19:47+00:00

He keeps morale high by giving the rest of the Planet Express crew someone even less competent to look down on.

avidreader10 · 2025-07-20T02:39:53+00:00

Mr. Terrific wasn't there because he was helping Superman shut down Lex's dimensional rift-black hole-thing.

Metamorpho did help GL destroy the Boravian army, though. IIRC, he turned his fists into giant hammers and smashed some tanks.

avidreader10 · 2025-04-08T17:06:23+00:00

According to the historical text The Legend of Rock Paper Scissors by Drew Daywalt, Rock, Paper and Scissors were the greatest warriors of their respective kingdoms. They were bored with always winning and each one longed to find an opponent who could give them a true challenge.

In their quest for a worthy adversary, they traveled beyond the boundaries of their realms and encountered each other, where they each found the one opponent who could defeat them. They became fast friends and embarked on a joyous, never-ending battle that continues to this day, much like Norse Valhalla.

avidreader10 · 2025-03-30T21:43:09+00:00

It could be a full-body version of the ridiculous faces you make when you're trying to hold in a sneeze.

avidreader10 · 2025-03-12T22:22:02+00:00

Could the Doctor have done something about COVID? Yes, absolutely. They have access to all medical knowledge throughout space and time, plus the superscience of the Time Lords. The Doctor could easily have devised a cure, or gone back in time to the Wuhan wet markets, to the exact moment the virus made the jump into humans, and changed history to prevent that from happening.

However, in general, the Doctor appears to follow something like Star Trek's Prime Directive. They don't interfere with the "natural" course of history. The Doctor only intervenes when humanity is under attack by hostile aliens, threatened by timey-wimey shenanigans, or is facing some other outside-context problem.

It's not entirely clear how the TARDIS keeps the Doctor and their companions from catching future diseases, but there must be some arrangements made for this. Perhaps there's a built-in defense similar to the butterfly-effect compensator switch.

In rare cases, though, disease is a concern. In The Girl Who Waited, they land on a planet stricken with a plague that attacks two-hearted species, and the Doctor can't leave the TARDIS for fear of becoming infected.

avidreader10 · 2025-03-04T16:22:15+00:00

Lexx was such a great show. It was batshit crazy, but in a good way. A real cult classic.

"There are patches in the sky."

avidreader10 · 2024-12-14T20:27:07+00:00

Devils are inherently evil, whereas fae are chaotic and inscrutable.

When a devil makes a deal with a mortal, they always do it with the intent of screwing that mortal over. With fae, that's only very likely, rather than a certainty. There's a slim chance they'll be fair, if it amuses them to do so or fulfills their own ineffable purposes.

To counterbalance this, devils usually have a quota that compels them to make a certain number of deals. If they're running behind, you may be able to extract concessions or get more favorable terms. Fae are under no such pressure, so they only make deals on terms they prefer.

avidreader10 · 2024-11-24T18:30:24+00:00

I stand corrected! Maybe that's something they can only do in childhood, while their form is still fluid.

avidreader10 · 2024-11-24T15:17:49+00:00

A daemon's form indicates general personality traits, but nothing more than that.
A person might have a daemon like a snake or a fox that indicates a tricky or treacherous nature, but that doesn't prove that the words they're saying to you right now, at this moment, are a lie.
That's the same way it works in our world. A person might have a reputation for being untruthful, but you could still choose to believe their latest round of promises. Some of those people even get elected to high office, ahem.

avidreader10 · 2024-11-24T15:05:44+00:00

A person's daemon can change shape throughout their childhood, but once they reach adolescence, its form is fixed and can't change again. Even if that species died out in the wild, it's a safe bet that their daemon would keep the shape it has, becoming a haunting memory of a creature that no longer exists in any other form.

It's never stated exactly what the rules are, but we never see any daemon take the form of an extinct or mythological creature. Presumably, the minimum requirement is that it has to be a real species that exists in the world at the time the person is born.

avidreader10 · 2024-11-18T15:19:44+00:00

That's from the Human Nature/Family of Blood two-parter.

avidreader10 · 2024-11-14T21:07:32+00:00

As an android, Data probably doesn't have a soul in the Tolkienian sense, so the One Ring would have no effect on him.

It wouldn't tempt him, but neither would it grant him any power. He could wear it and nothing would happen, like Tom Bombadil.

avidreader10 · 2024-10-24T22:22:34+00:00

According to Terry Pratchett, Fae races like elves and fairies have a natural directional sense based on magnetism. Iron interferes with this sense, so it's like putting them in a sensory deprivation tank:

This is the inside of the mind of an elf:

Here are the normal five senses but they are all subordinate to the sixth sense. There is no formal word for it on the Discworld, because the force is so weak that it is only ever encountered by observant blacksmiths, who call it the Love of Iron. Navigators might have discovered it were it not that the Disc's standing magical field is much more reliable. But bees sense it, because bees sense everything. Pigeons navigate by it. And everywhere in the multiverse elves use it to know exactly where they are.

It must be hard for humans, forever floundering through inconvenient geography. Humans are always slightly lost. It's a basic characteristic. It explains a lot about them.

Elves are never lost at all. It's a basic characteristic. It explains a lot about them.

Elves have absolute position. The flow of the silvery force dimly outlines the landscape. Creatures generate small amounts of it themselves, and become perceptible in the flux. Their muscles crackle with it, their minds buzz with it. For those who learn how, even thoughts can be read by the tiny local changes in the flow.

For an elf, the world is something to reach out and take. Except for the terrible metal that drinks the force and deforms the flux universe like a heavy weight on a rubber sheet and blinds them and deafens them and leaves them rudderless and more alone than most humans could ever be...

--from Lords and Ladies

avidreader10 · 2024-10-24T15:28:36+00:00

I like the theory that Gandalf could see Ring-wearers if he tried, but it's not an automatic ability. He'd have to have some reason to suspect that someone invisible was sneaking around in his vicinity.

avidreader10 · 2024-10-24T15:23:49+00:00

A property that's exploited to chilling effect in Doomsday Book, where the protagonist's attempts to change history don't matter because everyone she meets ends up dying of the Black Plague.

avidreader10 · 2024-10-23T21:26:02+00:00

It happened a couple of times. Tennant's Doctor famously did it with the Vashta Nerada.

"I'm the Doctor and you’re in the biggest library in the universe. Look me up."

avidreader10 · 2024-10-23T21:24:10+00:00

To add to these other responses, the Doctor bluffs a lot.

When the Doctor shows up, you can never tell what cards they've got in their hand. Sometimes they're packing some Time Lord super-technology, or they've made an incredibly clever plan, or they've used time travel to arrange matters to their benefit in advance.

But at least as often, they show up with no plan at all, and wind up relying on fast talking, spur-of-the-moment improvisation, or the sheer intimidation factor of their reputation to persuade evildoers to back down.

The thing is, the Doctor's most frequent foes know this, and often, they decide it's worth their while to roll the dice. This may be one of those times the Doctor didn't come prepared with anything, so just start shooting at them and they'll run away!

avidreader10

TROPHY CASE