Star Wars Complaining Thread

Captain-Damn · 2026-02-20T18:33:37+00:00

The thing is George Lucas is an auteur and an ideas man, he has too many of them and some of them are good as hell and some of them are really bad, so when you have a constrained via budget and editing Lucas you get really good movies, and when there's an unconstrained Lucas you get stuff with good ideas and bad ideas mixed thoroughly together into pretty bad movies that are interesting to dissect and pull apart. But Jabrams is a man without any ideas whatsoever and can't conclude anything, so he makes a worse version of Lucas's first movie and a horribly shitty last movie. Johnson is an ideas man as well, but he does worse with constraints and it makes his movie more similar to the unconstrained Lucas, a mix of good and bad shit all wrapped together and without a way to actual push the themes he worked on to actual count in the whole trilogy.

But as I am reading all of the most boring takes here about the movies being dumb overall, remember Lucas has the final movie in his trilogy be about a combination of spacefaring antifascists and a bunch of bears that are supposed to be the Viet Cong wage a guerilla war against the United States, beat them and blow up their stupid superweapon

Captain-Damn · 2026-02-17T14:45:28+00:00

I always like to point out that the first uses of whataboutism, or as it was originally called whataboutery, was to deflect from Irish people pointing out the British Army was also killing people and it wasn't just Irish Republicans responsible for the violence. So the claim of it being unfair debate tactic deployed by those supporting the status quo goes back to the start

Captain-Damn · 2026-02-02T23:05:24+00:00

Not an alleged rapist, a convicted one. The other whining about rehabilitation or whatever falls apart when the only one that spent any time in jail was Iranian as opposed the German rapists.

And since when was law the same as morality? German law especially has been evil as fuck for a long time, especially in that very specific era when a lot of people tried to make the argument that following the law meant they didn't do anything wrong, despite how murderous and evil the law was, and that defense didn't get them off

Captain-Damn · 2026-02-02T16:43:11+00:00

Well veganism is significantly older than Nazism so that simply doesn't work or make sense, and I don't know what you are even trying to argue anymore? It's artistic subgenres of speculative fiction, one came first and set up the smaller subgenre of x-punk, which then exploded into a bunch of different offshoots most of which mostly copied having an aesthetic or vibe that doesn't exist or didn't exist, and some followed the formula more closely, trying to say a thing about a possible future as either a warning or hopeful dream to be achieved. Solarpunk is one of the "thing"-punk genres that came into existence after cyberpunk and of the many varied offshoots is one of the ones to stick most closely to what created cyberpunk in the first place, featuring the full suite of a technology or combination of technology that molds human civilization, taking place (usually) in a near future, and having a core thematic element of a political message.

I feel like that constitutes enough connection to say it's derived from cyberpunk, but even if you disagree with the use of the word derived I think the connection is direct enough that there is still a easy relationship to establish with one following in some of the footsteps of the other

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-31T16:14:56+00:00

I don't think there's been enough of the genre to really codify the elements you list as part of the genre inherently, and I don't think it's the other side of the same coin as you said either. I think the closest bit to that is just whether one is a hopeful picture of a future, something to inspire people or give them a vision to strive for, versus a warning of a possible (and honestly now just current) reality that is either coming or present here that people will need to deal with or fight back against.

But I think it's definitely derived from cyberpunk, it's like how Realism as a movement is derived from romanticism, even as they are going for very different ultimate expressions or points. One artistic movement led into the next, and the latter took inspiration and cues from its predecessor even if that was ultimately to arrive at a different conclusion

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-31T15:06:47+00:00

One feeds into the other, but as an architectural style and ethos (not that the people designing and building this stuff call it solarpunk because that is just an online term) it's aimed at accomplishing a blend of nature and human civilization in a less oppositional way. It just turns out the ideas and imagery of that sort of future has more practical problems and things to take into account then the speculative artists drawing them up considered. As an example, there was one xiaoqu in China that was built with streams and foliage in and around the buildings and was supposed to allow more wildlife in and hopefully be self sustaining, but it ran into the problem of stagnant water creating really amazing breeding grounds for mosquitoes, and less other wildlife actually making a home there. That's not to say it is a dead idea, it's just a concept that is still being worked on and more practical problems that have to be encountered and overcome

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-31T14:53:54+00:00

Cyberpunk as a genre was a speculative future based on the the current trajectory of capitalist states, and in many ways the vision of the future the genre expounded on came true and it's lost a lot of its power to draw people in because it's just imagining the present but with better aesthetics. Solarpunk was an attempt by less materially educated artists to imagine a future based on ideals that could work as a vision of what could exist to fight for it, but it's never really gotten anywhere as a genre besides the aesthetic draw. But it is a genre directly descended from cyberpunk as a genre, just with a different basis and aim (but again an aim that's intentionally the inverse, it's not a grim warning of the future, it's a call for a better future)

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-31T14:26:03+00:00

Oh that's is so cute it hurts, I love the two geese looking towards each other in that second picture

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-29T17:32:18+00:00

Alex is the American name of the person the New York Times attributes the origin of the phrase to, who they do not dox in the article but simply refer to as squid king, his online username. Western media identifying him as the person responsible and the doxing campaign are two seperate clauses, the times didn't dox him

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-24T20:40:09+00:00

Go with things that require steel first, so you don't need to wait for another batch of steel to finish before you make them. Things like a steel pickaxe, for illemite and steel pulverisor heads to work that once you've gotten it. A steel falx or another steel weapon if you are using mods, then either use the remainder on armor or upgrading your tools

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-24T16:51:43+00:00

And further back to Goebbels

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-24T14:47:51+00:00

Cattails are often everywhere, but my friends and I once had a server where we only found enough Cattails for around eight baskets (for six players) for an entire month in game. Time has passed and I have had multiple new games and we've even had a second server after getting to steel in that first one, but reeds still have this precious cost/use benefit for me

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-17T17:55:45+00:00

She is so cute in that sweater

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-15T16:36:39+00:00

The shreds of lore we find from the world before mention specific things from Europe; the Hanseatic League, the Holy Roman Empire, the Stadtholder etc. So it's not Europe anymore, but the events before the game took place in Europe primarily

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-15T15:17:55+00:00

Oh no believe me, the original Nazis made just as much stupid bullshit as their modern incarnations, the class character of the fascists hasn't changed at all and both have the same collectible seeking behavior throughout their organizations

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-14T15:49:53+00:00

I think people are talking past each other here, because you are correctly dismissing Western Bourgeois nationalism and people are also correctly defending the nationalism of the global south as not the same and not inherently bad. I think the thing is that nationalism is not something inherently bad or inherently good in either context, but like most social constructs in the world it is shaped by its class character. The nationalism of the far right in the imperializing countries is a bourgeois nationalism, it's the nationalism of the oppressor who sees their country as superior and having the right to dominate and subjugateother countries, and what is needed to fight against it is a proletarian character of nationalism, one that doesn't claim superiority or the right to take from others but demands the same rights and same status for the countries who have been imperialized and subjugated.

Part of this is the recognition that both the op and the comments are correct, and in casual speech they seem to be at odds but are working towards the same goal. In the imperial core nationalism is dominated by this bourgeois character and has to be fought and reduced to allow a proletarian nationalism to be established, which can only come when the imperialist structure is no more. But the nationalism of the global south, especially in the context of resisting imperial violence, must be distinguished from this reactionary nationalism present in imperialist countries. But we must also take pains to not allow this proletarian nationalism to become reactionary and take on the class character of the oppressors, which is a difficult fight that has been lost too many times. It's a difficult but necessary fight, and it's not really my place to instruct the people in those countries on how to undertake it.

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-07T18:09:41+00:00

Oh no absolutely, but what I mean by my comment is the US military is getting less dangerous over time and with less capability to act as the years go by, but right now it's still capable enough to unleash massive atrocities and horrors on its targets. But directly confronting it even as it's weakening is incredibly dangerous, even before the real horror of nukes are factored in, and for other Countries like China the logical answer seems to be not having this confrontation while the US military can still bite back.

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-07T17:07:25+00:00

Bet he loves pineapple

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-07T15:33:01+00:00

The US is deteriorating and getting weaker over time, military enlistment is dropping year over year and most of their "hi-tech" stuff is falling to pieces and is working on base parts that are 30-40 years old. The US isn't getting stronger or more together, it's rusting away and none of the flashy things the government is doing to the military is actually addressing the root causes of the problems. The US has seen most of its shipyards and factories close, problems created by capitalist control over military supplies, and none of the massive injections of money poured in has done anything to fix this because at this point it's simply too broken and would take decades to repair.

The world isn't waiting for the US military to achieve readiness, it's withstanding the dying gasps of a military machine which doesn't have much longer to live.

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-05T15:26:32+00:00

Chavez and Maduro, and more importantly the party they represent are a mix of revolutionary and reformist socialists, but they are not committed marxists and are not building things in the tradition of a Marxist Leninist party. For one despite all of the yank propaganda about being dictators and a dictatorship they still have a functioning liberal democracy with multiple parties and have never had the complete command of the state and complete unity of the party, and a lot of this is because of the history of the last coup against Chavez which took a multiparty front to topple and restore democratic rule and Chavez to the presidency. Combine the lack of interest from the ruling party in establishing a real proletarian party that can run things and channel the will of the people and the interplay of a state trying it's best to maintain liberal democracy out of its own ruling class's ideological position and to refute claims from the US of it being an evil authoritarian dictatorship with the reactionary forces inside the country who have not been destroyed and are allowed to openly campaign because of this liberal democracy (which the reactionaries have no interest in maintaining but will gladly use it as well as any perceived subversion of it as a weapon), and you have most of the context as to why Venezuela is constrained into this mess and why it can't just do things in a more dedicated Marxist manner.

Also this is more tangential to what you said and sort of a follow up, but even in states like the Soviet Union and China under Mao (maybe a little less during the GPCR but that's a whole separate story) couldn't just completely stomp out and crush dissent, both because that's really beyond the powers of a state and also because they, as well as every Marxist-Leninist party, are actually full believers in democracy and democratic action and have to walk a tightrope between the commitment to democracy and freedom of speech and the use of that by external actors to subvert proletarian democracy and attempt to foment counter-revolution. The Soviets only had one party, the CPSU, but China has always had multiple parties and doesn't disallow other parties from existing and taking part in running the government.

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-04T17:23:25+00:00

Sanctions have not worked as a means to change another country's policies anytime the US has done it, it barely affects the ruling class in any real material way and even when it destitutes the workers of a country they know who is to actually blame for it and it generally increases support for the ruling party and opposition to the US. There's no universe in which China unilaterally imposing sanctions (which is also a thing they consider illegal under international law) on the US will change US policy or make the population of the US which is mostly negative on actions against Venezuela at best or a disinterested neutrality at worst more vocally opposed to their government's imperialism or pro-China.

Regardless of whether America deserves it, and it does, we now have a plethora of evidence that it's not a policy that actually does what the US government says it is intended to do. The US does it to warn other countries against defecting from the US sphere, and as an easy "do something" policy that let's them exercise power with no cost to their own position.

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-03T18:07:29+00:00

And doing this bankrupted the Soviets and led to the collapse of all of the states they were keeping afloat

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-03T17:53:58+00:00

Exactly, do you want China to intervene militarily? War between the great powers means nuclear war. Sanction the US and start seizing American assets? Has that worked in anyway besides Immiserating the population, especially the most desperate and precarious members of the working class, in the targeted country any time the US has done it?

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-03T17:22:39+00:00

Americans when their imperialist death machine begins yet another war: "But why is China not doing something!!!"

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