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
Hehe, reluctant agreement, my favorite kind of agreement
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
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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Hehe, reluctant agreement, my favorite kind of agreement
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
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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.
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I've heard house of dragon is okay - much less awooga and sexual violence for it's own sake, more dragons.
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Oh I have not watched it and never will, I just heard it's less grotesque.
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Good news and bad: the Section 31 show has been cancelled, but it's gonna be a movie instead now
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Space Hitler is gonna be the mc
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Oh yeah I saw that thread, fucking libs gonna fucking lib.
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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!
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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.
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Nice, nice, good for them.
I've got one in another thread trying to tell me that Billups isn't ace right now it's a silly place
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At your convenience
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You didn't have to click it now
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Understandable
I look forward to parsing through your many emojis if this terrible fate you've predicted does come to pass
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It's become iconic, ngl
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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.
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.
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Yeah, that was especially egregious. I also hated the time Sisko poisoned an entire planet because Eddington was being too antifascist near him
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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.
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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.
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
The Maquis never did a single thing wrong ever
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.
Yeah i know this is why i don't watch those new shows