I watched the entire video, but I timestamped the link to where I believe it matters most for any comrade that ever liked Star Trek, liberal idealistic and quasi-militaristic flaws and all, and would like to see a succinct and thorough summary of what they might have already felt, may have already inductively collected for themselves, but got it drowned out by "well the TNG gang got together by the end of Picard Season 3 so just enjoy it like a popcorn movie, 4/5" or even worse brainworms like "section 31 is based and it's just cold hard reality that such an agency would have to exist for the Federation to exist, just like in based Deep Space 9 which was totally about wars and genocidal biowarfare plots and how cool and necessary they are."

The Trek fandom site in the Lemmyverse is loaded with insufferable liberal/libertarian brainworms and a fair amount of Thermian Arguments that justify anything that was presented on screen as not only good, but necessary if they were done by protagonist characters, and not just the flaws, weaknesses, and (for lack of a better term) sins of characters that weren't intended to be infallible, let alone blindly emulated, no matter how cool it was when Sisko punched Q or whatever.

TL;DR: I hope comrades find value in this concluding section of a much larger video, or maybe even watch the whole thing, which I also think is worthwhile. Also, I fucking despise Section 31 apologists because they make the Lemmyverse's Trek site unbearable for me. If Kurtzman gets his way (especially with that Section 31 series he keeps jerking off about), Trek will become increasingly murderfucky gory edgy black ops obsessed bootlicking schlock with a vague and redundant nostalgia flavor.

  • Black_Mald_Futures [any]
    ·
    27 days ago

    section 31 is based and it's just cold hard reality that such an agency would have to exist for the Federation to exist

    i mean this is literally my defense of China/the USSR/DPRK etc etc, you literally do need some clandestine bullshit intelligence agency when you're beset by those of others

    this isn't a section 31 defense because I'm not enough of a nerd to know all the holocausts they've done for liberalism

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      27 days ago

      I reluctantly agree with you the same way that I acknowledge that most ideas of "don't tell me what to doooooo" anarchist utopia come apart the moment a more organized force decides to invade and take what it wants.

      Even so, I fucking despise the "every atrocity is justified if the unaccountable shadow people, or the writer, says it is" brainworms that some get out of DS9 and especially from NuTrek.

      • Black_Mald_Futures [any]
        ·
        27 days ago

        Hehe, reluctant agreement, my favorite kind of agreement gendo-tent

        But yeah no i agree, it's just lib shit if it's used to handwave away "we did a genocide" or whatever. Nutrek sucks, it's just action schlock and it's not even good it's all shaky cam action schlock

        • UlyssesT [he/him]
          hexagon
          ·
          27 days ago

          If Kurtzman gets his precious Section 31 show finally off the ground, it'll make those bloodthirsty wine liberals even more insufferable in Trek fan communities. Some say I complained too much about Gambo, and well, I am pretty sure I'd hate any sort of successful enough Section 31 prestige tv shit enough to eclipse even that if it got prominent enough in pop culture somehow.

          • Frank [he/him, he/him]
            ·
            27 days ago

            It is possible to complain to much about gambo, but only in so far as there are much more interesting things to complain about where there is more productive discussion to be had.

            • UlyssesT [he/him]
              hexagon
              ·
              26 days ago

              I am truly grateful that the Gambo juggernaut is slowing down and coming apart. Maybe it's just the change of scenery and people around me, but not once this year did I have to hear about the unmissable must-see moments like DAE LE RED WEDDING and DAE LE SHAME in whatever might be the recent murderfucking treats.

              I know almost nothing about "House of the Dragon" except it had a shitty unsatisfying ending, which doesn't surprise me whatsoever. football-lucy

              • Frank [he/him, he/him]
                ·
                26 days ago

                I've heard house of dragon is okay - much less awooga and sexual violence for it's own sake, more dragons.

                • UlyssesT [he/him]
                  hexagon
                  ·
                  26 days ago

                  That's nice, I suppose. Still sounded like misery for misery's sake from what I heard about the first episodes.

                  How about that ending, then? Did Lucy keep the football in place for the kick? football-charlie-brown

                  • Frank [he/him, he/him]
                    ·
                    26 days ago

                    Oh I have not watched it and never will, I just heard it's less grotesque.

                    • UlyssesT [he/him]
                      hexagon
                      ·
                      26 days ago

                      I am glad for that I suppose, but as I've said before, diluted sewage is still sewage to me.

          • buckykat [none/use name]
            ·
            27 days ago

            Good news and bad: the Section 31 show has been cancelled, but it's gonna be a movie instead now

            • UlyssesT [he/him]
              hexagon
              ·
              27 days ago

              That means less overall cultural exposure, but possibly a heavier impact if it has any success at all.

              I'm sure if there's plenty of "adults in the room making the hard decisions and getting shit done" the hogs will oink and gobble it up, especially if it's loaded with Gambo shit like sensationalized SV and the like. Corpo media will do the old "this isn't your father's boring old Trek! It's mature now and by mature we mean murderfucking and quips from smirking sociopaths between SV sessions!" that boosted Gambo into the stratosphere if the movie is successful enough.

                • UlyssesT [he/him]
                  hexagon
                  ·
                  27 days ago

                  Oh yeah the head douche of that terrible Lemmyverse argument I got into was really, really into the idea of the Terran Empire's time traveling and universe hopping Mary Sue (with Section 31 associations too because OF FUCKING COURSE) made friends on the Discovery and therefore felt kind of bad for what she did and would "reform" the Terran Empire somehow, pinkie promise.

                  I said that was a load of bullshit and even if she meant it, it wasn't even so much as pulling out the knife as Malcolm X once put it; the atrocities are already done, claiming to feel bad about it doesn't undo the damage.

                  I got an astonishingly basic smug P R E S T I G E T V enjoying liberal barrage of "heh, you are babybrained and clearly dont understand what the adults in the room are doing" jagoff that ended, of course, in a last word game.

                    • UlyssesT [he/him]
                      hexagon
                      ·
                      27 days ago

                      I wanted to like the Lemmyverse Trek site, but that wasn't the first time a bunch of smug neoliberal jagoff was exchanged there, without me saying a damn word, where they gladhand each other about "to each his own" as if ethics in the Trek setting are just sports teams or like Star Wars lightsaber colors and costume choices. No surprise, Team Evil is the most popular and they want to feel like smart cool insiders, like their edgelord counterparts (or themselves) in Star Trek Online that fill their characters' biography spaces with "BLACK OPS TOP SECRET CLASSIFIED RUMOR HAS IT EXILED SHADOW FORCE NEED TO KNOW BASIS" jagoff while commanding the ISS Ayn Rand.

                      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
                        ·
                        27 days ago

                        Ueeeueueueugh star wars light saber colors! It's literally just so you can tell who is one which team, but apparently in the shows now you sword changes colors if you wangst hard enough because something about inner turmoil or some shit. The idea that the dark side is a real verb, it's using you magic powers to take things and hurt people and not an abstraction or a mood, is too much for some!

                        • UlyssesT [he/him]
                          hexagon
                          ·
                          26 days ago

                          Grrrrrrr this glowbat is bleeding because I want to drain all the goodness out of your goodness crystal

                          Show

                          I'm still pissed that Lucas signed on to that Clone Wars episode with the Nice Moon and the Mean Moon and the god of enlightened centrism preaching that everyone needs a balanced diet of peaceful contemplation and murderfucking for maximum space magic gainz. centrist

                          • Frank [he/him, he/him]
                            ·
                            25 days ago

                            Ugggggggggh nooooooooooooo fuck all the episodes where the force was in any way personified!

                            The only story i can think of that did the "you must be 50:50 good:evil crap are the Recluse books. And they had order chaos and worked on the premise that the more order magic you concentrated in one place the more chaotic everywhere else got. Recluse was a little hermit magic liberal super-power nation that had basically stolen and sequestered all the order magic in the world, allowing themselves to build steam punk super weapons and leaving the rest of the world subject to chaos magic which was really good for war magic and breaking things. They had all the build sustain and preserve magic, everyone else pretty much had " fireball!" And recluse used their magic to build ironclad gunships that only they could use because anywhere else a chaos magician could snap their fingers and detonate the powder magazine. So it wasn't actually good and evil and it was actually justified by the magic system - the liberals had done, idk, magic imperialism to the rest of the world and reaping the bennies while everyone else suffered both from the absense of magic for sustaining, strengthening, and building and also a flood of magic suited for disassembling, weakening, and dismantling. And no one benefitted from processes that employed the two forms in harmony as a complete system.

                            A big part of the first book and honestly the only thing i remember is the kid from the super Orderly lib society leaving and finding out that chaos wasn't actually evil and had legitimate uses beyond casting fireball.

                            • UlyssesT [he/him]
                              hexagon
                              ·
                              25 days ago

                              I was prepared to get really mad at Final Fantasy XIV before I actually played Shadowbringers and found out how they'd expand the cosmology, mythos, and magic system to explain how light and darkness really work. I hate "neutrality means only murderfucking half the time" fictional morality systems, so it was nice to have the reveal that light and darkness were energy, just like the other elements of fire, lightning, wind, water, ice (no idea why ice is its own element but it's magic so whatever) and earth, and that all of them could "flood" and destroy ecosystems and entire worlds. Evil still exists, as intent, and the utter annihilative force is an absence of such magic in the form of nihilistic despair as applied through akashi, or dynamis. Not perfect, but it was actually nice to separate good and evil from the elemental system entirely, no matter the reputation of "black mages" in the setting versus "white mages" before.

                      • buckykat [none/use name]
                        ·
                        27 days ago

                        I've got one in another thread trying to tell me that Billups isn't ace right now it's a silly place

                        • UlyssesT [he/him]
                          hexagon
                          ·
                          27 days ago

                          Billups isn't ace

                          EXPLAIN THIS BULLSHIT guts-rage

                          ... I'll check it out after I come back. Sleepy.

                            • UlyssesT [he/him]
                              hexagon
                              ·
                              27 days ago

                              Mr. Billup's orientation has always alluded and intrigued me.

                              I think most evidence points to him being asexual (like his comment in 2x07 "Will it hurt" maybe implying he doesn't experience attraction and his general lack of demonstration of any romantic interest where every other senior officer does).

                              However, there are a couple of things that might point to him being gay, bi, or pan. His hologram duplicate in Crisis Point: Rise of Vindicta seemed to show almost a romantic interest in Rutherford's character, although it could just be wanting a platonic bestie to share his engineering hyperfixation with (the platonic aspect being seen in his loneliness in the mess hall at the end of the episode). In addition, in 2x07, the soldiers sent by the queen could be evidence of her knowing Billup's orientation.

                              "Absolutely any opinion made of the character must be equally valid, and as such any sort of platonic friendship or fondness must automatically be weighed equally as possibly sexual tension. Actual sexual expression presented in the show, or lack thereof even when pressed, means nothing in the face of the power of shipping."

                              Thanks. Sleeping will be slightly harder. sleepless

          • Black_Mald_Futures [any]
            ·
            26 days ago

            I look forward to parsing through your many emojis if this terrible fate you've predicted does come to pass

      • buckykat [none/use name]
        ·
        27 days ago

        Some of the morally questionable things in DS9 are more justifiable. Like In The Pale Moonlight, where Sisko and Garak assassinate a Romulan Senator to trick Romulus into joining the Dominion War on the Federation's side. Hell, I expect that when the Romulans eventually find out about that they'll respect it as a very Romulan sort of plot. Notably, Section 31 wasn't involved in that one.

        • UlyssesT [he/him]
          hexagon
          ·
          27 days ago

          I'm talking, like, the genocide attempt on the entire changeling species. One particular chud on the Trek Lemmy site said that was the only way to save the Federation... which it clearly wasn't even in the show as written because clearly that genocide attempt didn't actually go off as planned. Maybe another example of "it didn't happen, but it should have" hitler-detector

          • buckykat [none/use name]
            ·
            27 days ago

            Yeah, that was especially egregious. I also hated the time Sisko poisoned an entire planet because Eddington was being too antifascist near him

            • UlyssesT [he/him]
              hexagon
              ·
              27 days ago

              Memes about how Sisko was infinitely based and all that tend to voluntarily mention that shit, too.

              I can accept a flawed character struggling to survive and endure a dark time for the Federation. When his atrocities become "based" to edgier fans that basically saw DS9 as "THE ONE WITH THE WAR WAR WAR WAR WAR" I get really tired of their shit.

              • someone [comrade/them, they/them]
                ·
                26 days ago

                Somewhere in another universe there's a version of DS9 where the focus was on rebuilding Bajor and all the complex post-revolution politics that inevitably happens, and not on technobabble and CGI space battles. We got glimpses of what it could have been like with episodes like "Duet", "Shakaar", "Progress" and "Past Prologue". What could have been.

                • UlyssesT [he/him]
                  hexagon
                  ·
                  26 days ago

                  While I enjoyed DS9, I'm on my guard whenever someone in the internet wild says DS9 is their favorite Trek because there's a significant chance it's because of atrocity enjoying/apologia and WAR WAR WAR WAR WAR WAR lanyard warrior fixations. nerd

                  • someone [comrade/them, they/them]
                    ·
                    26 days ago

                    Oh fully agreed on that. My personal litmus test is what they think of "Duet". If they don't remember it, that's a bad sign, because it's easily the best episode of the series.

                    I do think that DS9 was consistently better written than TNG on average. But on rewatches I just find myself disappointed with how many missed opportunities there were. In canon, Bajor is an old world, rich in a variety of cultures. There's so much that could have been done with that setting in a post-occupation political-infighting context. The first few seasons started to go down this road. But in the end we got almost nothing. Honestly during rewatches I tend to skip most of the latter half of the series. I just don't find the war to be interesting.

                    In contrast TNG was never really trying to be anything other than modernized-for-the-1980s TOS. Just high-concept episodic sci-fi. It succeeded brilliantly at that once Roddenberry's counterproductive micromanagement was over by the end of season 2.

            • CyborgMarx [any, any]
              ·
              27 days ago

              To be fair he made the planet toxic only to Humans after Eddington tried to make it toxic only to Cardassians

              I mean its a bit outta pocket, but there's a million planets and he was trying to make a really funny point

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]
          ·
          27 days ago

          My favorite part of Discovery was the episode where the anthropologist yells "holy shit Klingons! You have to punch them in the face as hard as you can right now or we'll all die!" And then they don't listen to the anthropologist and they don't ship-punch the klingons and then they do all die. Idk if the other episodes were good.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      27 days ago

      Yeah but there's a difference here - Communist intelligence units are full of commies, and can be a net good and continue to be a net good as long as they continue to be full of commies. Their goal is to defend the star trek future. Their enemies are the guys who think that Section 31 make cool protagonists.

      If you look at the cold war, one thing I'm amazed by is how cheap you can by an American patriot. It's fucking chump change, beer money. And it's always because America's spies don't have financial stability and a good quality of life.

      Meanwhile the Russians had guys inside Hoovers toilet counting the boils on his ass.

      You'll find endless discussion on why, but i'm pretty sure at the end of the day the commies were fighting for an idea, and the americans, regardless of what they believed, were fighting for a roof, braces for their kid, cancer treatment for their mom.

      The section 31 these show runners have created aren't hard nose old revolutionaires who have seen and done terrible things in the name of a good and honest ideology. The show runners are all end of history kids. They grew up after the world of ideology and belief had ended. For them there's only the status quo, forever.

      Starfleet can't boldly go because they've already arrived at the end of history. Starfleet is america, section 31 is the cia and fbi and army, the only conceivable goal is to maintain the status quo forever. And int he world of the show runners that means that as the status quo decays for reasons they are ideologically not allowed to understand the intelligence services, the section 31s, use increasingly mask off violence to keep the wheels on.

      Sci fi is always about society in the present day. Picard is about america, no. With no soviet union who can the romulans or klingons be? There's no one left except competing "bad" capitalists. There's no revolutionary future, just a static liberal now. They can't tell star trek stories because they don't live in a world where kids can be allowed to dream star trek dreams, because that would be better than what we have. And better isn't allowed. The status quo must be defended, and that demands that the star trek future, the better future, the we came in peace for all man kind future, has to be killed. And it's most important that it be killed in the dreams of children.