Areas where you'd respectfully disagree with Chuck

[Ixthos]

Well, it was just an observation.

Touché

[Shuboy07]

I don't think there was a Stupid Neelix Moment in Dark Frontier. Chuck picked the scene where Neelix talks about his family with Seven as the stupid moment but I thought it was good writing.

[Madner Kami]

Morrighan is the worst romance option in Dragon Age Origins.

Because?

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

She's utterly insufferable. Zevran may be Chaotic Evil but he doesn't raise a stink every time you do something nice for somebody, even if it takes you all of two minutes. She's basically there to complain and lose loyalty any time you help somebody out, and she manages to combine extreme amorality with a strong sense of moral superiority. She has neither warmth nor chill.

[RobbyB1982]

She's utterly insufferable. Zevran may be Chaotic Evil but he doesn't raise a stink every time you do something nice for somebody, even if it takes you all of two minutes. She's basically there to complain and lose loyalty any time you help somebody out, and she manages to combine extreme amorality with a strong sense of moral superiority. She has neither warmth nor chill.

Depends on HOW you play it. If you play pure straight paragon she gets annoyed sure... the same way Alistair the pure and noble hero will get get pissy if you don't 100% take his side on literally everything, rangind from your attitude on enslaving mages to if you want to let Loghain live. But you can help people out and present different reasons for it,like for the sake of power and she gets along just fine.

My first time through the game I played pure compassionate hero, hated her and Sten. Second time I played the character completely different as a power seeking mage and got entirely different reactions and personalities off both of them. (And Shale and Dog went along with everything.) Very different game throughout despite being most of the same scenarios. Did the same with parts 2 and 3, and its interesting just how different some companions can be depending on how YOU act.

I *hated* Merrill in my first play of DA2 and then ended up with her as my love interest in the second. Games have versatility that way and how you play your lead DOES affect them.

I have yet to figure out a way to make Vivienne in DA3 at all tolerable though... I think its impossible unless you're a slave owner thats willing to shackle all mages or something.

[Dragon Ball Fan]

to clarify a previous entry I made. Chuck expressed an attitude that many other people have, that ancient alien theorists are racist, I think this is a strawman, put in simplistic terms, it's not about ancient people being stupid, it's that they didn't have cranes and bulldozers.

and I'm sure you can find theories about the accomplishments of ancient white people being at least partially attributed to aliens.

[Robovski]

It is more a matter of completely underestimating the achievements of the past because we do things with cranes and bulldozers and lay people need to be educated, not told "it's aliens" when we don't know how a people did something that they clearly did do. Historically while this does sometimes apply to say Stonehenge or the Pyramids, it is more often applied to the Nazca Lines or the step pyramids of the New world. It may not be often racism that drives this but more the arrogance that we could not possibly (as humans) known how to do something that we cannot do now and that is patently false. Techniques are lost (even in the modern world) when people stop using them and move on to new methods and ways. A ready example: you want to build a new Saturn V rocket? Good luck, the heavy industry fabrication techniques used in implementing the design are lost to the generations in the US. Use it or lose it is a saying for a reason.

[Petike]

It is more a matter of completely underestimating the achievements of the past because we do things with cranes and bulldozers and lay people need to be educated, not told "it's aliens" when we don't know how a people did something that they clearly did do. Historically while this does sometimes apply to say Stonehenge or the Pyramids, it is more often applied to the Nazca Lines or the step pyramids of the New world. It may not be often racism that drives this but more the arrogance that we could not possibly (as humans) known how to do something that we cannot do now and that is patently false. Techniques are lost (even in the modern world) when people stop using them and move on to new methods and ways. A ready example: you want to build a new Saturn V rocket? Good luck, the heavy industry fabrication techniques used in implementing the design are lost to the generations in the US. Use it or lose it is a saying for a reason.

Very well put. As someone with a lifelong interest in history, archaeology and technological development, I am honestly always amazed at how creative, ingenious and industrious people could and can be, even in the very distant past, or more recent historical settings in locations that were not resource-rich to develop all manner of technologies. Human ingenuity is very impressive, knows few bounds, for better or worse.

As much as I can harp on the likes of Roddenberry for his frequent hypocrises in his supposedly enlightened attitudes about the future (largelly self-aggrandizing anyway), one thing he got very right was saying something to the effect of "aliens didn't build the pyramids, humans did, because they're smart and work hard". That's a good attitude to have, especially in an era where the "ancient astronaut" obsession was at its peak and something of a cottage industry.

TOS is not without sin in the "ancient astronaut" mania, as it had the whole silly "transplanted Indian tribes" episode, TAS has the blatantly Däniken-esque Cuculchan ep, Voyager had the annoying Tattoo episode. (Notice that it's repeatedly Native Americans being branded as "primitives needing saving from aliens". A rather outdated attitude already at the time, given that all NA cultures, even the technologically humblest, have been shown to be far from primitive, even in terms of crafts and material culture.)

Also, if we lose knowledge of how some construction technique and so on was utilized in the past... That's what either archives or experimental archaeology are for. A huge amount of work on recreating or better understanding past technologies not commonly in use today has come from successful experimental archaeology.

[Dragon Ball Fan]

okay, that all makes sense but the thing to remember is that non of this can be known with 100% certainty, so, even though the odds are very long, there is always the chance the ancient alien guys are right.

and whenever I see a video talking about stuff like the Nazca Lines, I never get the impression it's based on the idea that those people were too backwards to do it, it just happens to be something related to non white people. plus, the sources I consider worth entertaining never outright say these monuments and such were directly built by aliens witn absolutely no involvement from humans, at worst, they bring that up as a possibility but offer others such as "the aliens taught them some techniques and then they decided to use those techniques", which would still make the humans the actual creators.

[Thebestoftherest]

Are we talking about anicent aliens.