Areas where you'd respectfully disagree with Chuck

[Admiral X]

I kind of feel the same way about people who say they actually like the prequels.

[Karha of Honor]

When it comes to the Star Wars Prequels I am incapable of Respectfully disagreeing. My desire to respect certain people who's openly trashed the Prequels requires to just pretend they don't talk about Star Wars at all.

In my opinion people who claim to like Star Wars but don't like the Prequels are the children of the father of lies.

Is there an internal logic to your aproach?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

When it comes to the Star Wars Prequels I am incapable of Respectfully disagreeing. My desire to respect certain people who's openly trashed the Prequels requires to just pretend they don't talk about Star Wars at all.

In my opinion people who claim to like Star Wars but don't like the Prequels are the children of the father of lies.

Is there an internal logic to your aproach?

My take is that it's a means of not regarding people's take of Star Wars seriously as if to just consider they are not talking about Star Wars.

[MithrandirOlorin]

It means I try not to let things bother me.

[Darth Wedgius]

When it comes to the Star Wars Prequels I am incapable of Respectfully disagreeing. My desire to respect certain people who's openly trashed the Prequels requires to just pretend they don't talk about Star Wars at all.

In my opinion people who claim to like Star Wars but don't like the Prequels are the children of the father of lies.

That explains why I never, ever got what I wanted for Christmas. And I know he could afford them, he's "a man of wealth and taste."

[Darmani]

When it comes to the Star Wars Prequels I am incapable of Respectfully disagreeing. My desire to respect certain people who's openly trashed the Prequels requires to just pretend they don't talk about Star Wars at all.

In my opinion people who claim to like Star Wars but don't like the Prequels are the children of the father of lies.

I'm not going to deny the prequels being flawed. But some of those flaws honestly intrigued me because they show an example of cultural drift. As an example especially in common pulp sci-fi the idea of clones as evil jester pursue was so accepted that just alluding to them and the idea that it was wrong to do so was perfectly fine. Fast forward to mm and not only have we discovered dolly but it's based off of reproductive technology that in terms of cultural narrative has been empowering to women not trampoline on God's domain or mechanical Rafe by in human Masters who believe that they can determine who lives and who dies. Whereas before cloning was an exaggeration of man being turned into a product now it's a means by which people who otherwise couldn't can now enjoy life that was denied to them

As a result what the clone wars were and what was wrong about them had to be changed. Also like it or hate it I kind of like the fact that it's probably one of the most widely understood pop culture tragedies from the fall of Anakin Skywalker to the fall of the Republic. Obviously there was a good skeleton there which is why the Clone Wars cartoon series was able to do so well with it but yes they often had to take the ideas and pushed aside some of the more direct influence of George Lucas. Despite this I'd say his second look with characters like Ahsoka we're really good calls. After all you can't show what's wrong with Vader or Anakin if you don't push him out of the Trap of Luke if he turns out to be evil. And instead push him onto the responsibilities and difficulties of actually being a leader

And yes intentional or not I like the fact that it's kind of contradictory to how romance is handled and pop culture a lot. Mainly that yeah from RN Anakin is giving off all the evil lover vibes but he's also dressed and the torture bat boy who needs a woman to fix him. Simply put we get a movie that's about a Harley Quinn romance and it's treated as a bad thing because it's in contradiction to everything else that matters. All too often when romance is our focus it doesn't matter all that other stuff it's just in the way

There are some who to this day try to make it so that Luke and Leia are the product of rape and not you know stupid decisions. Alongside this is the the sand people Rampage

[Hero_Of_Shadows]

There was an opinion during the Old Republic Sith Sorcerer videos which was (and I'm condensing and paraphrasing here) "the only real sorcerers are the ones that are sneaky, use long drawn out rituals, deals with magical and entities and etc those guys that throw around fireballs are not real sorcerers" while I share a lot of the fascination with the hunt for arcane lore, roleplaying my sorcerers as dealing with dark entities and magic that is more weird, subtle or not directly combat ready I'd like to offer a defense of the fireball throwing sorcerer:

It works, more often than not if you try and setup a huge elaborate ritual your enemies will show up just in time to distract you, stop it and shank you with a rusty sword.

Try and interrupt a fireball to the face ! I mean in most systems you can dodge or use some sort of magic resistance or artifact or maybe the enemy counters with a spell of their own but at least you managed to get one spell off.

Compare that with the blue balls of having gathered all the potions and gems and ritual blood and other easily smashable reagents that inevitably get smashed and you're just left there defending yourself with empty cauldron and wooden spoon.

Fighter and rogue types love to argue that no matter how powerful or learnt the wizard a knife in between the ribs will do them in all the same. This is true and this is also why you need fireballs to keep them out of knifing range, better yet why you also have a spell to turn your skin to stone. Is it subtle ? No. Is it creative ? Not really. Does it work in helping you not get knifed ? Absolutely.

It's easy to write and it's easy to program. Do you want computer games where you never play a mage ? That's what you get by insisting on every spell be a unique thing that means you must find a supernatural npc which will send you on a quest yada yada then impart the knowledge on you then another series of quests to get the components then another quest to feed the target the potion and etc

Magic that is not a pain to program into the game means that mages are a potential choice for the player.

Writing a story is somewhat similar, what the point in making your hero a mage if all he does is swing his sword through all of the book then only at the end he casts 1 spell.

That's how the old media did it, they just separated the arcane knowledge in a old wizard guy formula is: old wizard guy tells hero what he needs to fetch => hero hacks and slashes or alternatively tricks his way to every magical ingredient => brings back to wizard => wizard makes the magical sword => villain is defeated.

That's the thing insisting that magic should only be obscure and plot breaking means that sorcerers will never get the spotlight, without the humble fireball or the expelliarmus POV/hero sorcerers will never come along and the sorcerer will remain as the perennial old bearded man who hovers at the edge of the story.

[Dragon Ball Fan]

related to what I've talked about before. Chuck has occasionally said that having a villain that is just evil to be evil, that's inherently bad writing. plenty of great villains in fiction were what TV Tropes calls "Complete Monsters". for one, Micheal Myers. for another, watch this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-MhMo-gL6A&t=527s

on a different subject, with present understanding of reality, he is correct but I am not sure about Chuck's assertion that science and religion are necessarily different. if the afterlife is proven to exist tomorrow, that doesn't change the nature of the afterlife, it just means we understand that nature now. when it's used in relation to real life, it is in the context of UFOs but I like to expand the general principal of Clark's Third Law to all unknown phenomenon.

[Trinary]

There was one review of Babylon 5, "The Coming of Shadows," where I think Chuck really badly missed the mark in his historical comparison. I had written it up under a post on that episode, but I think it vanished into the ether after one of the forum crashes. Sorry if I go on too long but it's history, which is my passion, and I think it's really interesting.

In that episode, Centauri Emperor Turhan came to B5 to issue an apology for the Centauri occupation and devastation of Narn while G'Kar (not knowing this) was planning to assassinate him because he couldn't see past his historical grievance against the Centauri Imperial family; regardless of the fact that Turhan himself had done nothing wrong with regards to the Narn.

Chuck brought up the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary by the Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip. He described Ferdinand basically as an enlightened reformer, someone who saw that the old ways had to come to an end, that the oppression could not continue, that he wanted peace with Serbia, to establish a United States of Greater Austria and by killing him, the Bosnian Serb radical had killed the man most likely to deliver justice to his people, all because he couldn't look past his family name.

That was not the case. The situation was that Austria, which ruled a multinational empire, was in dire straits. After several bruising, losing military conflicts with Prussia and Italy in the 1860s, the ruling Hapsburg Dynasty of Austria was forced to reconcile with Hungary, the largest single nationality and territory they ruled, which had been under martial law since the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1848. This turned the Austrian Empire into the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary, giving Hungary more power and influence than it had enjoyed before, granting the Hungarian language official status, etc.

Many higher ups in Austria hated the compromise, even if they recognized the necessity of it. Franz Ferdinand was notoriously anti-Hungarian, as well anti-Italian and anti-Jewish, in his bigotries. He pursued a softer line towards Serbia and the Slavic peoples of Austria-Hungary not out of any enlightenment or desire for peace, but because he wanted to have a break on the power of Hungary, whose elevated status he resented.

The Kingdom of Hungary was much bigger than modern day Republic of Hungary, including all of Slovakia, Transylvania (now in Romania), and also included portions of modern-day Austria, Slovenia, Serbia, Ukraine, Poland and was in a personal union with the Kingdom of Croatia. Hungary wanted to do to these peoples basically what Austria had tried to do to them: try to force their language onto them and assimilate them into Hungary ("Magyarization"--because crap rolls downhill). So these Slavic peoples in Hungary (plus the non-Slavic Romanians) looked at Hungary the way the Hungarians had looked at Austria. In fact, many Croats and Slovaks had supported the Russian intervention that crushed the Hungarian Revolution in 1848, fearing, not without reason, that an independent Hungary would run roughshod over them.

Austria noticed this and some, like Franz Ferdinand, thought about cultivating them against Hungary. That's where the idea of trialism came in: turning the Dual Monarchy into a Triple Monarchy, forming a new unit out of (at least some) of the various Slavic territories in the empire, with the creation of a Slavic Kingdom counterbalancing Hungary. Some went a step further, figuring that if they could do that, why not incorporate Serbia (and Montenegro?) itself into the Empire and amalgamate it with the new Slavic Kingdom; forming a Triple Empire with three capitols on the Danube: Vienna, Budapest and Belgrade. The United States of Greater Austria was of a similar vein; especially since it would mean greater autonomy for the peoples within Hungary, weakening its status within the empire as a whole.

However, this was very much a minority viewpoint in the Austrian ruling elites. Most were hardliners against any further granting of rights to the constituent peoples of the empire since they feared this would exacerbate and encourage, rather than dispel, drives for independence. And they could well have been correct. Anti-Slavism was one of the few things that united the Hungarians and German-Austrians, so they decided to go with that, especially since both the Austrian and Hungarian rulers had Slavic subjects they feared would give into pan-Slavist aspirations, so no need to go around actually encouraging that, in their view.

Even if Franz Ferdinand had ascended to the throne, the virtual entirety of the Hapsburg establishment was against any restructuring of the Empire or conciliation with Serbia. Just because you have the crown, doesn't mean you get your way. So painting Franz Ferdinand as being peace- or justice-oriented, and that if only he had ascended to the throne perhaps a truly peaceful, equitable solution to the national strivings of the peoples of the Hapsburg Empire could've been achieved without the bloodshed--as Chuck suggested--was really historically off. Plus Trialism would've been a nightmare trying to figure out how it would work. Would it have been just for the South Slavs in the Empire, in Bosnia-Herzegovina? Would it have included Austrian-ruled Dalmatia, or Hungarian-ruled Croatia? What about other Slavic territories in Hungary itself, or Bohemia and Galicia-Lodomeria, ruled by Austria? What would stop the Hungarians from revolting against taking land from the Kingdom of Hungary? Etc.

So yeah, TL;DR Chuck gave Franz Ferdinand far too much credit. War is a tragedy, but not all are the kind of tragedies that could've been prevented if only X had happened.

[Artabax]

What if History:
1) Ferdinand intended Mercy for the Slavs
2) Black Hand feared that the Slavs will not rebel to overthrow a merciful king.

Trinary asserts:
3) Ferdinand wanted a Tri-partite system: Germans, Hungarians, Slavs, ALL are Free born Citizens.
4) Ferdinand hated Hungarians, Jews Italians and Gypsies.

5) So standard alt-history asserts IF-NOT Ferdinand assassinated then all sweetness and light. But Trinary's version of alt-history asserts what?

6) Oh no it doesn't: most alt-histories assume WWI would have happened anyway.