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I gave it the ol' junior high try, there was a lot to like in the art direction, and I approved of updating the cast to the 21st century from a very white bread 50s look... but after 5 eps I don't know if I can continue. My main beef: the whole fucking point of Asimov's psychohistory trope was that humans en masse can be modeled like an ideal gas, and the "great men" of history were lucky guessers, right-person-right-time accidents, and (more often than not) colorless committees and bureaucrats. The big names of the first novel -- Gaal Dornick, Salvor Hardin, Hober Mallow -- were normal people in abnormal times, maybe a little more perceptive than most. They were *most definitely* not momentous paradigm-shattering math prodigies or monolith-communing probability-defying I-dunno-what-the-writers-were-smoking "outliers". The only "outlier" in the original books was the Mule, who serves as a pointed example that it takes a fundamental change in human interaction -- control of other's emotional responses by a mutation that could not have been predicted or adjusted for -- to change the statistical unfolding of history. The Mule fucked up the Seldon Plan because he wasn't baseline human. In this particular version of the story, both the characters Gaal Dornick and Salvor Hardin are Mule-level disruptors. One could also make the case that the cloned Emperor lineage is another fundamental modification of human nature. Which puts paid to everything Asimov was trying to say. One of the supporting characters said it best: the nascent Foundation is following Salvor Hardin's lead *because* she's a woo-woo magical savior -- not because she's a savvy, politically-adept student of history and human interaction, as the original characterization held. I guess people just crave the messiah view of history, with God-appointed (or, in this case, floating null-field-generating sci-fi Maguffin-appointed) saviors leading the blinkered sheep because nobliesse oblige and reasons. It's a shame. An actual honest-to-God conceptual theme hiding in what looks like a run-of-the-mill galactic empire space opera -- dumbed down to a Chosen One cliché. #foundationseries #applefoundation https://www.instagram.com/p/CXZxJ65LqmT/?utm_medium=tumblr

I gave it the ol' junior high try, there was a lot to like in the art direction, and I approved of updating the cast to the 21st century from a very white bread 50s look... but after 5 eps I don't know if I can continue. My main beef: the whole fucking point of Asimov's psychohistory trope was that humans en masse can be modeled like an ideal gas, and the "great men" of history were lucky guessers, right-person-right-time accidents, and (more often than not) colorless committees and bureaucrats. The big names of the first novel -- Gaal Dornick, Salvor Hardin, Hober Mallow -- were normal people in abnormal times, maybe a little more perceptive than most. They were *most definitely* not momentous paradigm-shattering math prodigies or monolith-communing probability-defying I-dunno-what-the-writers-were-smoking "outliers". The only "outlier" in the original books was the Mule, who serves as a pointed example that it takes a fundamental change in human interaction -- control of other's emotional responses by a mutation that could not have been predicted or adjusted for -- to change the statistical unfolding of history. The Mule fucked up the Seldon Plan because he wasn't baseline human. In this particular version of the story, both the characters Gaal Dornick and Salvor Hardin are Mule-level disruptors. One could also make the case that the cloned Emperor lineage is another fundamental modification of human nature. Which puts paid to everything Asimov was trying to say. One of the supporting characters said it best: the nascent Foundation is following Salvor Hardin's lead *because* she's a woo-woo magical savior -- not because she's a savvy, politically-adept student of history and human interaction, as the original characterization held. I guess people just crave the messiah view of history, with God-appointed (or, in this case, floating null-field-generating sci-fi Maguffin-appointed) saviors leading the blinkered sheep because nobliesse oblige and reasons. It's a shame. An actual honest-to-God conceptual theme hiding in what looks like a run-of-the-mill galactic empire space opera -- dumbed down to a Chosen One cliché. #foundationseries #applefoundation https://www.instagram.com/mindhue/p/CXZwyj6lNn1/?utm_medium=tumblr