Lit Apropos of Nothing - ACKBAR IN CAPITALS - The Lit Forum Social Thread, v2.0.15

Apropos of the Beardrop GIF on the last page (though only tangentially related to it specifically), I've found that the Hobbit movies are much more enjoyable if you just stop thinking about J.R.R. Tolkien entirely and just view them as the best D&D movies ever made.

...Which is actually sort of interesting, now that I think about it, because for all that it was LOTR that pretty much spawned all modern fantasy, I think the actual The Hobbit is way, way closer to the spirit of the standard tabletop fantasy RPG.

 

I thought Conan the Destroyer was the best D&D movie

 

I'd rather be free. "Being ruled" is a condition that violates the basic rights of human beings. Same goes for creating castes in which some are "highborn" (aka people who ensure that their bad genes stay in the family by marrying their cousins so as not to lose the loot) and some are "lowborn" (aka just about everyone who didn't manage to grab someone else's stuff when the "highborn" went a-pillaging). People have equal rights. You know about that, I hope?

 

Both are fun - I've been on DAI for the last few weeks having got to the end of Witcher due to an insane amount of playing it across 2-3 months - but Witcher has the better world creation and environmental effects, plus, more importantly, far better writing and quests.

DAI isn't bad, but its quests tend to be:

Find dis guy.
(You find him)
Kill dis guy.
Quest complete.

Witcher does things that you don't expect and one thing tends to lead to another. Also, unlike DAI, you get one hell of a package with the game that was, for me, unexpected.

First expansion is due October and, given how they've done so far, it'll probably be more than 10 hours worth. Also 16 pieces of DLC are bundled free with the main game - it covers armour/weapon sets, extra quests, alternate appearances - they could have sold each separately and cleaned up but didn't - that ought to be rewarded with sales.

 

Yet more Jedi Prince in Disney Infinity

"So now Dex is having me deliver spicy Gargon gumbo–and the planet Gargon was where Grand Admiral Grunger kept his Star Destroyers."
Impressively obscure even by Jedi Prince standards.

Also Zoochberry Cobbler.

GrandAdmiralJello , @Starkeiler : Enough of this! This bickering is pointless.


Everyone knows the best form of government is brain-slug-ocracy.

 

Both Hobbit and Conan are good D&D movies. Personally I enjoy the DA setting over the Witcher one, don't know why, it just fits better. Personally I just play both.

 

Sorry Jello, but by the laws of the internet, you officially lose.

 

Unfortunately, it's not up to me, but if it were, I would replace the Nazis as the boogeymen of history with their contemporaries the DNVP, the DeutschNationale VolksPartei. They were just like the Nazis -- ultra-conservative, anti-democratic, traditionalist, antisemitic, völkisch -- but also monarchists. Which officially makes them the worst thing that ever happened.

But they weren't into cool occult crap and they didn't have awesome uniforms, so Hitler won.

PS: When stolen property is restored to its rightful owners, that's called "justice", Jello. Exactly how did the Habsburgs make their fortune? Can you rightfully own land you appropriated and developed by forcing people to work it? How can one support tyranny by appealing to human rights when tyranny itself is based on the negation of the very concept of human rights? The concept of human rights is the modern humanistic crystallization of the ancient concept of democratic citizenship, and it emerged as feudalism fell. You either have monarchy, or you have human rights. You can't be sick and healthy at the same time.

 

Where is the "Justice" for the Pamunkey, Lakota, Apache, Cheyenne, and Iroquois. The Europeans may have took their lands in the beginning but the 'Democratic' US stole the lands of the Native Americans in the plains, broke almost every treaty it ever made with them, destroyed their main food source and nearly eradicated their way of life.

No one governmental system is perfect, because they are, in the end, run by humans, and humans are very fallible.

 

The native peoples of America were not treated any better by the democratic colonists than they had been by the colonists before they got rid of their king. They were treated shabbily in general. But the most cogent formulation of justice and the rights of man was put forth by these American colonists, and this formulation was essential to us even being able to claim that all people, including American Indians, have rights. That is a very compelling contradiction, as is that of the philosophers who built the basic edifice the American and French republicans later formed into functional governments, such as John Locke, having written about the rights of man under the British monarchy.

But I never tried to prove that republicans held true to their ideals. Tom Paine did, and that's why I admire him so much, but obviously most people are people, and they treat other people like crap even when the framework of their society isn't total crap. But the fact that republicans did not always follow the principles upon which their ideology was built, doesn't negate the fact that they had an ideology, or that their ideology amounted to something more than theft, coercion and suppression, as is the case with all tyrannies. Building a society upon the rights of man is not the same as building a society upon some family's hereditary right to lord over everyone else.

The republican system is built on the notion that people are born equal, with equal rights. That is why it is the only system compatible with justice. Monarchy has subjects, democracy has citizens. And they cannot be combined. Either you are a subject, or you are a citizen. If you strip monarchy of most of its powers, but keep it in a ceremonial role, you are choosing to build a society on a deadly contradiction, and at the same time, by associating a system of oppression with a system of freedom, you exonerate monarchy of its crimes.

I have seen all sorts of outrage about the Confederate flag online, backed by claims that it's offensive and racist. At the same time, I have heard some claims that I would not dare elevate by calling "arguments" about constitutional monarchy, that it's not hurting anyone, that it's ceremonial and doesn't have real power. What would be the reaction if the American South had been allowed to retain slavery in a "ceremonial" capacity, after stripping it of all the nasty picking-cotton-in-the-hot-sun stuff? Why is it OK for Britons to have a cultural heritage that involves them being subjects to someone, when blacks of the American South can say that the fact that were once unfree (i.e. subject to someone else) is not their heritage, just oppression? Or, what would be the reaction if Germany had kept the Nazi flag? (After all, it's a good luck charm.) If something is a symbol of evil, it doesn't get any better in a "ceremonial" capacity. It just declares to everyone that you're not ashamed of your nasty past.

 

You seem to treat all Monarchs as a monolith as if every last one of them were guilty of horrible crimes and should pay for them. When throughout history there have been good rulers and bad rulers, just like there have been good leaders and bad leaders in every society I believe what Grand Admiral Jello is trying to do is to recognize that Monarchs are people too, not heartless killers that subjugate people for their own pleasure. People have organized themselves under Monarchies and Pseudo-Monarchies for thousands of years if it were as terrible as you say, would civilization have progress as far as it has?

 

When some warlord conquers X territory, declares himself King of X and demands that everyone does as he says, or else he will kill them, is he not violating their rights? No matter how decent people and chill dudes the descendants of King X the First are, are they not compounding the original crime by not restoring the people's rights? Even if they are forced to grant them a constitution after a revolution they of course spilled copious amounts of blood to supress, are they not still guilty of the original crime if they retain the lands their ancestor took by force and possessions deriving from forced labour? If they "are people too", they can prove it by coming out and saying they have no subjects, only fellow citizens, and giving back their lands and palaces and jewels and gold.

 

At the highest points of power, the semiotic and physical realms merge, and crimes can be theoretical. If we agree that the diversity on display in billion-dollar movies is important, then we have to agree that a symbol of even potential tyranny is important. Collapse time in on itself, and any arrangement which allows for tyranny inevitably terminates in tyranny. Power corrupts.

I dunno about Starkeiller, but personally I don't even believe in a representational presidency or congress. In this day and age, it seems clear to me that we don't need an electoral college or party system and that people should be reasonably able to vote on individual issues without towing any party line for fear of all-or-nothing representation. It could be tempting to revel in the growing progressive streak, but that'll inevitably backfire on us and make the anti-progressives into the new cool rebels... Whether this year, or four years from now, or eight, it'll get ugly. Seems obvious to me that, instead of all that pendulum-swinging, leaders should be by-the-book neutral economists first and foremost.

 

What if they want to keep their Monarch, what if the former subjects turned citizens want to keep their Monarch if in a symbolic way, is that not their right? This isn't slavery were talking about now, the Queen of England today cannot order a person executed just because she feels like it.

I get what you're saying it's that Monarchies are inherently flawed because they lift one group above another but, that sort of thing still goes on even in democracies. Being based on principles is not the same as having them.

In your analogy you make no mention of the governmental system of territory X if it was a Monarchy before and the descendants of the Warlord gave them their lands back and stepped down as leaders, what would the the people do then, suddenly organize themselves as a democracy?

If it was democratic then the old leaders would have been killed in the the Warlord's conquest, who would be elected, would they willingly give up power when the time came, how long would it be until a civil war breaks out in the country because one faction believes their leader should be president over the one that was elected. It has happened before.

 

I agree that the flaws of the representational system are greater than the flaws of a system which gives people direct access to the administration of government. The problem is that the representational system is much more stable. And I see the "growing progressive streak" in blacker terms, as an authority-worshipping progressivism that is far removed from strictly rights-based progressivism. I mentioned "administration" and not "power" because I agree with your last point as well.

Ah, yes. Stability.... Forgot about that one. Yes, extreme injustice has proven extremely stable. Let's remove the last remnants of tyranny, work on making democracy more just, and see how a just system fares in the stability department after a century or two.

As for the case of the subjects wanting to remain subjects only ceremonially, no, that is not within their rights if we recognize freedom as inalianable. You can't give it all away. It's the same as selling yourself to slavery. There are arguments that selling yourself doesn't violate your own rights, but I remain unconvinced. But perhaps more importantly, it is not within their rights to graft tyranny onto democracy because tyranny will corrupt democracy via this association.

 

That would be anarchy, which is a state of governance that humans tend not to stay in.

 

Being ruled as in, not participating in government yourself. Being ruled as in, not retaining your right to choose how to live your life. Being ruled as in, not democracy, "the demos --the people-- in control".

 

So, how about those video games, huh?

 

Arkham City was pretty cool. That's the last game I played. Now I need to get a PS4 if I want to play Arkham Knight. Which I find frustrating.

 

Sadly it is not very good

 

Still, you get to glide over Gotham. That has to be good.

 

It is indeed a small bright spot in an otherwise rather mediocre game.

 

I'm feeling better about not owning a PS4. Thanks.

The only other game I'm looking forward to is the sequel to South Park: The Stick of Truth, which will run fine on my PC.

 

Arkham Knight is old-gen in next-gen clothes.

 

The PC version is much better now that they've started patching it. Still get some frame hitches, but it actually runs 1080p 60fps now, and I only have a GTX780i. I rather enjoy it, I'm on my second playthrough and will be doing a NG+ run later on. The voice acting in the game is top-notch, especially John Noble as Scarecrow.