Unpopular opinion time (super alpha no pony edition)

@Don’t  

 
What truth?

After watching a few episodes, I think Star Trek Lower Decks is pretty okay.
 
I don’t really get the hate. Sure, its nothing special, and I can see some superfans taking umbrage at a cartoony comedy. But it got me to laugh a few times, the voice acting is good, and its amusing enough to hold my attention.
 
And hey, it’s better than Insurrection.

@Zincy  
Insurrection would’ve worked better as a two-parter in TNG or one of its spinoffs.

Cancel culture should cease to exist.

@Hollowfox Jaeger  
It depends

@Don’t  
On what?

katan’s are the most boring sword weapon ever in fiction. fucking basic as bitch ass shit.  
shit like this shit is way better.  

@Zincy  
I don’t like Marriner. If the show didn’t push her into the focus so often I’d probably consider the show a favorite.

@Hollowfox Jaeger  
Like if some boomer was talking about John Wayne being the perfect American, I wouldn’t blame anyone for saying that JW was a Racist White beatet

@Don’t  
Yeah, but I’m still annoyed how Gen Z uses cancel culture to slander… well, everything.
 
Especially toxic Marvel fans after Chris Pratt supports a church that he didn’t know it was problematic.
 
Or the false allegations against Vic Mignogna, Justin Bieber, and now Brendon Urie and Tom Felton.

@Hollowfox Jaeger  
The Chris Patt stuff is unjustified I agree
 
And What Brendon Urie allegations, last time I heard it was the bassist of PATD who was caught with teen Fangirls and Urie kicked him out because of it

@Don’t  
So, they should have called out the guitarist, not the frontrunner.
 
People mix shit up just to get upset.

@Angrybrony  
That axe looks heavy as shit but the Machaira looks badass.

We need more hook sword representation.
 
That shit is badass

@Don’t  
Guitarist*

@Myoozik  
the rapier looks fuckin cool.

Fantasy or sci-fi media where the humans are depicted as the villains is so overdone.
 
Like, I understand why it became such a widely used trope in the first place, but it is a tired old cliché at this point.

@TheHappySpaceman  
How about ‘humans are the real monsters’ in every dystopia or post-apocalyptic setting?

@TheHappySpaceman  
the problem is that the alternatives carry to many pit falls, remember when you assign a non human the role of enemy they become ever kind of human not shown to be one of the good guys in the allegory, look at the orcs from LOTR who are basically just every non white person, Tolkien didn’t intend that but it’s still a perfectly valid reading, the solution is of course to just not have “humanity” be a monolith of western culture in these settings,

@Thanotos Omega  
Didn’t know that elves, dwarves and ents were just white people. And how can orcs be every non-white race? At least say that all the evil races were non-white rather than just the orcs.

@Thanotos Omega
 

 
What? Really!? Nowadays, are there really people who accept this? So I’ve read a lot of nonsense about the theory of racism in LOTR all these years, but that’s pretty much the biggest BS I’ve ever heard. ;-D

@DarkObsidian  
I can see the orcs being accidentally base on a real life race, just not every non-white race.

@Meanlucario
 
Well. I say what I’ve always said about this. Anyone who tries to interpret racism unnecessarily in the books of Tolkien commits the mistake, in my opinion, of disregarding the background of the author.
 
The orcs are probably based on the word Orcneas from the poem Beowulf and means “Monsters”. As a philologist, Tolkien was quite familiar with this work. However, it is no longer possible to say with certainty to what extent it has influenced his creative process.
 
He himself wrote about it: Orcs (the word is as far as I am concerned actually derived from Old English orc “demon”, but only because of its phonetic suitability) are nowhere clearly stated to be of any particular origin.
 
The origin of the Orcs is still one of the great myths of the LOTR universe. However, it can be assumed that it is similar to the Uruk-Hai an artificial breed. They are the incarnate, monstrous henchmen of evil. To want to compare them to a real race seems absolutely ridiculous to me.
 
Moreover, in creating the Orcs and Uruk-Hai, Tolkien processed his own experiences in World War I (especially the terrible effects of the Industrial Revolution on warfare) - and unlike the Hobbit, he had to distance himself from the word “goblin”, as it was already strongly associated with the work of George MacDonald.
 
I admit, Tolkien certainly took a lot of inspiration from the Mongolian storms and the “ugly” Germans, but certainly not for racist reasons. Rather to illustrate the horror of evil. If there’s one thing you can blame Tolkien for, it’s his very clean “good vs. evil” concept. But he didn’t invent that. Basically he merely continued a concept that is already fundamental to Christianity, Manichaeism, and Zoroastrianism. The basic good against the basic evil. The last battle. The finale fight. In principle Armageddon in a nutshell, only without all the fire and sulfur.
 
I mean, we don’t accuse Jesus of racism either, because he is supposed to fight the Antichrist, just to protect the feelings and rights of the demons. And the fact that the orcs are often referred to as black-skinned does not indicate a supposedly African origin, but the absence of light. If there’s no light, it’s dark. In other words, it’s black before our eyes. Do we have to worry now that the darkness is not gender-friendly pink? Does everything have to be racist in any way nowadays?
 
That there is racism INSIDE the LOTR universe is not to be denied. Tolkien himself created the conflict between elves and dwarves, among other things. But behind this there is no racist motivation or conviction on the part of the author. Instead, in my opinion, Tolkien wanted to point out a fundamental problem, that was very close to his heart: The absolutely opposite ways of life between forest dwellers and miners.
 
Again, one can recognize Tolkien’s actual leitmotif. The suppression of nature and the mystical by technology and greed. Tolkien was a child of his time and looked at the technological development in the world and the changes in society which followed it with great concern. He saw there a core conflict of man in his inability to live with nature. The disappearance of the old and mystical was also disturbing for him. What was good, he saw threatened, and what was evil was cruel, ugly and destructive. I can understand why Tolkien was attracted to this conflict between good and evil. And basically I do not think his way of creating a book and a whole universe out of it is badly done. But I don’t think we should be too overly critical of it. Or at least see his work in the right context. ;-)

@DarkObsidian  
I’m talking facial description, and unintentionally describing the non-good races similar to real life races.

@Meanlucario
 
Squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes? Or what exactly do you mean? ;-)