cannoli-reader

[cannoli-reader]

Maybe you need a better term than "homophobes" to describe people who were right all along. The whole point of people who claimed these things being called homophobes was the assumption that their claims were baseless and driven by hatred for homosexuals. Undoubtedly some were, and are simply stopped-clock accurate, but by using the slur term, you are implying that's all that was driving anyone to speak up, when outcome strongly suggests it was actually prescience. At this point, it seems that good faith is the fairer assumption than bigotry.

And moving from connotations & popular usage, to denotation & technical meanings, it's not a phobia if the subject of one's fear is real and likely.

“Why be straight and cis when you can be- THE LGBT MOVEMENT HAS SPENT YEARS TRYING TO CONVINCE PEOPLE IT ISNT A CHOICE SHUT UP

[cannoli-reader]

Don't look so worried Elayne, it's not like he's going to trample all over the government of the nation you have trained since childhood to participate in, knock you up with boy-girl twins, get his hand cut off and then fall to the dark side and choke out his brunette girlfriend.

[cannoli-reader]

It's basically a trope, especially in genre fiction (even the Bible, if one chooses to look at it that way) that institutions with a high, or moral, purpose, have lost their way, fallen in some fashion or are otherwise unprepared to meet the great crisis of the story, especially if it's one for which they have been preparing or anticipating for a long time.

This is seen so often, because it's true to a degree, it resonates with human nature & experience. Look at the government of your country. Do you really think it's doing the job for which it was established? To protect your rights, freedom & property? To ensure your material welfare & prosperity, to guard against the predators in society? Yeah, I didn't think so.

The one word used to describe the Jedi and/or the Force consistently in Star Wars is religion. It isn't quite, the way we think of or experience religion, but it fills in a lot of the same purposes in the setting. And when the Order exists, what do we see it doing? Answering to the government. Conducting diplomacy on its behalf, attempting to arbitrate disputes among the citizens, responding to threats to the body politic, advising the head of state. The concept of a "wall of separation" between church and state was conceived for the protection of the former, not the latter. The fate of the Jedi Order in the Star Wars prequels demonstrates the how and why of this. It's not that the Jedi are doing wrong, or are harming the Republic, rather they are stepping into the gaps where the Republic is failing. But it's not what the Jedi are for, it's not what the Force is for.

The Jedi became an institution of the Republic and were destroyed along with it. Palpatine bent the Republic and its laws and constitution until they were at the breaking point, beyond which the Jedi could not be bent and remain true to themselves, but they had become so identified with the Republic that their resistance to Palpatine's takeover became, de facto, an act of rebellion, perceived as treachery. They could no longer act as an independent body, they could no longer say "We have no duty to the Chancellor, we have the right to act strictly according to our own beliefs and consciences where he is concerned" because they failed to exercise that right throughout the series of crises manufactured by the Sith, and because they effectively had been taking the orders of the Chancellor and/or the Senate for longer than that.

Their ossified rules and practices could have led to their undertaking bureaucratic functions because they gravitated toward government service as a result of their bureaucratic mindset, or working so closely with the government, out of a belief that it was the best way to help the people the government was supposed to be protecting, infected the Order with governmental, bureaucratic thinking. It's not an accident that Qui-Gon Jinn is described in his first scene as being frequently at odds with the leadership, not progressing in the organization, and also imparting a lesson to his apprentice to pay attention to the Force instead of politics, that contradicts what his superiors teach. It's not bad characterization that Obi-Wan quotes Yoda as saying he should be mindful of the future, and in Empire Strikes Back, Yoda complains to Obi-Wan that Luke is unsuited as a Jedi, because he has always been looking to the future. No, that was very much deliberate, that Yoda, practically the films' embodiment of wisdom, has come around to Qui-Gon's perspective. Nor is it an accident that the music composed for Qui-Gon's duel with a Sith lord is called "Duel of the Fates." They were literally fighting for the fate of Anakin at least, and possibly the Order and the galaxy as well. Qui-Gon was the proof that the Jedi are good, that Anakin could have been saved. But he died and there was no one left among the Masters with his commitment to the Force over and above politics and trade, and Anakin's fate was all but sealed.

It probably says something about how far our Republics have fallen, how our good institutions have deteriorated that we get so many edgelord takes on this concept, and there is such a critical mass of them, that Leslye Hedland gets to actually write and produce "The Acolyte."

Whenever I think about the dark side and how Star Wars talks about it, it's never as small as having a temper or being prideful

It's those character flaws to an extreme

It's the loss of control. The loss of stability. The loss of who you really wanted to be. It's everything you would be if you sacrificed any kind of restraint

No one's turn to the dark side has ever been treated as a freeing experience because that's not what it is. Most dark side users have been broken down and twisted by even worse characters into following them. In most cases, it takes years of pain and suffering to be fully corrupted. It takes direct brainwashing to turn someone quickly. The very few who seemingly turned to the dark side completely by their own choice were just inherently drawn to the worst aspects of a person's nature

Many jedi have their own flaws and struggles. Quite a few lose their way and need time to rediscover themselves and who they are as jedi, but many of them never fall to the dark side because the dark side is more severe than having negative traits

The light side represents who a person is when they are at peace with themselves. It's who they are when they accept their vices as part of them, and then refuse to let those same vices dominate them. Keeping your worst traits under control is not a form of repression

The dark side is the full rejection of all of your positive traits. It's embracing your vices to the point that compassion and kindness no longer exist. It's expressing every negative emotion without thought or restraint

Light represents freedom. You're free to decide for yourself what kind of person you want to be. You're free to choose your way forward. You're free to change and grow as you please

Darkness is the one that represents being trapped. It's the side that chains you to your hatred and refuses to let go. It's what blinds you to the goodness in the world and lose sight of everything you hoped to be

That's why there's no such thing as positive corruption in Star Wars

[cannoli-reader]

Me, living in NJ: The fuck do we pay taxes for that the cops can't do anything about these douchebags in weed shop across the street, or the chop shop down the road.

Me, also living in NJ: What she said about CA.

Our choices for governor are my Democratic Congresswoman, who won her seat all but running as a Republican, with ads promising not to vote for Pelosi and emphasizing her prosecutorial record and military service, against the prior Republican candidate, whom I met on the boardwalk down the shore last election cycle, and when I asked him about several regulatory issues, his proposed solution was to hire more state employees to process the applications faster.

Me, living in Texas: Have you all considered that Rules and Regulations could help improve our society? That following Rules and Regulations is a good idea? Perhaps?

Me, visiting California: Have you all considered just... letting people live their lives? That not every tiny aspect of existence needs to be regulated? Maybe?

[cannoli-reader]

Apropos of nothing, but that's a paraphrase of an actual quote by Martin Luther, including the "sin boldly" phrase.

Just passed a Lutheran church in my way home that had a pride flag with the words “If empathy is a sin, then sin boldly.”

I have never been more disgusted at the devil or disappointed in my fellow believers in my life. Please pray with me for those people.

There’s a Lutheran church near that boasts on its signs about how “accepting and inclusive” they are and waving all the woke sexuality flags (but not displaying any actual Christian or biblical symbols. Easy to see what they value and prioritize the most).

It’s always the Lutheran churches 🙄

[cannoli-reader]

Visser Three made it to the top of the Yeerk hierarchy and came within a hair of conquering Earth.*

Just saying.

*Yes, yes he technically lost in the end, and while I'm sure there's a way that courtesy & respect could have found a way to thwart indestructible dog robots with fool-proof holograms and cheat-code-level hacking proficiency, but I ain't holding my breath.

Visser Three is the kind of guy who thinks promising people a quicker, less painful death is an incentive to cooperate with him.

[cannoli-reader]

As bad as that trilogy was, it was rendered an improvement retroactively by "I, Jedi" Michael Stackpole's novel featuring his personal Mary-Sue, Corran Horn, ret-conning Horn into the Jedi Academy story as one of the students. Except it makes the writing of Rey Palpatine look grounded, balanced and restrained. The big bad guy they fought at the academy? Actually, Corran defeated him behind the scenes. He had better ideas for a training curriculum than Luke, and was the best student, but he left the academy to figure things out on his own, and did; having a grand victorious adventure on his own, after which Luke came and paid his respects to what an awesome Jedi Horn turned out to be.

Anderson would also write the much worse stand-alone novel Darksaber. And for my money, The Courtship of Princess Leia was a much bigger piece of cringe than the Academy trilogy. There was a lot of crap in the EU, and Lucasfilm knew it, because around the time of the prequels being released, they seem to have given Timothy Zahn a mandate to wrap it up and clean up as much of the continuity conflicts as possible with the Hand of Thrawn two-parter, leading into the Yuzhan Vong saga (which kicked off with established genre star author, R. A. Salvatore, killing off Chewbacca for shock value). From that point on, the Star Wars novels seemed to progress with more oversight and coordination, but were never more than mid. IMO, the best works from that point were the ones filling in the backstory around the prequels, especially Darth Plageius, by James Luceno, and the novelization of Episode III, by Mathew Stover, which either serves as a massive script doctor for the film, or else represents a great original script that was butchered in the filming & editing.

The worst thing about Star Wars was never Jar-Jar Binks and the Midichlorians. It was always Kevin J. Anderson's Jedi Academy trilogy.

Go to the bathroom right now and wash your mouth out with soap.

[cannoli-reader]

Regarding "never doing Rogue One Again," they did, but better, it's called "Andor."

As for the established EU backstory, I'm not familiar with that, my experience was limited, so IDK how it goes. But the problem I have with Rogue One was that it was, like the early seasons of Game of Thrones, a mild, almost unnoticeable case of the exact same problems that would metastasize and wreck their respective franchises down the road. While not as egregious and more palatable, in hindsight you can see all the Disney Star Wars problems in Rogue One, like poor espionage and military practices that make the warring factions look incompetent; forced insertion of a little English brunette whose character is given way too much importance, while lacking in much substance; characters who are supposed to shady or morally gray, but we are only told as much and very little of that actually makes it onto the screen; and really stupid retcons that contradict, or even damage, the original movies.

Rogue One looks like the South Park parody line "Put a chick in it and make her lame and gay" is about 2/3 literal truth. The movie did not need the Erso family at all. Especially after "Andor," it makes much more sense for Cassian, Melshii & K2SO to have been the focus of the story. It really feels like someone took a look at the script and told them to stick a chick in it and make her lame, so they invented Jyn and then Galen, to given Jyn a reason to get involved. Everything about their story seems like it was written backwards from making Jyn important, and by the way, makes Galen into an incompetent, an asshole or both, while making Imperial Security into a joke.

Full disclosure, I had a working theory for years before Rogue One came out, that the Death Star's weakness was a feature deliberately built in by Vader, possibly with the collaboration of the Emperor, to enable Vader to scuttle the station if the Force atheists in command decided that having the "ultimate power in the universe" under their control might justify a change in rulers. The weakness requires deft piloting to access, and use of the Force to actually hit the target. In other words, it's tailor-made for Vader's skillset, and it seems really weird otherwise, that a guy with his apparent need for a special medical facility, would have a hyperdrive-equipped one-man starfighter, that seems to be all cockpit. This is clearly not Vader's optimal method of interstellar transportation, and most of the time he is on a shuttle or his Star Destroyer. The only real explanation why he has a lightspeed-capable TIE fighter aboard the Death Star seems to be in case he has to destroy it and get away, but can't necessarily count on having another ship in system to pick him up. I am not at all butthurt at Rogue One for preempting my theory, because Galen's retcon is so sloppy that I can simply adjust it to his being the unwitting tool of Vader, and Lonni Jung somehow tinkered with the security clearances, inadvertently allowing Bodhi to get in contact with Galen, whose own ineptitude in sending his warning is due to working around security brainwashing preventing him for putting anything useful in his message.

But that's just another example of Rogue One foreshadowing its successors in the Disney portfolio, where the viewers have to do even more mental gymnastics to bludgeon the stories into a semblance of coherence.

I hate how even people who like the Star Wars prequels feel the need to go "I know they're flawed, but..." when talking about their prequel love. Screw that. The prequels are wonderful. They're fun and engaging and they fit in well with the original trilogy.

And compared to the terrible fanfiction Disney Star Wars has been putting out for the last 9 years, even the worst prequel is Citizen Kane and The Godfather all rolled into one.

[cannoli-reader]

If you think men need to be torn down for women to succeed you're just admitting you think men are inherently superior to women.

[cannoli-reader]

The smirk of a woman convinced she has plot armor.

[cannoli-reader]

Actually, investigating the elections is consistent with a sincere belief that there was something wrong there. I was rather surprised that Trump would make such an effort, because I more or less assumed he would not care about the integrity of any elections, now that he is in his second term as president and can no longer be affected by the issue.

And a 3rd special prosecutor, in his fifth year as president (the first of which was against himself), is hardly going to bankrupt the republic, and even a foredoomed effort to ensure the integrity and faith in our electoral process is a better use of the office than, say, protecting the "fifis" of the opposition media and politicians who took Joseph Wilson seriously.

So trump is looking to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the 2020 elections. Honestly, how small and petty is he?

If we need a special prosecutor every time Trump's fifis got hurt, we're going to add another trillion to the deficit.

-SLAL

[cannoli-reader]

You might have forgotten, but no, in the 90s, Cindy Crawford was a far worse choice. Mulder & Scully were characters on an obscure niche TV show. I only knew the names, because I, a teen in the 90s, was into genre entertainment, but I never saw the show. Cindy Crawford was, as they pointed out, one of the biggest names in popular culture. It would be like Marco & Rachel claiming to be Joel Miller & Ellie Williams and Cassie saying she's Taylor Swift. Genre fans will know who the former are, and everyone will recognize the name of the latter. FFS, the ubiquity of Cindy Crawford is probably why the name occurred to Cassie in the first place.

Can't believe Marco and Rachel were making fun of Cassie for saying 'Cindy Crawford', as if 'Mulder and Scully' were any better.

[cannoli-reader]

Also, Sanderson's attempt to "fix" this issue wrt the Yellow was idiotic.

Egwene phrases her reaction to the room full of plants oddly. “And Nynaeve complained that the sisters in the White Tower ignored the use of herbs! If only she could spend some time with plump, round-faced Suana.” There are two ways to interpret this passage, in addition to noting the oddity of Suana's attitude, completely at odds with every Yellow among the rebels. The first is that Egwene is immediately falling into her old habits of scoffing at Nynaeve. Something on the order of "What IS that crazy bitch going on about? Yellows do too love plants. Just look at this place!" A second issue with Egwene's perception is that she equates Suana's vegetables with Nynaeve's medicinal herbs. The only types specifically mentioned are vegetables and spices. There is nothing aside from their common floral nature to tie what Suana does to refute Nynaeve's complaint. In fact, it reinforces Nynaeve's complaint!

Nynaeve: Even if they are not as useful as Healing, herbs are a part of the healing arts and understanding them cannot hurt a sister's comprehension & use of her Talent. All the sisters I know are very resistant to this concept, and even belittle me for making use of herbal medicines. Egwene: Hah! That's where you're wrong Nynaeve! In her rooms in the Tower, Suana has a garden set up where she grows carrots and radishes. Nynaeve:...Wow. Nothing like finding out you have just wasted all those years I spent teaching you about medicine.

Of course there is a worse option: SUANA could think they're medicinal. I shudder to contemplate what she prescribes carrots to cure. Suana: Lonlieness. Nynaeve: Nice try, but for that, I prefer to give cucumbers...

Anyway, as I was saying, you can interpret that quote as Egwene snarking off against Nynaeve, simply because she has a positive reaction to Suana, or else she is on Nynaeve's side and saying it's too bad Nynaeve could not meet Suana because they have so much in common. However, that quote is just about the worst way to express the latter sentiment and carries a very strong connotation of the former interpretation. Additionally, the oddly placed description of Suana in that quote, where it is not at all relevant to the idea of the sentence highlights the awkwardness, IMO.

they did not care much for her herbs, but you did not need herbs when you could Heal with the Power

This is one of the failings through hubris of the White Tower. Yes, the Power can heal more thoroughly and rapidly than herbs, but that doesn't mean that herbs are useless. For one thing, Healing requires energy and effort. Sometimes, there is not enough to go around. For another thing, herbs can help with recovery after Healing, or ameliorate symptoms that don't warrant Healing (such as sea sickness).

[cannoli-reader]

Also, notice that one of the oldest, best educated sisters in the White Tower, needs Nynaeve to ascertain the poison that killed Adeleas and Ispan.

Also, also, forkroot. Yes, it caught everyone by surprise - how are the Aes Sedai supposed to expect this weird miraculous herb to come out of nowhere to which channelers are vulnerable? Well, if you were better educated in herblore, if you made active efforts to study herbs and mundane medicine, maybe it would not have taken you all by surprise!

Additionally, I am morally certain that Nynaeve's self-discovered Healing weaves use all the Powers and are adaptable, because her knowledge of medicine and anatomy influenced her subconscious efforts at Healing. Where other people's thought process would be "make it better" Nynaeve's was undoubtedly targeted at the symptoms and their root causes, and thinking of the specific treatments for each, and thus her Healing weaves are more targeted. Her Healing provides its own strength, rather than drawing on that of her patient, because she is aware of the overall health of her patients and the need to avoid taxing their systems.

they did not care much for her herbs, but you did not need herbs when you could Heal with the Power

This is one of the failings through hubris of the White Tower. Yes, the Power can heal more thoroughly and rapidly than herbs, but that doesn't mean that herbs are useless. For one thing, Healing requires energy and effort. Sometimes, there is not enough to go around. For another thing, herbs can help with recovery after Healing, or ameliorate symptoms that don't warrant Healing (such as sea sickness).

[cannoli-reader]

Oooh! Neither did Egwene, and she was both aware of the interest her mother would have in her relationship and had ready access to Traveling, to facilitate Marin's presence. No excuses, off with her head!

I finished wheel of time and all I have to say is the ONLY post a memory of light scene I need to see is the one where Bodewhin Cauthon—little sister and tattletale to the end—flounces up to her parents and tells them “Matrim got married to the Seanchan empress” then walks away while mat feels a disturbance in the pattern suspiciously like the dice rolling in his head again

[cannoli-reader]

Lincoln prioritized the union over abolition, but don't mistake political statements aimed at the former goal as an honest repudiation of the latter. Slavery was the issue by which he staked out his political career & owed his success. If he was not an abolitionist, it is only in the technical sense, in that he might have preferred a more gradual or conciliatory approach to ending slavery, but he had the same end goal. Letting the south keep their slaves was a price he was willing to pay to preserve the union, not his goal or ideal situation. If anything, retaining the slave states would be the best way to eventually see the end of the institution, whereas the US would have limited ability to effect that end were the slaves all in another country. There was no guarantee of success in a war to either reunite the country or abolish slavery, so any sensible and reasonable leader would have preferred unity over secession.

As far as the economic argument, the first time South Carolina tried to secede was a generation before the Civil War under Jackson, over tariffs. Because the profits of slave labor industries were tied up in a cash-crops-for-manufactured-good trade cycle with the UK and other European countries, with many of the planters in debt to foreign merchants and bankers. It was the British government that vetoed an act of Virginia's House of Burgesses forbidding slavery in the colony. The ill-informed embarrassment of Rhode Island to having "plantation" in its formal name, leading to the state legislature changing it a few years back, is the result of "plantation" originally meaning "colony" not 'slave farm' that people came to understand it as.

For the slave owners themselves, it was a lifestyle they were attached to, and were allowed to maintain, regardless of the debts (the monied powers in Europe were well used to holding paper on aristocrats and estates in genteel poverty), so they were unlikely to ever yield to the economic reality, but it's pretty obvious. For those who don't care to do the historical research to discover the economic, population & manufacturing disparities between the USA & CSA, just listen to Clark Gable's rant early in Gone with the Wind on the futility of a war with the North. Birmingham, Alabama, is one of the greatest natural sites for steel making in the world, certainly in North America, having iron, coal & coke deposits in close proximity (steel industries have historically boomed in places with just two of the three, while other parts of the world like Germany, only became successful when transportation infrastructure improved to allow the supply of the missing elements to a location where the other was located). Yet, there was no steel industry there (or anywhere in the South, really), as long as there was slavery. There simply is not the true drive for profits and or new sources of income under a command economy that you get in the free market.

There are two ways to look at slavery in the US: If you believe it was profitable and the wealth from slavery industries built the country, then what does it say that the vast majority of the states and people rejected it, and wrote that rejection into the Constitutions of their states, regardless of the loss of wealth that would entail? If slavery was such an intrinsic part of America's makeup, why did the slave states spend two generations fighting politically to impose slavery in the expansion of the country, and maintain a parity of slave & free states in the Senate? Why did they fight a bloody war in order to leave such a hospitable environment? Or you can assert that the economic reality strips the virtue from the country's inarguable tendency toward freedom, and it was an easy & sanctimonious position for the free states to take, since other industries were more profitable. In which case, whither the argument for reparations? If America was not built on the profits of slavery, if generations of Americans did not turn their backs on the blood money but simply discarded an obsolete economic model in pursuit of greater means of wealth, then how are the descendants of slaves (plus Kamala Harris, Barack Obama & Ilhan Omar), entitled to a share of those non-existent profits? It's like a criminal's victims suing his parents & siblings for restitution despite their rejecting his criminal lifestyle, beating him up, sending him to jail, and taking him back into the family under strict watch to keep him on the straight and narrow.

Interesting read, though I disagree with two points. One, Lincoln wasn't as much of an abolitionist as the author portrays here. He wasn't pro slavery by any means, but he would have happily (or at least contentedly) let the south keep their slaves if that would have kept the union together and he could have gotten his party to go along with it. (This is me massively oversimplifying a complex issue, but I think as a general hypothesis it holds up) Two, I don't believe for a second that slavery 150 years ago is at all responsible for poverty today. He's just repackaging the tired left wing justifications for reparations and DEI and using them to try and dunk on those very same issues. But I reject that premise wholesale. Nowhere in America still feels the effects of slavery. Slavery has been over and done with for 150 years and it has zero impact on anyone today except where race hustlers use it to try and extort money out of people.

But I do find the parts about how slavery held the south back economically to be interesting. And I definitely agree and find interesting that the most prosperous parts of the country, the places that "built America", were free states.

[cannoli-reader]

She wouldn't do that, because in most parents' eyes, that's a win. Only a bigoted or particularly uptight & sanctimonious parent would be angry at their child for choosing a spouse of the wrong ethnicity, nationality or belief system. The sort of parent who would react to news of Mat's "dicing - and winning - and kissing the girls" with horror and outrage, not chuckling "That sounds like my Mat."

I finished wheel of time and all I have to say is the ONLY post a memory of light scene I need to see is the one where Bodewhin Cauthon—little sister and tattletale to the end—flounces up to her parents and tells them “Matrim got married to the Seanchan empress” then walks away while mat feels a disturbance in the pattern suspiciously like the dice rolling in his head again