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The Plate Archive31 charts

Science Fiction, Monsters and the Apocalypse, in Charts

The genre most likely to be charted, because it is the genre most likely to specify things it cannot measure.

Thirty-one charts, and they are here because invented worlds do something no realist genre does: they declare their own rules out loud, and then break them wherever the plot needs it. A chart can hold a franchise to its own published specification, which is why this material produces sharper diagrams than any amount of realism.

Invented rules, taken literally

Choices According to Yoda renders the philosophy as three bars — do, do not, and a third for try that barely leaves the axis. Yoda Brainpower Allocation audits the same character as a resource budget. Girls Luke Skywalker Got To Kiss is a very short bar chart about a canonical fact the films spend three films regretting. Possible Outcomes Of Transformer Confrontations enumerates a franchise whose entire mechanic is enumeration, and Content of Transformers does the same job for the films.

The joke in each is the same and it is a good one: the fiction has told you the rule, so the chart is not inventing anything. It is reporting.

Death, counted

Star Trek Deaths is the collection’s most familiar title, because the observation behind it, that mortality on an away team tracks shirt colour, had already been made a thousand times in prose and had never once been falsified. Putting it on axes does not make it truer. It makes it look institutional, which is funnier.

Replicants alive at the end of a film runs the same audit on a different franchise and gets a shorter bar. Geographical Probability of Godzilla Attack plots a hazard map for a threat with a documented preference in landfall sites.

The zombie apocalypse as a specification

Six charts here treat the end of the world as a planning exercise, and they are the collection’s most useful material precisely because the scenario is fictional. Zombie Apocalypse Objects by Usefulness is a kit list ranked by utility. Places You’re Most Likely To See A Zombie is a hazard-by-location chart. Things a Zombie Would Do specifies the behaviour of the threat, and Things That An Average Person Would Do During A Zombie Apocalypse, published as its own plate, specifies the behaviour of everyone else, which is the funnier half.

Which Lead To The Apocalypse and Far fetched apocolypse theories widen the frame from one scenario to the whole genre of endings. God vs Satan, also published as a plate, is the earliest entry in the group and the only one that plots a contest rather than a procedure.

Physics as a punchline

Four charts here borrow the apparatus of real science. SPACE/TIME CONTINUUM is a diagram of a concept the films it comes from never define. Will the LHC create a black hole?, filed under the news, since it was a news story, belongs to the same family. Schrodinger’s cat is watching takes a thought experiment about observation and points it back at the reader. Multivariate Increase of M.C.Escher’s Popularity announces a statistical method in its title and then does not use one, which is its own kind of accuracy.

Theorized Coconut Transport Probabilities is the earliest of the group and the most rigorous: a probability distribution over an argument about load-bearing swallows, drawn in May 2008, linked from two sites.

The 2010 shift

The later entries are looser and mostly lost. Force existed, Facts are strong with this one, Jurassic youth, Caveat: She is a ROBOT, these are titles from the period when the site posted a reaction and drew a chart to carry it. Blatant Xeno-Sexism RIGHT HERE PEOPLE from September 2010 is the last recovered image in the collection and is linked from two sites, which suggests the late voice still travelled even when the discipline had gone.

What survives across the whole span is the collection’s one consistent argument: that a genre which specifies its own physics has volunteered to be measured, and that the measurement is always funnier than the specification.

Charts here
31
Images recovered
17
Published as plates
2
Referring domains
42
First posted
Apr 2008
Last posted
Sep 2010

The charts

In publication order. Sides run in tens, the way a record does. A chart marked as a plate has its own page and its own retrospective; the rest are published here, at the addresses they held when they were posted.

  1. A1

    SPACE/TIME CONTINUUM

    · 2 domains still link here · image not recovered

  2. A2

    Geographical Probability of Godzilla Attack

    · image not recovered

  3. A3

    Replicants alive at the end of a film

    · image not recovered

  4. A4

    Theorized Coconut Transport Probabilities

    · 2 domains still link here

  5. A5

    States Satan Failed To Collect Souls

    · Drawn by Patrick R · image not recovered

  6. A6

    God vs Satan

    · Drawn by rakudave · 4 domains still link here · published as a plate

  7. A7

    Girls Luke Skywalker Got To Kiss

    · Drawn by Tobias N

  8. A8

    Multivariate Increase of M.C.Escher’s Popularity

    · Drawn by B. Brucker

  9. A9

    # of Alien Women Slept with

    · Drawn by Michael E

  10. A10

    Choices According to Yoda

    · Drawn by TheObviousTourist

  11. Side B
  12. B1

    Star Trek Deaths

    · Drawn by slbain · 2 domains still link here · image not recovered

  13. B2

    Possible Outcomes Of Transformer Confrontations

    · Drawn by Vera C

  14. B3

    Yoda Brainpower Allocation

    · Drawn by johnb133

  15. B4

    Animals featured on “Planet Earth” series

    · Drawn by Alyssa · image not recovered

  16. B5

    Schrodinger’s cat is watching

  17. B6

    Things a Zombie Would Do

  18. B7

    Places You’re Most Likely To See A Zombie

    · Drawn by Amberwine

  19. B8

    The Future

    · Drawn by That_Guy_Behind_You · 2 domains still link here

  20. B9

    Content of Transformers

    · Drawn by hpkid1

  21. B10

    Zombie Apocalypse Objects by Usefulness

    · Drawn by Deathmask

  22. Side C
  23. C1

    Force existed

    · image not recovered

  24. C2

    Things I Would Do During A Zombie Apocalypse

    · Drawn by mossrolled01 · image not recovered

  25. C3

    Volcano explode

    · image not recovered

  26. C4

    Things That An Average Person Would Do During A Zombie Apocalypse

    · Drawn by greenlantern1416 · 4 domains still link here · published as a plate

  27. C5

    Far fetched apocolypse theories

    · image not recovered

  28. C6

    Facts are strong with this one

    · image not recovered

  29. C7

    Which Lead To The Apocalypse

    · Drawn by RiotDX

  30. C8

    My superpower is extreme cleanliness

    · image not recovered

  31. C9

    Jurassic youth

    · image not recovered

  32. C10

    Blatant Xeno-Sexism RIGHT HERE PEOPLE

    · Drawn by imtka · 2 domains still link here

  33. Side D
  34. D1

    Caveat: She is a ROBOT

    · Drawn by Shugotenshi · image not recovered

Queries answered

Why are the zombie charts in this collection?

Because a zombie apocalypse is a rule set, not a story. Six entries here plot survival kit, likely locations and what an average person would do, and they belong with the Yoda and Star Trek material for the same reason: the fiction has already published its own specification.

Why does science fiction attract so many charts?

Because the genre invents rules and then states them out loud. A universe with declared physics, a stated hierarchy and a canonical body count is already tabular. The chart only has to take the invented specification seriously.

Which chart is about Star Trek?

Star Trek Deaths, from August 2008, which plots the franchise’s best-known statistical joke. A second Trek chart, Space: The Final Frontier, is filed under Television because its subject is the broadcast rather than the fiction.

Is Schrödinger's cat really science fiction?

It is filed here because the archive treats it that way. Schrodinger’s cat is watching is a thought experiment used as a punchline, which puts it with the invented-rules material rather than with the animals.

What is the coconut chart?

Theorized Coconut Transport Probabilities, from May 2008, a probability treatment of the argument about whether a swallow could carry one. It is linked from two sites, and is one of the earliest charts here.

Why do some entries show no image?

All the original images sat on a host that now returns an error, so each was recovered from a surviving copy. Where no copy survived, the title, date and address are kept as the record.