Cliches you can't stand

[DestinyPlayer]

See, the real answer is that space in Star Wars isn't actually a vacuum, but is instead filled with an extremely inert gas, which is why heat is usually only ever a problem in systems with way too many suns in 'em, and also why ships have a tendency to require at least some form of aerodynamics and seem to have drags.

Mostly a joke.

 

[Vyslanté]

Well, that does explain the sound

 

[Kadmus]

I mean, the actual real answer is that planets in Star Wars are not actually planets; they're essentially different counties, not even different countries. Everything makes a lot more sense when you consider it like that; Coruscant isn't actually a massive city-planet that should hav ebeen long rendered uninhabitable, it's Mega New York, and it doesn't have to worry about heat and food and so on because of course it doesn't, it's just Mega New York, there's a shitload more of the planet (space, in this case) for things to come from or go to. Ignore that all of that makes no sense, it doesn't matter.

Star Wars is also a science fantasy setting that's so soft you can't even spread it on bread because it would just dribble off. The numbers are all made up and don't matter except for the vibes they provide.

I suppose that's the cliche I can't stand? People refusing to engage with a work on its own terms just to be pedantic about numbers, when it's clear that the numbers are just thematic, not intentional or calculated. It doesn't matter that a Super Star Destroyer is a gajillion miles long and makes no physical or military sense; what matters is that it's intimidatingly large and looms over all the other ships in a display of grandiose oppression and excess. It's shaped like that because sharp edges are mean and evil, not for any practical reason.

 

[Fourthspartan56]

I mean, the actual real answer is that planets in Star Wars are not actually planets; they're essentially different counties, not even different countries. Everything makes a lot more sense when you consider it like that; Coruscant isn't actually a massive city-planet that should hav ebeen long rendered uninhabitable, it's Mega New York, and it doesn't have to worry about heat and food and so on because of course it doesn't, it's just Mega New York, there's a shitload more of the planet (space, in this case) for things to come from or go to. Ignore that all of that makes no sense, it doesn't matter.

Click to shrink...

Except all of these questions are answered canonically. Star Wars isn't a super hard setting (to say the least) but it's odd to criticize others for not engaging with the setting on its own terms when the setting has answers for this very issue. Agriworlds exist, interstellar travel exists, "how Coruscant is fed" is not some impossible to comprehend issue.

I don't like this attitude, just because a setting is "soft" does not mean that we should just throw up our arms and declare it all theme and no substance. One look at Wookiepedia should show you how wrong that attitude is. Clearly people have put some thought into Star Wars' worldbuilding and frankly it's a little disrespectful to just cavalierly throw out all their work just because you think Star Wars only exists in one way. That to me is a much worse attitude then pedantic nerds overfocusing on numbers, at least the latter group respects the setting enough to take it seriously.

 

[Arden]

I suppose that's the cliche I can't stand? People refusing to engage with a work on its own terms just to be pedantic about numbers, when it's clear that the numbers are just thematic, not intentional or calculated. It doesn't matter that a Super Star Destroyer is a gajillion miles long and makes no physical or military sense; what matters is that it's intimidatingly large and looms over all the other ships in a display of grandiose oppression and excess. It's shaped like that because sharp edges are mean and evil, not for any practical reason.

Click to shrink...

Honestly, I agree with you there. Sometimes it's just fun to bicker a bit about things that aren't really important, though. Keeps your mind off of things.

 

[Reveen]

Personally I just think nitpicking settings like this is just boring and unimaginative. Going in the opposite direction, of looking at what the setting shows you and thinking about what that implies is both more intellectual stimulating and more fun. Unless the setting blatantly makes no sense in ways that are right in your face so much that it's insulting to your intelligence.

Also it's more conducive to being able to read and create stories in a way actual storytellers do. Whereas getting too far into the hypercritical nitpicker mindset just straight interferes with your ability to grapple with storytelling as a concept. At a certain point expecting authors to answer all these logistical questions becomes expecting the writer to do the thinking for you.

When has Star Wars ever given the slightest indication that it has anything like that? As someone previously mentioned, Coruscant just presses garbage into bricks and dumps it into the deepest hole they can find. They're clearly not even interested basic recycling. Even if they have the technology to make something useful out of trillions of people's worth of bodily waste, they do not seem remotely willing to use it.

Click to shrink...

We know they probably have this kind of technology because we're not far off from it ourselves. The composition of poop isn't a mystery, we just lack the precise technical know how to recycle it efficiently and also we don't give a shit.

Same thing with hydrogen + oxygen = water. It literally happens in your car, we just can't scale it up efficiently yet.

Star Wars as a setting has huge wealth and tech gaps with lots of corruption and sleaze. Particularly on Coruscant where the lower end of the spectrum starts at borderline caveman. If trash is being dumped in big hole that probably because it's Grifto Malkonscam's Greasy Waste Disposal Company and they don't give a shit, not because they can't.

Noew efficiency minded core worlds? Or hippy species like Ithorians? They probably recycle their shit.

 

[firefossil]

Personally I just think nitpicking settings like this is just boring and unimaginative. Going in the opposite direction, of looking at what the setting shows you and thinking about what that implies is both more intellectual stimulating and more fun. Unless the setting blatantly makes no sense in ways that are right in your face so much that it's insulting to your intelligence.

Also it's more conducive to being able to read and create stories in a way actual storytellers do. Whereas getting too far into the hypercritical nitpicker mindset just straight interferes with your ability to grapple with storytelling as a concept. At a certain point expecting authors to answer all these logistical questions becomes expecting the writer to do the thinking for you.

Click to shrink...

While such has always been the case I think its getting worse of late. Modern media is becoming more self-aware, referential, and prone to deconstructions and reconstructions, likely as a byproduct of IP law forcing artists to play in the same handful of pools over and over again. Doing so in turn makes the audience think about it more and more.

Take for example AtlA. The animated version is a heroes journey kid's cartoon and so runs on "kids do most of the important things, but adults are allowed to be wise elders that help out" logic. The live action version though hews much closer to YA dystopia fantasy and consequentially runs on "adults are all useless, hostile, or evil" logic. What is normally a conceit of the genre suddenly becomes disconcerting because we 'know' the characters aren't supposed to act like that. But the animated version's conceit was just as nonreal as the live action, moreso really.

 

[Konradleijon]

While such has always been the case I think its getting worse of late. Modern media is becoming more self-aware, referential, and prone to deconstructions and reconstructions, likely as a byproduct of IP law forcing artists to play in the same handful of pools over and over again. Doing so in turn makes the audience think about it more and more.

Click to shrink...

I despise modern copyright law. How many works are even "in print" after thirty years?

charitably twenty percent of works. The other stuff rots away In metaphysical vaults.

The idea that creators own the rights to their own artistic labor is very rare in mass media.

Imagine if anyone could use some show after thirty years.

Personally I just think nitpicking settings like this is just boring and unimaginative. Going in the opposite direction, of looking at what the setting shows you and thinking about what that implies is both more intellectual stimulating and more fun. Unless the setting blatantly makes no sense in ways that are right in your face so much that it's insulting to your intelligence.

Also it's more conducive to being able to read and create stories in a way actual storytellers do. Whereas getting too far into the hypercritical nitpicker mindset just straight interferes with your ability to grapple with storytelling as a concept. At a certain point expecting authors to answer all these logistical questions becomes expecting the writer to do the thinking for you

Click to shrink...

Especially when the nitpicks are something that actually societies have done/are like.

Like "why don't the adults listen to the kids telling them about monsters?"

IRL children are repeatedly disbelieved when talking about things like abuse do you think adults will just believe a kid talking about a ghost when they don't believe accusations of abuse.

Or "why technological stasis?" Because in real life technology doesn't continually "advance" it's a product of modern industrial capitalism that we accept technology to advance and get better IPhones.

Before it technology only advanced if a society had a need it needed to fill. If magic is accessible enough they wouldn't need to advance technology.

 

[Axslashel]

Or "why technological stasis?" Because in real life technology doesn't continually "advance" it's a product of modern industrial capitalism that we accept technology to advance and get better IPhones.

Before it technology only advanced if a society had a need it needed to fill. If magic is accessible enough they wouldn't need to advance technology.

Click to shrink...

I think you are using the word "technology" a bit to narrowly here. If magic exists that is the technology in question being advanced. I kind of hate that the word "tech" in modern times seems to refer exclusively to computer stuff.

 

[Giblets]

Didn't mean to kick a hornets nest there, I was just pointing out how the movies always show the place as full of mile+ high skyscrapers yet it has a small fraction of the population density of a real city that very much doesn't have mile high sky scrapers but does also have somewhat large stretches of sparsely populated industrial areas.

I never said anything about it needing to be hard sci-fi, all the numbers I used were the first results on Google so not exactly a hard study into the weeds of SW lore/tech. They've got space wizards, hyper matter reactors, and can move between stars as casually as taking the freeway to the next town over, they're not hurting for logistics capacity in any form.

It's just, what gets shown on screen and what is stated as canon are so radically different as to be nearly mutually exclusive and it's really personally annoying to me.

 

[Axslashel]

Progressively thinner skyscrapers as you go up in height and the lower levels being uninhabited can explain a bit of that.

 

[Exponent]

Didn't mean to kick a hornets nest there, I was just pointing out how the movies always show the place as full of mile+ high skyscrapers yet it has a small fraction of the population density of a real city that very much doesn't have mile high sky scrapers but does also have somewhat large stretches of sparsely populated industrial areas.

Click to shrink...

Budget and casting constraints probably are partly to blame, along with writers not getting the scales that should be at play in megacity and city planet settings.

 

[Silver2195]

I think you are using the word "technology" a bit to narrowly here. If magic exists that is the technology in question being advanced. I kind of hate that the word "tech" in modern times seems to refer exclusively to computer stuff.

Click to shrink...

Also, while technological change happened more slowly in premodern times, it still happened. People in late-medieval Europe had better ploughs and better timekeeping devices than people in early-medieval Europe. The D&D trope where millenia-old ruins contain weapons and armor exactly like present-day weapons and armor is silly.

 

[Arawn_Emrys]

Also, while technological change happened more slowly in premodern times, it still happened. People in late-medieval Europe had better ploughs and better timekeeping devices than people in early-medieval Europe. The D&D trope where millenia-old ruins contain weapons and armor exactly like present-day weapons and armor is silly.

Click to shrink...

In most D&D settings the reason for it is that the more advanced Civs got blown up either by gods or magic nukes. So it's more like finding a better gun in a Fallout vault when all you had was a homemade musket.

 

[Triggerhappy]

Even if they have the technology to make something useful out of trillions of people's worth of bodily waste, they do not seem remotely willing to use it.

Click to shrink...

I mean, they actually do have this. At least if we go by the old essential guides in the Legends EU. There's an entire class of recycling droid that are used to reprocess waste on exploration ships so they don't have to carry decades of supplies.

But again, Star Wars is inconsistent and everything is done for style first and substance a distance second.

I think you are using the word "technology" a bit to narrowly here. If magic exists that is the technology in question being advanced. I kind of hate that the word "tech" in modern times seems to refer exclusively to computer stuff.

Click to shrink...

Especially because language and architecture are also technologies. The thing the 'tech industry' has done is monopolize the idea that an app is the solution to all of life's problems.

CEO - "What do you mean 'the App doesn't magically deliver the food and we have to pay people to do that in the real world'?"

The upper limit is energy though. My understanding is that in the densest places of human civilization the average energy consumption per square meter already exceeds the usable solar energy per square meter, which creates problems if you extrapolate to 'the whole surface of the planet that dense'. If you try to bypass that limit via non-renewables or imports you necessarily warm the planet to the point that you are also going to have to have a plan to export the waste heat or end up cooking your planet's inhabitants.

Click to shrink...

So just going to do some napkin math on this, and I COULD be wrong.

New York City -

Land Area - 300 square miles - 768,000,000 square meters
Population - 8.3 million - Assume 2000 Calories a day of work works out to - 19920 Megawatt Hours
Electrical Energy Consumption - 11,000 Megawatt Hours per day
- Assume additional energy costs, i.e. internal combustion, are negligible.
- Assume additional organism - i.e. pets and pests, are negligible.

This gives us a total thermal load from the city of New York of about 30,000 Megawatt hours per day or organisms and electrical work.

Solar Output - Average over the year and accounting for day and night, NASA says it's about 342 watts per square meter.

So that's about 8.208 Kilowatt Hours per Square Meter Per Day (342 watts * 24 hours = 8208 watt hours/meter)

768,000,000 meters * 8208 watt hours / meter * 1 Megawatt hour/1,000,000 watt hours = 6.3 million Megawatt Hours . . .

So, I might have gotten my math wrong. But I don't even think its close.

Even assuming our terrible solar conversion ratios, I'm pretty sure our solar power conversion rate is better than 0.5%.

Now, there ARE denser cities than New York. But on average, they aren't THAT much denser. In fact, our tallest cities are statistically quaint little 3-4 story town ships in the Belgian countryside compared to Coruscant or Trantor.

Edit - Apparently, canonically, Trantor has a population of only 40 Billion. Which makes its' mile deep world city a rather strange creation. Coruscant Ironically has the more impressive canonical number in this case, 3 trillion.

 

[Silver2195]

In most D&D settings the reason for it is that the more advanced Civs got blown up either by gods or magic nukes. So it's more like finding a better gun in a Fallout vault when all you had was a homemade musket.

Click to shrink...

Finding unexpectedly high-tech equipment, Expeditions to the Barrier Peaks-style, is cool. It's when past technology is basically the same that it's nonsensical.

 

[Silver2195]

Edit - Apparently, canonically, Trantor has a population of only 40 Billion. Which makes its' mile deep world city a rather strange creation. Coruscant Ironically has the more impressive canonical number in this case, 3 trillion.

Click to shrink...

Asimov was prone to population panic the way a lot of people were in the 70s, and was also the kind of New Yorker who unconsciously thinks of big cities as the default way for humans to live.

 

[Triggerhappy]

Asimov was prone to population panic the way a lot of people were in the 70s, and was also the kind of New Yorker who unconsciously thinks of big cities as the default way for humans to live.

Click to shrink...

40 Billion is literally NOTHING when Trantor canonically is covered in a mile deep layer of skyscrapers that forms a near solider layer of metal. Like compared to Trantor, new York city uses almost none of its airspace.

 

[Konradleijon]

Both of you seriously underestimate how difficult it would be to feed a population of dozens of trillions. There would not have to be thousands of ships daily, there would have to be millions.

Click to shrink...

Yes a planet having to import all its food could lead to consequences if something happens.
Yes big cities are the only place where people loved

 

[Queshire]

City planets are cool. Writers are notoriously bad with numbers. (This isn't new information.)

 

[DestinyPlayer]

Finding unexpectedly high-tech equipment, Expeditions to the Barrier Peaks-style, is cool. It's when past technology is basically the same that it's nonsensical.

Click to shrink...

I don't really see how? There was an advanced civilization back in the past.

It blew up.

A new civilization rose and over time it's now exactly as advanced as the past civilization. So it discovers stuff as good as the stuff they can make because they're now on the same level.

I will admit it's boring but it's far from nonsensical.

 

[Queshire]

Expedition to Barrier Peaks sees you exploring a crashed alien space ship if I remember correctly.

 

[10ebbor10]

40 Billion is literally NOTHING when Trantor canonically is covered in a mile deep layer of skyscrapers that forms a near solider layer of metal. Like compared to Trantor, new York city uses almost none of its airspace.

Click to shrink...

Is that canon?

Afaik, (book) Trantor was domed, but not particukarly layered. Been a while though.

Corurscant otoh, has thousands of layers...

 

[Triggerhappy]

Is that canon?

Afaik, (book) Trantor was domed, but not particukarly layered. Been a while though.

Corurscant otoh, has thousands of layers...

Click to shrink...

No, I'm pretty sure Trantor is mention to be about a solid kilometer thick worth of city with only the Imperial Palace grounds being untouched by development. They're literally described using the heat differential between the surface and the top of the skyscrapers to generate electrical power.

 

[Mandemon]

To be honest, I would not be shocked if with constant layering, there eventually comes a point where lowest levels are just flat out abandoned, nobody living there and left to rot until something on upper levels falls down and forces people to pay attention.