On the Mary Sue-ism of Rey (Split off by (several) requests)

[Thaluikhain]

Now that I think of it (and admittedly, I've not watched the movies in a bit), Luke gets his power ups after something kicks his teeth in. He learns how to shoot Death Star weaknesses after he watched his old friend get cut up and all his younger friends get shot down. He learns basic telekinises after being beat up and ice-glued (somehow) to the ceiling by a yeti. He then has a lousy time hanging out with Yoda before going off to fight Vader and getting his hand cut off before changing into black clothes and being able to beat up Jabba's goons with some new tricks.

Rey is somewhat annoyed that a former stormtrooper keeps taking her hand before she shows her piloting skills. She gets easy mind control after arguing with Kylo Ren.

Now, not saying that that makes her a Mary Sue, just that her progress with the Force was fairly "meh", but so was the movie in general.

Also, there might be some relevant stuff in the Ewok adventures and holiday special, we should all go watch those. Right?

[Chamomile]

Chamomile, everyone who is willing to engage with you at all is calling you on your bullshit. You should probably consider that this means that there is a good chance that the hill you have staked out is bullshit mountain.

"But lots of people disagree with you!" is not a super compelling argument when each individual argument is bad, and indeed most of them are laughably bad. The arguments on display here are "but this line from the trailer," "but audiences surely have psychic superpowers that allow them to discern where the storyteller is going with this," "I don't understand what foreshadowing is or how it works," and "it makes sense if you read the books." You, specifically, have demonstrated either an inability to parse my arguments or a dishonest unwillingness to recognize them back when you were trying to accuse me of "shifting goalposts" because of things that I said in my first full post on the subject or which Disney announced four years ago. There is no amount of dishonest shits believing something that will convince me to question my belief in it, because beliefs supported by things which are trivially false have no better odds than chance of being correct. It's as convincing as "but there's hundreds of thousands of Christians for every atheist in the world, don't you think they might know something you don't?" No. No, I do not.

Even basic familiarity with the film series would show you Luke spontaneously manifesting Force Pull and yes, Anakin spontaneously manifesting Mind Trick (an event that was specifically coded as surprising and alarming to Obi-Wan).

See, that would at least approach a reasonable argument (although you still have not confirmed whether or not you think Anakin wasn't a trained Jedi in AotC, which is kind of an important distinction - Luke's scene in RotJ was establishing that he's a fully trained Jedi now, not that he'd turned 24, which you apparently think is critical), except that the scene you're referring to doesn't appear to actually be real. Now, maybe you caught something that Wookieepedia's otherwise exhaustive list of every mind trick ever used in the current canon has missed, but I'm pretty confident that this is actually just you misremembering (or outright lying). And I'm even more confident that your consistent ineptness in recognizing basic storytelling techniques has caused you to misread Obi-Wan's alarm at casual or aggressive use of the Force for Anakin knowing a mind trick at all even if the scene is real, and even if that isn't what's happening that still doesn't help you because we see no indication that Anakin doesn't already know telekinesis, and indeed, his casual use of it on Naboo suggests that he's already quite comfortable with it by the time the movie begins. You seem to think that "people sometimes spontaneously manifest Force powers" is a slam dunk rebuttal to "Force powers come online in a certain order, with some powers being used to indicate higher levels of master," but, uh, they're not even really related.

But the more important underlying issue is that your fundamental complaint about storytelling signposting is so wrong that it's literally backwards. That Rey was going to spontaneously manifest a Force power in that scene was extremely obvious by how closely the film mimicked scenes from previous Star Wars movies. Rey bound in the interrogation chamber is arecapitulation of Luke in the Wampa cave. Therefore the only thing that can happen in a movie that derivative is for Rey to manifest a Force power just as Luke manifested a Force power. And where Luke manifested telekinesis, Rey has to manifest Mind Trick because it's the only other power that was shown in the first movie.

And...you're...calling this good storytelling? Because that's the only way this argument works. If you're calling the mind trick the result of bad storytelling - which you later do - you can't use necessity of good storytelling to defend it. Like, no one complained when I said that Starkiller Base tried and failed to make itself look more impressive than the Death Star by being larger and more destructive. That this was bad appears to be the consensus position. Now later we have the exact same story making the exact same flaw - taking one of Luke's most powerful abilities and dropping it on our new protagonist in her first movie to try and make itself seem more special than the OT just by bludgeoning the story with the author's power to increase scale and rate at-will - and suddenly you're asserting that this is not only okay but necessary, and then you go back to complaining about why it is bad. So you assert that the scene had to play out the way it did because of narrative, and then go on to assert that it failed on merits of narrative. You can't use the rules of storytelling to defend a scene where the storytelling failed.

Nothing about narrative can be used to defend this because you have already conceded that the narrative failed. The limit of your wiggle room to argue this is that the pre-eminence given the mind trick (and Force choke) in Return of the Jedi was already subverted or retconned, and so far all you've got in that direction is media explicitly decanonized by the movie we're talking about which wouldn't be reasonable to expect audiences to be familiar with even if it weren't and your assertion that Anakin totally did something that is a slam dunk for your argument but which Wookieepedia somehow missed despite otherwise cataloguing every individual use of the mind trick down to Qui-Gon's failed attempts on Watto.

Now, the things you keep falling back on here are things that I, myself have brought up either in laughably poor attempts to turn them around on me - pro-tip, Frank, your understanding of storytelling is utterly crippled and you are never, ever going to find me making a mistake basic enough that you catch it - or else you're reciting back to me things that I said were important in Leia's scene, like age or the fact that she was in a desperate situation which, yes, does lead people to push through barriers that otherwise prevent them from using difficult skills. The fact that you're leaning on this so heavily, even in contexts where it makes no goddamn sense (I will point you again to age, which makes absolutely no sense in this context), suggests that you consider my perspective on the Force reliable enough to try and rephrase it back at me even though you don't understand it. Maybe you should consider doing the same thing here.

[Username17]

You, specifically, have demonstrated either an inability to parse my arguments or a dishonest unwillingness to recognize them back when you were trying to accuse me of "shifting goalposts" because of things that I said in my first full post on the subject or which Disney announced four years ago.

Yes. I can't parse your arguments. Your arguments are so thoroughly self refuting that I have difficulty even understanding why you don't just apologize for having wasted everyone's time.

The Force has rules. Those are wishy washy rules, and there is room for various authors to pull out various weird exceptions, and they totally do that way too often. But actually factually Mind Trick is a basic Force power that is the first Force power of a lot of Force sensitive characters. It just is. It literally always has been. If you had asked me in 2004, 1994, or 1984 whether it was reasonable for a newly recognized Force Sensitive hero to spontaneous display Mind Trick in a moment of stress, I would have told you that yes it was. Because The Force working exactly that way for basic powers in general and that power in particular has been one of the few constants of the system.

You know, long before people decided that Vader's fucking glove was a powerful Sith artifact or people wrote five pages of backstory for holo chess, Mind Trick was defined as a basic Force Power and basic Force Powers were defined as things that could manifest spontaneously in Force Sensitive characters. That's just how the setting has always fucking worked, since before I was even born.

So the onus is not on me to find an example of movie continuity where it explicitly shows a character demonstrating Mind Trick spontaneously in a moment of stress to the surprise of people around them - although I did actually do that. The onus is on you to show an example of literally anyone ever saying a single fucking thing about The Force to make us believe that was an unreasonable thing to happen. Which you have not done.

Mind Trick is shown used successfully in the Original Trilogy twice, and in the prequels three times. And it's only ever used successfully by any character once in each trilogy. There are a grand total of four characters who use it across all six movies, and one of those times it is used as a joke on a character whose actual fucking credited name is "Sleazebagano." It would be horrendously difficult to make any sort of claim about what you need to succeed at Mind Trick based on those five examples. And even more ludicrous to claim you could make any sort of claim based on the two fucking examples in the original trilogy. But even in that incredibly limited list of examples, your hypothesis is not supported. Not only is there no evidence for your assertion, but the "Tell Us Now!" bit by Anakin actually is a fairly persuasive piece of evidence in the opposite direction.

Which brings us to your weird "audience expectation" arguments, which are complete unparseable horse shit. Obviously it wasn't a subversion of audience expectations for her to use Mind Trick in that scene, because I was in the audience and called her doing it well before she actually did. The whole thing was so telegraphed that I was completely unsurprised by it happening. The structure of the movie, the forced recapitulation of scenes from previous Star Wars movies meant that Mind Trick scene was inevitable and when they set up a rehash of the Wampa cave I knew it had to be there. Fucking fuck.

You don't have an argument. The actual Star Wars lore says you are wrong. And it has said you are wrong since before either of were alive. So you need to find some scene somewhere where it strongly implies that the Star Wars lore is wrong. You don't have that scene, because it doesn't exist. We've looked at all five scenes where Mind Trick was used in the main-line movies, and none of them paint the picture you claim they do. Not a single one.

Please shut up now.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

I once saw a person learning to play basketball. He started by shooting free throws, then he learned how to dribble.

From this one person I saw once, I have concluded that all basketball learning is always in the order:

Free Throws, Dribbling, Passing, Three Pointers, Layups, Dunks, Hook shots.

That's why I get mad whenever I see basketball coaches teaching people how to dribble before shooting. Since that one guy proves the only proper order is the one he used, it follows that of course any other order is a mistake.

[Chamomile]

Yes. I can't parse your arguments. Your arguments are so thoroughly self refuting that I have difficulty even understanding why you don't just apologize for having wasted everyone's time.

Explain what about my assertion that Obi-Wan and subsequently Anakin are knight-level capability and only waiting for the formality of the promotion was hard for you to follow. Explain what part of that you thought was even slightly difficult to parse. Not what you thought was wrong or whatever, but what you thought was hard to understand. Because that is, in fact, the argument that you claimed was "shifting the goal posts" despite being contained in my original post. You keep trying to distract from that fact, hoping that if you're vague enough you can get people to forget how dishonest you've been the entire time you've been talking to me, but dude, I can just bring it up again. There's no version of this where you win.

Not only is there no evidence for your assertion, but the "Tell Us Now!" bit by Anakin actually is a fairly persuasive piece of evidence in the opposite direction.

And thus the truth comes out. That's not a mind trick. The Sleazebaggano mind trick is listed on Wookieepedia, but they don't have that one just a few minutes later in the movie, because there is nothing in the film to indicate that this is in any way a mind trick. It's just a threat. Obi-Wan is taken aback because Anakin is getting angry as Hell, which is happening because he's interrogating an assassin who tried to kill his crush. That's Anakin's actual character arc, which you are, of course, unable to identify, because you have no idea how narrative works. I am not even slightly surprised, but thank you for immediately providing evidence to support my accusation that you are incompetent at parsing storytelling language.

The Force has rules. Those are wishy washy rules, and there is room for various authors to pull out various weird exceptions, and they totally do that way too often. But actually factually Mind Trick is a basic Force power that is the first Force power of a lot of Force sensitive characters. It just is. It literally always has been.

So now you're falling back on "it makes sense if you read the books!" again. No matter how many times you reassert this, it's still going to be something that has been known to have been wrong for well over a decade. The only thing that matters to a piece of media is the media that precedes it in its own series, not decades-old books in entirely separate series' from a no-longer canon version of the setting.

Which brings us to your weird "audience expectation" arguments, which are complete unparseable horse shit.

You later go on to explain that you have difficulty parsing this because you are a myopic idiot. "There exists at least one person with sufficient background information to make sense of this" is not the same as "the audience has sufficient background information to make sense of this," especially not when the background information in question has been decanonized by the movie in question. Even people who have read/played the same material as you can't reliably come to the conclusion you did, and you sure as Hell can't expect that from the audience, because, despite your narcissistic presumption, the audience is more people than just you.

And this is the argument: You chasing your own tail and trying very hard to pretend that everything you have to say isn't just dumb, but dumb in a completely uncontroversial way. When Halo fanboys said that the plot of the games is good if you read the books, the response is that the games need to stand on their own merits without requiring background reading to comprehend. That argument was settled fourteen years ago. Now you're digging it up again and pretending that it was settled the other direction, like pointing to obscure canon not actually presented by the work under discussion is not only a counterargument, but some kind of unassailable checkmate position. That is literally the opposite of true! It's just you doing MGuy-grade "I am not actually going to counterargue what's been presented, I'm just going to pretend it wasn't presented and go on arguing like my opponent isn't even fucking here."

And it's not the only part in the post where you do it, either! Like here:

So you need to find some scene somewhere where it strongly implies that the Star Wars lore is wrong.

The scene from Return of the Jedi, where Luke Force chokes a dude and later mind tricks a dude, two Force powers that previously only fully trained Jedi had been seen to use. The purpose of that scene is to demonstrate that Luke has now arrived as a Jedi knight, because he can use powers he previously could not. This isn't the first time I've brought this up. Like, I'm not saying that I find your argument as to why that scene doesn't qualify to be lacking. I'm saying you literally didn't even present one. You just walked right past it under the hope that maybe if you pretended that you'd already rebutted that argument, no one would notice. I don't know why you expected to get away with that.

Now, I know you well enough to know where you're going to go next with this. You're going to put on your usual "too cool for school" act where you pretend that well obviously [lunatic bullshit counterargument that is neither obvious nor true] and you just thought it didn't even need to be stated. I feel like I should warn you in advance that this has never been convincing. The kinds of people who will actually believe you thought such an argument was obvious is limited to those who are both very foolish and have poor self-esteem, but honestly, you're a petty, dishonest bully hoping to use insults and misleading rhetoric to drive off the other party of an argument without having to concede that you have made not one, but multiple clearly false arguments in favor of your position, that indeed, people who wanted to argue for your position would be better off if you shut up and walked away because the twin self-inflicted injuries of rattling off whatever argument first comes to mind and trusting on rhetoric to buffalo it through no matter how stupid it is and a narcissistic unwillingness to ever admit to fault no matter how obviously one of your supporting arguments has failed and how much better off you'd be if you walked away from it and at least aspired to be specious instead of clinging to everything you've ever said no matter how wrong. So let's not pretend you don't know this tactic is useful exclusively for getting people to side with you whether or not what you're saying is true, and that it's something you pull out only when you have realized the position you are defending is false, and you continue to defend it anyway.

I once saw a person learning to play basketball. He started by shooting free throws, then he learned how to dribble.

Hey, remember when I told you that stories are about precedent, not data, because they are fictitious works created intentionally by human beings and not real phenomena that arise from natural chaos with tons of outliers? That's still true. You can't just reassert your bullshit like I never responded to you. You have to actually address the counterargument.

[Username17]

Explain what about my assertion that Obi-Wan and subsequently Anakin are knight-level capability and only waiting for the formality of the promotion was hard for you to follow.

That Obi Wan in Phantom Menace is 25 and Anakin in Attack of the Clones is 19. Claiming that they are at functionally the same level of maturity and educational level is fundamentally absurd. Everything you say stemming from the claim that Teenage Anakin and Graduate School Obi Wan are functionally the same rank is ridiculous. That hypothesis is obviously stupid and I fundamentally reject it. Any conclusions you hope to derive from those premises are summarily rejected.

-Username17

[Chamomile]

Where in either movie were their ages stated? No, wait, let me guess, "it makes sense if you read the books!"

EDIT: Oh, and also, you have apparently forgotten that I very specifically asked you not to explain why you thought it was wrong, but why you thought it was hard to follow, such that you thought it was a new thing that I was bringing up for the first time when I referenced it later, even though it was included in my original post.

[Wiseman]

How dense are you? They're clearly different ages in the first movie, so they're obviously different ages in the second movie. But whatever, quit trying to goalpost shift.

[Maj]

Where in either movie were their ages stated? No, wait, let me guess, "it makes sense if you read the books!"

Um... It's in the script?

Phantom Menace Script[/url]]OBI-WAN is twenty five, with very short brown hair, pale skin, and blue eyes.

...

A disheveled boy, ANAKIN SKYWALKER, runs in from the junk yard. He is about nine years old, very dirty, and dressed in rags.

Attack of the Clones Script[/url]]AMIDALA is more beautiful now than she was ten years earlier when, as Queen, she was freeing her people from the yoke of the Trade Federation.

I'm assuming math still works in the SW universe, so if the second movie is ten years later, and Anakin was nine in the first movie, then Anakin is now 19?

[Chamomile]

How dense are you? They're clearly different ages in the first movie, so they're obviously different ages in the second movie. But whatever, quit trying to goalpost shift.

We're comparing the age of TPM Obi-Wan to AotC Anakin, not AotC Obi-Wan to AotC Anakin. A cursory understanding of the conversation would've made that clear. How dense are you?

And even if we were talking about comparing only their ages in AotC, why would you expect that to constitute a shifting of the goalposts, besides blindly believing Frank when he says I'm shifting goalposts even though the fact that Obi-Wan and Anakin being comparable has again and still been a part of my argument since my very first full post on the subject? Frank's lie on this subject is not even slightly convincing, to be taken in by it is a demonstration that you are not even trying to evaluate whether or not what he says is true, just blindly agreeing.

Um... It's in the script?

Why would you expect "it makes sense if you read the screenplay" to be more reasonable than "it makes sense if you read the books?" Even fewer people read the screenplays than the spin-off books, and neither of them are part of the finished movie that must stand on its own merits!

[deaddmwalking]

So your argument is 'I, Chamomile, do not understand the movies, and even though I believe that an audience is bigger than one individual, only my understanding can be right.'

Which is stupid and wrong.

Anakin is not 'knight level', even if that were defined. You keep claiming that he just hadn't received his promotion...based on what? That he is using powers that you consider advanced?

Clearly there are two equally plausible answers to that. Either he is fully trained and capable (as you claim, ignoring evidence to the contrary) or it is possible to use powerful 'force moves' without full training and experience.

You are the one that refuses to engage with evidence contrary to your opinion. For example, you keep referring to a scene in the end credits as a 'trailer' when it wasn't a trailer - it was the end of the movie.

[Chamomile]

So your argument is 'I, Chamomile, do not understand the movies, and even though I believe that an audience is bigger than one individual, only my understanding can be right.'

Wrong again. Still not reading your posts until you can explain to me why the statement I'd quoted from you previously is wrong.

[Maj]

Um... It's in the script?

Why would you expect "it makes sense if you read the screenplay" to be more reasonable than "it makes sense if you read the books?" Even fewer people read the screenplays than the spin-off books, and neither of them are part of the finished movie that must stand on its own merits!

I'm sorry. I've obviously mistaken you for someone who gives a shit about the topic they're discussing.

When I don't know something, yet I care to know it, I look it up. And the most obvious way to look it up is to find the source. In this case, what George Lucas intended when he wrote the movies. I totally get not wanting to go to the books or whatever - they aren't authored by the same dude who wrote the movie and/or created the universe. But to deny facts about the universe your are debating because you're too lazy to look it up?

No one can debate with that attitude because it means that there is no way to argue the same topic. You will argue your impressions and memories of the movies, and if someone actually brings up an actual fact that you missed when you saw it on the screen, it gets dismissed.

By dismissing actual written proof of George Lucas's intentions when he created the movies you're debating, you've beyond discredited yourself. And ruined credibility means that - even if you are right - no one believes you. Further, it demonstrates that you are not interested in knowing the actual truth, so efforts to educate are a waste of time.

[Chamomile]

words

My opinion on this subject was not subtle:

When Halo fanboys said that the plot of the games is good if you read the books, the response is that the games need to stand on their own merits without requiring background reading to comprehend. That argument was settled fourteen years ago. Now you're digging it up again and pretending that it was settled the other direction, like pointing to obscure canon not actually presented by the work under discussion is not only a counterargument, but some kind of unassailable checkmate position.

And it's also something I explained to you, specifically:

neither of them are part of the finished movie that must stand on its own merits!

You want to talk about being unable to learn? Let's talk about how writing that sentence for you to read appears to have had no effect on your ability to understand my position whatsoever. I don't know how I could've made that any more clear.

Star Wars isn't real. This isn't like science or history where facts, however obscure, are still true. The only real people are the creators and the audience, and pretty much the first thing they teach you when you attempt to learn any kind of storytelling whatsoever is that unless you plan to stand over the shoulder of every single reader and explain to them what you really meant, creator intent means absolutely nothing. It's why when you're getting feedback on stuff you've written, you're not supposed to clarify or argue with the people giving it to you, you're just supposed to ask questions. Because you will not be able to clarify or argue with your audience. Anakin and Obi-Wan have no age because they aren't real, there is no "actual truth" to know about them. Only the audience is real, and nobody told them that the scripts for TPM and AotC was required reading for TFA, and it is goddamn ludicrous to treat them like it is.

As it happens, I know shittons of trivia about the Star Wars canon, and Frank's assertion that Anakin and Obi-Wan aren't comparable due to an age gap is actually significantly harmed when framed as part of the overall canon. Even ignoring legends! Obi-Wan was trained as a Jedi since childhood and made knight rank at age 25. Anakin started his training late and beat Obi-Wan to knighthood by six full years, attaining the rank at the age of 19 or maybe 20 (if he has a birthday coming up soon after AotC), because he didn't have his padawan braid and, indeed, was assigned an apprentice of his own at the time of the Battle of Christophsis - which is from the Clone Wars movie and therefore still canon, and also occurred later on in 22 BBY, the same year as the Battle of Geonosis.

None of this actually matters, because you cannot reasonably count on anyone who's seen TFA to have also seen this, and again, the audience are real people and Anakin Skywalker is not. But fuck, you want to talk about background knowledge of Star Wars? You are not even close to my level, so it should be comforting to you that it is, of course, completely irrelevant trivia.

[Kaelik]

I once saw a person learning to play basketball. He started by shooting free throws, then he learned how to dribble.

Hey, remember when I told you that stories are about precedent, not data, because they are fictitious works created intentionally by human beings and not real phenomena that arise from natural chaos with tons of outliers? That's still true. You can't just reassert your bullshit like I never responded to you. You have to actually address the counterargument.

It's not a counterargument, it's an assertion you are making about how everyone else in the universe took the same wrong and completely unfounded assumption from seeing Luke do shit that you did.

My counter assertion is that actually, no most people did not assume that the force can only ever be learned in a specific order because Luke learned it in that order and most people would be completely unsurprised to discover that force shit can be learned in different orders.

Now, I don't have a scientific poll to demonstrate that, but I do have you know, all the people who wrote star wars books, all the people who wrote star wars games, all the people who watched the star wars movies and never complained about how Rey violated the fundamental intrinsic order of learning things, and all the people who have ever watched marvel movies and not gotten mad about how other people have different super powers than Iron Man, or all the people who have read literally any serial media (liek Naruto) and not made the assumption that all characters must learn all ninja magic in the order the first character learned ninja magic, ect.

Basically, all my interactions with literally every single person in the universe that isn't you has led me to conclude that people don't on interacting with a single character demonstrating abilities, assume that all people learn all abilities in the same order.

I could be wrong, maybe everyone I've ever spoken to about media is an outlier, but your evidence so far is

"BUT I'M REALLY MAD" so I'm currently content with my evidence over yours.

[Kaelik]

So your argument is 'I, Chamomile, do not understand the movies, and even though I believe that an audience is bigger than one individual, only my understanding can be right.'

Wrong again. Still not reading your posts until you can explain to me why the statement I'd quoted from you previously is wrong.

At the point where you are literally just being Zak S, you might consider that you have taken the wrong path.

[erik]

That's not fair. I don't think Chams puts his name up for google alerts so he can rush to his own defense anywhere in the interwebs. But yeah, this discussion does have that aftertaste. Salty with a dash of taint.

[Chamomile]

Now, I don't have a scientific poll to demonstrate that, but I do have you know, all the people who wrote star wars books, all the people who wrote star wars games, all the people who watched the star wars movies and never complained about how Rey violated the fundamental intrinsic order of learning things

Novel writers and game designers converging on "different Jedi have different specialties" is unsurprising because that is obviously a superior way of doing things. It allows you to differentiate Force users from one another. It's also something they establish first, early on in the stories, rather than in act three.

Meanwhile, if you read the Wookieepedia entry on mind tricks, they do actually point out how weird it is that Rey was able to pull one off untrained. So, yes, people have noticed, and that's before getting into the fact that people can't actually reliably articulate what makes a certain movie or scene good or bad.

Re: Deaddm, my position is that I'm not willing to engage with him until he can explain my own position to me. Not that he has to tell me why his argument is wrong or whatever. Just literally prove to me that he understands the argument he is claiming to rebut. If you think that's unreasonable, then you are literally arguing in defense of strawmen, because that's my issue with Deaddm: He very reliably attacks not only a strawman of my position, but the exact same strawman of my position. I adopted this stance because I explained to him three times that I do not oppose the growth of a hobby, and at the end of it he still thought I opposed the growth of hobbies. I'm not surprised he doesn't like me - I wouldn't like me if I actually believed all the stuff he thinks I do. But if directly telling him "no, I do not believe that" is not enough to get him to notice what my position is or isn't, then we have clearly reached the stage where no discussion can take place. Which is why I refuse to engage with him until he demonstrates the ability to actually articulate the position he is rebutting to my satisfaction. Not to actually agree with it or explain why he's dumb or whatever - just prove that he understands what I'm saying.

One of the things DeadDM has accused me of in this thread is something I have personally explained is not true three fucking times. How many times does an explanation have to sail over someone's head, totally unacknowledged, before you think it's justified that I stop trying to communicate with them?

[Kaelik]

Zak S explained to us that his hypothetical diplomacy system had no problems and had no apple stacking problem of any kind like 14 times and therefore everyone saying it did didn't understand what he was saying and he refused to talk to anyone who didn't understand what he was saying.

Your contention that literally everyone arguing with you just doesn't understand your arguments isn't making you sound LESS like Zak S.

[Chamomile]

Zak S claimed that X is true, because Y. People show up to tell him that Y is false, and therefore X is false. He asserts loudly and repeatedly that Y is true, and demands that people explain to him why his argument is correct. Zak S' position of "Zak S' diplomacy system totally works" is not in dispute (EDIT for clarity: The validity of that conclusion is in dispute, because it is wrong, but Zak S believes it is true, because he is a megalomaniacal abuser, but what his conclusion is is understood by everyone and is not in dispute).

I claimed that X is true, because Y. DeadDM accuses me of believing Z. I do not believe Z. I have never believed Z. DeadDM's accusation that I believe Z is a bizarre delusion whose only required counterargument is "no, that is not a thing that I believe." I explain to DeadDM repeatedly that I do not oppose the growth of hobbies, have never opposed the growth of hobbies, that indeed I am totally happy to see hobbies grow, and as of his last post on the subject he still believes I oppose the growth of hobbies. How the fuck do you expect me to interact with that?

[Maj]

As it happens, I know shittons of trivia about the Star Wars canon

Yes.

None of this actually matters

That is correct. And it's really easy for me to dismiss your unverifiable denial and bullshit because I don't believe you. And you can't prove that wrong.

[Chamomile]

Maj, if we've recognized that Star Wars trivia like Anakin's and Obi-Wan's age do not actually matter when they aren't even brought up in the movies, then what even is your argument?

[Wiseman]

Maj, if we've recognized that Star Wars trivia like Anakin's and Obi-Wan's age do not actually matter when they aren't even brought up in the movies, then what even is your argument?

What the hell even is your arguement? If you think people are misunderstanding your points, then the onus is on you to clarify.

[MGuy]

Hoo boy this is really funny. Chanmomile raced to agree with DSM and dismiss my argument (without reading it to check to see if DSM's rants actually mattered for what I was arguing), didn't realize that the bulk of the argument was people yelling about technicalities, and now here we are. I'm not even sure of the value of arguing the way Rey picked up her powers. I can see how it is odd that she picked up the mind trick (not that she picked it up but that she was able to out mind struggle a guy who was apparently really super good at it) in the same way that Luke picked up the force pull before training with Yoda. I don't know how Anakin counts considering he'd actually had legitimate training but whatever.

I'm not interested in this part of the conversation so I'm curious about something else. Regardless of all of this 'stuff' that people are on about. What do people think is the 'real' thing ruining star wars right now and what do people here think should be done to fix it?

[Chamomile]

I mean, sure. If people want to ask what my argument is, I'm happy to talk to them. For example: The summary of my position is that Rey's scene in TFA undermines Luke's scene in RotJ by taking a power that had previously been used as emblematic of a high level of mastery of the Force and handing it off to our new protagonist as her very first conscious use of the Force. This is a problem for the same reason as Starkiller Base attempting to steal the Death Star's thunder was a problem. Instead of earning a place in the canon, like Rogue One did, TFA has attempted to bludgeon its way in by using the power of copyright-enforced exclusive authorship to make the OT seem small in comparison, but this doesn't make the NT look good, it just makes long-term fans - and this is Star Wars, so almost everyone is a long-term fan, even if only of the movies - hate it for shitting on the movies we loved.

Now if, looking at that, someone decides that my argument is that TFA is bad because women should never be protagonists, the problem is not that I have failed to explain myself to them. The problem is that they can't read, or more precisely, that they are allowing their preconceptions to override the words that I have actually written and are not double-checking my writing to make sure that the thing they thought I said was actually in there (or double-checking that the thing they thought I didn't say wasn't actually in there, in the case of the ongoing and still obviously false accusations of goalpost shifting).

So now it's your turn to clarify: Do you concede that accusations of goalpost shifting are baseless, or do you maintain that they are valid? And if the latter, explain exactly what goalpost you think was shifted, with a quote of both the post that established the initial goalpost and a quote that established the second, shifted goalpost.