"You're the most basic of jokes." · 1:30am Jul 10th, 2017
I swear that this show is self-aware sometimes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VgzOx1csnM
Maud's joke at Discord might be seen as the sort of "No, YOU!" humor. But it's not. What she says is true in a way that is true to Discord as a character. Like panning for gold in a bunch of dirt, she is able to condense out what matters because that is what she went to school for. She didn't go to school to play the rock guitar. She went there to study ROCKs as things. Condense entire college-level arguments into thesis statements. Maybe use simpler words and shorter sentences so that non-college folks who she talks to will care about rocks and maybe go to college themselves (for rocks or whatever else). So Maud's college-educated mind did just that with Discord in a beautiful, six word summary of everything wrong with him as a character.
Just like Discord ripped off Skype without really adding anything new or useful to it. I think our fandom only uses it to talk about writing because of the name. Discord might have some new features, but it's very user unfriendly when it comes to actual functionality. It's made for gamers to cooperate in games and call their opponents "faggots." It's never designed for deeper conversation about things that matter on more than a gaming level. Skype was. I still use Skype For Business and it's a functional app at my work. It saves records of convos easily for my access later, with search function by keywords. "Have I ever asked my boss about file extensions? Have I ever asked Para about what makes Starlight a good character?" I can just search for it. Not so on Discord that I know. Maybe I should learn the app better. But I shouldn't have to learn a new thing if the old thing was either the same or better. Otherwise why change.
Skype I could mute the whole app, because the Skype team was smart enough, and graceful enough, to figure out that I might actually want to leave my computer (Thus skype) on and play music in the background when I was sleeping. Just like Nightmare Moon at least had grace and poise even as a villain. She cared about something, day and night and which time it was. She was wrong, but she had a motive. I shouldn't hear notifications from the app while sleeping, period. Discord you have to mute each channel individually, if there is a way to mute the whole app then it was never clear to me. Sometimes things unmute themselves too for no reason.
That's the problem with Discord. He abandons reason that we see everywhere else in the show. Because "What fun is there in making sense?" I mean, why not turn a community of friends into an incoherent mess where you can't find anything at all? Because it's funny because random! Because little kids like cotton candy clouds, right? No. Kids like a good story just like we do. What are we all but just smarter, well educated, taller, more responsible, more life experience... but still kids at heart? We're called adults and mature because our personality developed. But a kids' show can be just as engaging for character reasons as an adult show. MLP is better than the Simpsons because of MLP's friendly sense of life. The Simpsons often throws characterization out the window because the story needs Homer to act like a dick to his friends. Overly reckless to his family to the point where you want to shoot him and put his kids in foster care. Other than Mare Do Well, Owls' Well, Inspiration Manifestation... MLP does it sometimes. But usually, they actually have real characters. Who feel like real people with real motives. So we as the viewer care what happens to them.
With Discord I never cared. They just used Jon De Lancie's voice actor and tried to give him Q like powers. But there's a difference in soul. Q is near omnipotent (or he's just a technological trickster with teleporters that can reach through shields, and a massive holodeck on a cloaked ship. Who cares, not important to the story. There is evidence that the Q are just techy tricksters though.) Q uses his powers to try and learn from humanity, though. In Encounter At Farpoint, the Q Continuum put humanity on trial to judge if they are ready to explore the stars. Why would they care if they truly had GODLIKE powers they could just use to zap the Earth away. Because they probably are just really evolved tech, but that the Federation's tech could eventually meet or even surpass. But the Q see the whole galaxy due to their speed of transport/self teleportation. They can tell and history shows that you shouldn't let folks out of their quadrant if they aren't ready to interact with galactic society. They try to learn from humanity because the Q have slipped in their conception of justice and use arbitrary executions like creating a tornado to kill Q hiding out in Kansas whos only crime was leaving their stupid system.
Humanity tries to prove that it's learned the value of friendship and cooperation with other races. With themselves. Earth is at peace with little to no war, crime, violence, etc. because the justice system allows criminals to repent. The United Earth system allows countries to talk and resolve their differences without petty emotional political disputes. Imagine if we and Russia could do that. No more Syria or Ukraine proxy wars which each side have committed faults in. We'd acknowledge what we did, leakers like Snowden or Assange would prove what we did to our citizenry even if we were fucking evil liars to our own people. So we'd be forced to talk, just like Trump for all his faults is at least trying to TALK to Putin. Maybe even succeeding sometimes. "RUSSIAN AGENT! They hacked our elections with no proof!" Thanks CNN. Thanks for ruining our chance at forgiving each other for our cold war past, which the US was not blameless in either, see Vietnam. See Iraq in 2003 that Putin tried to warn Bush about. Maybe he should've listened. For all Saddam's faults he was a secular leader of a peaceful country which allowed freedom of worship. Even Westboro Baptist picketers were allowed to visit and picket under Saddam. Now though? ISIS, bombings everywhere. That is America's fault for toppling reason and secularism.
55% college educated Russia which had an Eastward expansion and a space program in its past. They have more in common with highly educated (50% college) America than fundie Islamic Saudi Arabia who sponsors terror, or ex-penal, uneducated (10%) Australia does. Sorry Aussies, you're good folks as individuals and I like your music and art culture. That being said, your national identity cannot be forged on a high school, tradesman or "tradie" level of understanding to be friends with educated country like America. You can't chain up your mind to loving your government no matter what, just like you are no longer actually prisoners in real chains. You can't disarm your own people, which good evidence exists was deliberately done by a planned massacre the government staged, and then expect the US to pay for your defense. Even Israel requires all citizens to join its military because it's so small and surrounded by enemies and they need it. You can't own a gun in Australia and train with it incase China invades. Australia is a self-disarmed moocher on America's good graces. Then you send your comedians over here to ask us to give up our own guns. Nope. Sorry. You're China fodder unless you shape up and behave. Trump is attacking NATO's leeching for not meeting 2%. You guys are next for not meeting common decency as national friends with America.
Russia would make better friends than both Saudi Arabia and Australia with us... if we bothered to be friends. If we bothered to wonder if we even could be. In the United Earth, Russia and America would be friends. Most starship folks are Americans, but Chekov is a Russian. Worf the Klingon was raised by Russian parents. Gene Rodenberry's vision of the future included Russia, America, and most other earth countries we currently know which worked together to solve problems. Not Islamic countries, though. Or else they don't take it seriously like the Muslims who actually helped humanity by discovering algebra and recoving the lost Aristotle from the Greeks back in the early 900's-1100's. Not a single Muslim is seen or referenced throughout the show. Maybe they are there but they put science ahead of their faith. Nobody working on a starship wears a hijab. I wonder why. Because that belief system is incompatitble with humanity's future if practiced exactly like the Koran says you should. Beverly Crusher was a Christian, but it didn't stop her from being a good Doctor and she wasn't all fundie and weird about it to everybody else. If she had to wear a burka, she wouldn't have been able to do as good of surgery. Makes sense. Either in United Earth, real life Saudi has removed those rules. Or they are isolated by every other country because they're rightly seen as weirdo backwards people. Just like we isolate North Korea as a planet today. Except duplicitous China who uses NK's craziness to its own advantage of warmongering and conquering the region.
Earth's justice system in Star Trek is better than ours. With criminals they do try to reform them rather then getting pointless revenge like putting them in prison for years where they rely on gov't support and can't learn a skill to help themselves and get back into society. Look at how they treat Tom Paris, a serving criminal. He's on a planet, probably a Federation penal colony, DOING stuff. Proving to both himself and the Federation that he could change and he did change. Maybe the Federations listens to why criminals justified what they did and explain, using the convict's own reasoning process, why he must have been wrong to himself. Unless the convict uses his free will to decide not to change, in which case the highly advanced and socially tolerant federation still does have the death penalty in most episodes we see. They can put him out of his misery and remove his burden of care or monitoring his reformation from his government. His unrepentant risk from his society. Gene Roddenberry didn't like executions. I don't think anybody does. But he thought the death penalty a noble alternative when all else had consistently failed to work on one person when it usually always worked on others.
Q never really affected anything outside of Q episodes. He wasn't a "reformed" guy with his powers living on their starship who could've zapped the Romulans away 'cause he's Q. Discords' frequent inaction by itself is deafening and speaks to his character as not a true friend with Jon Luc. Jon Luc is kidnapped and held under a forcefield by space terrorists? When Q's teleportation ability reaches through forcefields? Oh well. Better just sit in my quarters which I've turned into a banana plantation for no reason that makes sense to my character.
Discord is inferior to Q. Discord is inferior to Skype. Discord tries to act random and snide and make us think that random or snide are funny. But they're not. He doesn't use reason. Russia uses their minds. Australia does not. There is more to Russia as our national "villain" than meets the eye. There is far less to Australia as our "friends" than meets the eye.
If I met Discord? If I was talking to the Australian government about their lamprey sucking off of on America's good graces? I'd repeat Maud's thesis.
"You're the most basic of jokes."
EDIT:
Realized I never realized the example of change and the potential for more change.
I think Discord is salvageable, by making him more Q like and keeping his powers limited to him just teaching them lessons, but also learning lessons from them. With his powers used more as comic relief or setting the stage for how the lessons are taught.
At least the Starlight episode has Discord himself teach Twilight a lesson... that she had no plan on what to do to continue Starlight's learning. Yeah the pony who normally has a plan for every little item on her checklist, missed the bigger picture.
That means that Discord now values order and planning above just chaotoic, unpredictable motivations. His humor might still be random but at least he has a motive. That's something new. The Starlight-Discord-Twi episode was great for the development in Discord's motive alone.
That... took several unexpected turns.
4597161
Did it make any good points though? Did you watch any of the well-reasoned videos or the well-reasoned evidence that I used?
I could be wrong. You could be wrong. But until we both unchain our souls and start to talk to each other, we might never know. I respect you as a person, dude. Hopefully likewise. Can we help each other grow through the unrestrained application of our minds? Where we both admit that we might be wrong? Where neither of us argues with the other angrily but through respected disagreement?
4597165
My dirty secret is that i never read the articles i share on facebook. Because I'm incredibly lazy. And having attended a very large Brony pool party yesterday and gotten two days in a row of very little sleep, I kind of started skimming. Fuck I'm sorry I'm really bad at this.
I think I have to read it again to make sure you are not talking about the discord chat server
4597168
Dude don't worry. Just try to go back and read it when your mind is less tired. You will get more from it.
Additionally, once you start to realize the true power of your mind to expose and fight evil. You no longer get tired. In fact you only sleep because you absolutely need to in order to recharge. But once you realize how right you are, that even if you were wrong you could be reasoned into changing your views instead of emotionally clinging to them. You become like Sonic the Hedgehog fighting Robotnik. Fighting and exposing evil becomes what you live for! You know that your fast, disciplined mind (running) can never be defeated by a fat, lumbering, kinda stupid joker like Eggman. You might lose your rings sometimes if an enemy hits you. But you will win because you keep playing using your obvious strengths to defeat a cartoon villain.
"It's alright, take a chance. Cause there is no circumstance that you can't handle... when you use your mind!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcRwE_x6Jfk
Why'd they include "when you use your mind"? in that song. Because Sonic, unlike Discord, has depth as a character and his motivations are clear.
Start seeing the evil folks in our world more as slow, fat, lumbering cartoon villains. Not as actual threats that can communicate GOOD ideas to convince people at light speed through the internet. A good, reasoned idea spreads a lot quicker than a bad idea.
4597178
LOL! My first post on this subject, that I decided to scrap. Used two paragraphs of arguments that applied equally well to both Discord the dude and Discord the chat server. Only in a spoiler did it reveal that I was actually talking about both at the same time because they are both bad for the same reasons.
1. Turning a community of friends into an incoherent, nonsensical mess
2. Not as developed or refined as what came before.
3. Unlike nightmare moon who cared about day and night, neither Discord does. I can't even sleep if I can't turn off notifications or my computer. What a myopic, self-absorbed app!
3. Mostly only appealing to little kids instead of smart adults. But even kids can be smart and see thru Discord; why was Maud's joke included in a kids' show otherwise?
4. Capitalizing on fandom popularity to exist or maintain itself all. Discord wouldn't have been created if Jon De Lancie as Q hadn't offered up his voice talents, and the writers didn't know what to do with him. They should've had him judge ponykind, teach them a few things but learn things from them too. He could've still been a trickster, but his tricks taught lessons. At least the Starlight episode has Discord himself teach Twilight a lesson... that she had no plan on what to do to continue Starlight's learning.
In the same way, Discord the chat probably wouldn't have replaced Skype in this fandom if it didn't share a name with a common character in the show we love.
Or the Muslims in Star Trek are more Westernized.
Also, true. There are quite a few fics where Discord is more Q like, excluding ones where he is Q
4597207
I mentioned 2 possibilities. That muslims are more westernized. Or that fundie countries like Saudi Arabia are seen by United Earth as crazy people to be isolated. Like we do to North Korea today until they change their leadership, or their leadership changes. NK is a bunch of angry drunks waving a fully loaded gun around the bar. Except with nukes.
I think Discord is salvageable, by making him more Q like and keeping his powers limited to him just teaching them lessons. With his powers used more as comic relief or setting the stage for how the lessons are taught.
At least the Starlight episode has Discord himself teach Twilight a lesson... that she had no plan on what to do to continue Starlight's learning. Yeah the pony who normally has a plan for every little item on her checklist, missed the bigger picture.
That means that Discord now values order and planning above just chaos. His humor might still be random but at least he has a motive. That's something new. The Starlight-Discord-Twi episode was great for the development in Discord's motive alone.
4597224
Wasn't being Orderly hurting him if I recall? But yeah, or have him in more fights
Can I ask, are you from Australia? Because you say "us" when you refer to the US, but I've noticed you pay a lot more attention to what's going on in the nation of Australia than any other American I know unless they are an Aussie or a New Zealander.
4597252
I thank my life every day that I am not an Australian. But their national story is so compelling to me as a person. I watch their country as entertainment to me, as an engaged fan just like I watch MLP. I admire the few people there who've found reason like the girl who made that video, who I would consider marrying if she left her shitty country and came here. Her accent and the way she talks is just so cute, and she is SMART! Australia is real and has consequences to me by their treachery. Consequences to global geopolitics because nobody ever points out, or even thinks to point it out. I do. I have reason on my side. I cannot lose, or even if I do then I would have been wrong anyway and I'll gladly update my worldview to be right. I hate to think that Aus is such a terrible place. But nonemotionally, I must acknowledge reality.
Their staged massacre was used as an example by the left of why gun control works because there hasn't been a staged massacre since. Of course, because gun massacres are rare anyway. New Zealand hasn't had once since 1996 either but you can still get semi-autos in New Zealand. Here's the guns you can get there legally. Even if you don't know much about guns, compare that to the ones which Australia paid half a billion dollars to destroy for nothing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1vDdBRnnxM
A pretty respectable arsenal. No mass shootings because most people are good and wouldn't go on a spree shooting. The gun buyback was entirely unnecessary in Australia because their slightly smaller, but culturally similar next door neighbor is a good example.
Australia is our "ally" and they fake that they're a Western nation. They are not. Look at their economy and 60% commodities and mining exports. It is just as vulnerable to commodities shocks as Russia was to the oil collapse in 2014. Except Russia has a large tech industry (Yandex and VKontakte) and an arms industry because war never goes out of business. That insulated them from total societal collapse which we now see in Venezuela due to their myopic oil-based economy.
Australia's uneducated population would have used their guns to stage a revolt if the metals market collapsed. Perhaps Russia and the US could cooperate and mine the moon together. Australian society would quickly resemble a Third World country. In fact, they already are. They are one of the few countries which mandate voting, a small list which also includes such shining examples as North Korea, the Congo, and banana republics. Greece too, but don't get me started on Greece.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_voting
Australia is not a Western country even though they speak English, are 90% white, and are rich. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are rich too, but they are theocracies so we don't call them Western in ideals. Race out-of-context is not enough to judge a nation so them being white with blue eyes like me is not relevant.
You might as well call them Saudi Australia. That's all they really are to me anymore. But I'm not angry. I'm not happy. I'm just glad that I now see the truth.
4597321 Thanks for explaining.
4597333
No problem. But have you tried to integrate my view into your own conception of who is "Third world" and "First world?" Have you abandoned those concepts in your mind as no longer useful? Like the word "nigger" is not useful to you. To some people, it is. We banished that concept from our collective acceptable vocabulary, though. Good. It's a terrible, not useful word who judges a person based on race rather than what they do as a person.
Or will you stop integrating. You could, or you could keep going and unchain your soul, never stopping for your whole life until you have either made the world a better place by your contribution or have died trying.
Unleash your mind and you can stop evil with a few cool jokes, simplest of jokes like Maud's quip or like "Saudi Australia" and the strength of your ideas. Evil no longer seems threatening to you.
You can unemotionally state, then elaborate on your position like Maud. Or like that Aussie chick in the video who is very nonemotional when speaking about a horrific state-sanctioned slaughter. She can feel her grief and anger later. Not when arguing and trying to change others minds, or perhaps have her mind changed.