Tag: ask

What if Trump is TRYING to get impeached but his pride won’t let him admit to any scandals? He didn’t want to be president at first, after all. Maybe he’s trying to become a martyr. The thing is, his supporters are already convinced he’s never and will never do anything wrong, and the people who don’t support him will never see him as innocent, so there’s no way that plan will work.

I’m pretty sure he knows that and I’m sure he’s not actually trying to be disgraced and possibly go to jail. He’s also way too self-absorbed to want to be a martyr.

I think the reason that some people dislike the “child pornography” thing for drawn material is that it conflates it with the evil/exploitative real version, which could easily seem like the dishonest conflation of two unlike (because one is feeding on exploitation and the other isn’t) things. It’s like conflating actual rape and rape fantasy; I feel like “child fantasy pornography” could be a more useful designation.

I mean on the one hand, yeah, drawn and written child porn doesn’t demand the sexual abuse of actual children the way video and photographic child porn does. On the other I’m still iffy on the possible effects of treating children, even in fantasy, as acceptable objects of desire. It’s not a direct one-on-one correlation, nor is pornographic material the only thing to blame for our shitty sexually exploitative society, but I worry about saturation and normalization.

Do you think the ST would have been better with The Yuuzhan Vong or a new Sith Empire being the core enemies while the remnants of the Empire/First Order were dealt with in the 30 year time skip? Sometimes it just feels like the FO were only created for the mere reason of Disney Lucasfilm not wanting to lose the aesthetic. I thought since Finn was a Stormtrooper with regrets that Lucasfilm would try to display a moral grey area with the FO, but so far they’re just the same in the movies.

It might have been a more original and broader exploration of the universe, yeah. OTOH, in addition to commercial/nostalgia considerations, I think having a wannabe Empire as the main antagonist is timely and valuable. We’re living in an age of déjà vu, after all, and SW has always reflected the anxieties of the age. That was JJ’s explicitly stated authorial intent, to tell a story about neo-Nazis who look back at Nazis and see not horror and failure but greatness to emulate.

The Republic’s problems have come from its weakness, not its strength. Palpatine was able to cement his power because enough people really wanted strength and unity that the Republic couldn’t provide before. A Republic not simply beholden to the whims of special interests and able to manage its own defensive needs, among other things, would work a lot better.

The Republic at its strongest and most centralized was arguably the Empire, though…

Remember when the worst thing about the sequel trilogy was that the first episode was a soft reboot of A New Hope? I mean geez, remembering that Star Wars used to be good and feeling excited that it was a modern phenomenon again… I remember when my love of Star Wars wasn’t tainted and I miss it.

Yeah, I remember walking out of the theater after TFA thinking, “Well, that was a bit derivative and not perfect, but who needs perfect or original for Star Wars? That was a great, heartfelt adventure bursting with fun and love of the franchise!” I miss that feeling. Even TFA has been tainted for me when I remember how these developments pan out in TLJ.

Have you seen CollegeHumor’s “Are You Asian Enough?” sketch starring Loan Tran? It’s hilarious. Basically, a white guy claims Asian heritage due to being 1/8th Korean and a council of East Asian-descended representatives outline what is and isn’t acceptable for someone who is only fractionally connected to a culture through his ancestry. Depending on how you look at it, it’s either anti-appropriation, anti-cultural gatekeeping, or both. Hilarious either way and Loan does a great job.

I loved it 😂 Loan can do deadpan judgmental like nobody’s business!