: By engineers, yes.
: Way back when we were safeguarded by bold acronyms like NATO and NORAD, when
: the world being baptized in nuclear fire was a real worry, engineers in
: the aerospace industry took to referring to titanium as 'unobtainium'. It
: was ideal for a lot of applications because of its high strength and light
: weight, but it was unavailable as well. The best sources, if not the only
: sources, were in the Russian Bear's territory.

I see. Still, its use now is the topic :)

:: and essentially now used by any writer who wants to employ some element
: Heh. Neither of the Unobtainium materials in The Core and Avatar were
: elements.

element/material/compound/alloy/whatever. Spirit of my words, not the letter :P

: You could also complain about how Quantum was appropriated by Star Trek to
: mean "Whatever the #$% we want it to".

Indeed!

: I really prefer my definitions of unobtainium/handwavium, because there ought
: to be something that differentiates hard science fiction technology (We've
: crunched the numbers, thought about how society would use this material,
: and did our homework) and soft science fiction technology (It's an alloy
: that can withstand the temperatures of solar flares and blocks psionic
: waves)

To me, the former is still extrapolation into untested territory - we "think" it could/should do this, based on known science, so let's write it as though it does. The latter is more like - we "think" there is something that will accomplish what we want to write about, so let's handwave write it in.
Perhaps the difference is in direction of writing said 'space magic'.

: Just out of curiosity, but was I the only one who looked at the Unobtanium in
: Avatar, saw it floating on a metal base, and realized that it was a
: room-temperature superconductor?

All I know is I didn't. :P I heard 'unobtanium' and chuckled. I chuckle even more when a character says "I call it..." as if they made up the word (as opposed to co-opting an existing word the character knows means effectively 'space magic' :)

: It's a completely different beast in Halo 4.
: The Hardlight we saw in Bungie's Forerunner structures looked like primitive
: holograms or glowing force fields. 343i's interpretation is
: stuff-that-is-indistinguishable-from-real-matter-until-we-need-it-to-do-something.
: And, you know, it's only ever used in a handful of disparate applications,
: rather than wherever it would make sense to implement it.

: Saturating the environment with it? Hardly.
: It's used in a few gimmicky applications, but it's limited to the plot
: convenient locations and the stuff that 343i didn't want to create unique
: destruction animations for.

With regards to hard light, I was referring to the glowy-structure-and-material used quite abundantly in the environments and gameplay, not just (what I think you're referring to) hard light ammo and 'officially labeled' application or some such. From my perspective, a cursory look over the Halo franchise had cyan-glowy material throughout the entire series of games, the Forerunner 'style' that, without blatant description, most would just say was Forerunner use of hard light. The term was around since Halo 1 for the glowy bridge and other structural designs, and the glowy architecture has proliferated through each release. It's everywhere in Halo 4, as if 343 embraced the 'concept' of FR hard light and began using it in more obvious applications, like ammo and shields and whatnot.

: Just like how John's armor or the Forward Unto Dawn existed before 343i took
: the reigns.

yep

: Generally, it's a sign of the author having no clue what he's doing.

I don't disagree :)

: I strongly dislike the 'spark of life' trope for a number of reasons. Namely,
: it's overused and smacks of 'humans are special'

I consider it "life is special"

: If you could duplicate someone atom-for-atom, I have no problem believing
: that the result would a moving, breathing, living duplicate
: indistinguishable from the original.

I disagree. But I think we'd both be happy leaving that as a disagreement :) I would only see recreation of molecules as creating an inert entity. The difference between the entity being 'alive' and 'dead'. What makes the entity alive? Technically, when we're born, we're made of already-living matter, passed on through father & mother. "Aliveness" never begins anywhere, it's always been; well, it had a beginning somewhere, whether you believe in Evolution or otherwise. Death is the end of that 'life'. So in cloning/creating Life, I firmly believe that it can't be done from lifeless matter. If we create molecules and atoms, we create molecules and atoms, not life. That's why so far, cloning has only used DNA to re-creating the birth/growth process; life from existing life.

: She has agency, therefore she is alive.

Right, which is why I love sci-fi that explores the meaning/definition of "life" (or 'alive'). Is it the biological definition of what makes something alive? Or is it our perception of how something interacts with us, and how we treat it, that defines whether something is alive (or a life)?

: In my opinion, that's pretty easy to answer. Halo does many things well, but
: one of the things that it rarely does well is artificial intelligence. AIs
: are mostly just holographic humans. Until Halo 4, Rampancy was all talk,
: particularly in The Cole Protocol.

In the video games perhaps. At least in I Love Bees (yes I'm bringing that up again :) rampancy was a very real AI property that was dealt with. The answer was vague and left things open to interpretation, but the concept was front and center in the greater plot. And it's been referenced often in much of the Halo EU before Halo 4.

: Want a real challenge? Consider artificial intelligences that don't think the
: way we do, that don't represent themselves with human avatars. Is Vergil
: alive? Is it a sentient entity with a limited ability to communicate its
: thoughts, or is it just a chatterbox that can execute high-level
: directives?

Exactly :) (I must also say, I don't like sci-fi that presumes to answer said questions, but rather explores the ethics/morality of dealing with the question, letting us come to our own conclusions; that's what pushes us forward)

: Precisely.

I feel like we've come to a consensus regarding mech vs power armour and its uses. If not, I think the subject has come to a satisfactory conclusion :)

: Blurry range, I guess, though the border sometimes narrows down to a thin
: red/blue/green line.

Red vs Blue vs Green?

: One of the reasons I dislike it. Especially how the Forerunner seem less
: mythic, and more fantastic.

Right, I preferred the former. But that heads into territory of the other thread topic, re whether the FR remaining mystic would have served the Halo franchise better in the long run, or if this was a necessary direction to extend the life of Halo (whether you like that idea or not given its current state :)

: Eh. Just watched Pacific Rim for the first time. Felt like an entire season
: of anime crammed into two hours.
: 7/10, won't watch again if I'm sober.

heh, I don't watch anime, so this was just epic-scale machine vs monster combat. A wild ride. Even if the story was just a typical blockbuster ticket seller.