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A fair warning to my viewers: If you try publicly defending me, you WILL be incessantly and viciously harassed by Nazi filth, useful idiots and people with severe internalized bigotry.

If you don't have the skin for that, if you're the kind of person who nukes their social media when they get harassed, then don't do it. Please prioritize your own safety over defending me.

Force Lightning anon. As someone who has only really seen the movies and played some of the games I could only really say Mace Windu, though he was pushed out of a window by it so idk if that counts. I was more pointing towards Luke almost being killed by Palpatine in Return of the Jedi, which clearly showed that Force Lighting is quite painful to the person being hit by it.

Painful, but Palpatine was electrocuting him for quite a while.

Conversely, if you just jolt someone in the abdomen, they're down for the count without having to kill them. This fundamentally highlights the difference between a power being ontologically evil, and the person using it maliciously.

I agree with your overall statement about the whole Dark Side - Light Side thing, but killing someone via slowly electrocuting them to death is a lot crueller than instantly killing them with a lightsaber stab to the chest.

You'd be right.

Now, can you name any character in Star Wars that was actually electrocuted to death?

Also: Lightsaber wounds to the chest don't instantly kill people

All of them either survived, or held on long enough to feel every agonizing second of what had just been done to them.

Still, the Dark Side is about being selfish while the Light Side is about being selfless. That makes them respectively evil and good

Not at all!

It's not inherently evil to want to better yourself. And plenty of evil has been done in the name of improving others or society at large.

This is always the problem with cloaking your characters in Taoist, Bhuddist and Jainist imagery while taking all of your actual philosophy from a racist, gender-essentialist, radical Christian nutcase who'd give HP Lovecraft a run for his money.

I'm surprised I haven't seen you or anyone in your inbox use "Imoencest" as a portmanteau.

There isn't an official ship name for Gorion's Ward/Imoen. I jokingly said "Candlecest" at one point.

How do you square away your interpretation of the Dark Side with Lucas saying that there is no "Light Side" and the Force is just the Force, with the Dark Side being a corruption of it?

In general, I've never accepted interviews in my critique, analysis or writing. A creator can say whatever they want in interviews, it doesn't actually matter.

Lucas' statements on the Dark Side is undermined by a very simple concept: It isn't canon. There isn't a single version of Star Wars that has ever adhered to this idea.

Return of the Jedi showed Luke rocking up wielding Force Choke. The first Force Power we see on screen is fucking mind control. And even when Disney reset the canon to get everything back to basics, Rey straight up pulls out Force Rage during her fight with Kylo. Then you have Mace Windu's special "Dark Side but Not Dark Side" lightsaber form.

Using the Dark Side in limited quantities is something every Force User does. I think the best example of this is Electric Judgment. Plo Koon used Force Lightning, but did so to effectively be a taser to stun a man who had taken a young girl hostage. There's two ways to look at this power.

An example of Legends not understanding the real Force as Lucas intended.

The Jedi using the Dark Side and giving it its own fuckspecial name to make it sound more just because it's apparently different when they do it.

And if you're not keeping up: The second one is WAY better of an explanation. Like, Electric Judgment doesn't exist. You just used Force Lightning. That's not Vapaad, Master Windu, that's Juyo. You're using the Dark Side, fucking own up to it.

And the thing about the Jedi is that their own ideas about the Force aren't free of evil. Sure, the Jedi by and large favor diplomacy, but the thing about diplomacy is that it's very easy to come to a diplomatic solution when you walk in with the deadliest weapon in the universe attached to your belt. You see this in The Phantom Menace, when the Jedi show up to negotiate on the Chancellor's behalf, the Nemoidians are terrified. They're afraid to go into the room with them.

The Jedi's philosphy is fundamentally "Speak softly and carry a big stick. You will go far."

And let's be honest here: How the hell is Lightning more evil than sticking a rod of superheated plasma in someone's body? That's like saying a taser is more evil than stabbing someone with a blowtorch.

Lucas can say whatever he wants in Interviews about the nature of the Force, but none of what actually goes into the work ever adheres to that. And what's worse, all the best Star Wars media is the stuff that throws that shit away at the first opportunity.

Sure Lucas can say the Dark Side is a perversion, unfortunately Nihilism Grandma said that's cringe and then threw a chair at him.

imoen is some random thief/support character npc nobody else gaf abt that you project your sister fantasies onto bc you're a incest gooner. weeb type shit. go take more nature walks.

Aww, the BG3 troglodytes are mad :3

So you would canonize the Imoen incest romance?

90% of it is already canon

If you were in charge of the Baldur's Gate series overall, what would you canonize and de-canonize?

Canonize

The Trilogy

The Stayed Mortal ending

The Ward and Imoen travelled together until their death

BG1 NPC Project

De-Canonize

The novels

Every tabletop module

Baldur's Gate 3

Is it true you only wrote The Sith Resergence just to spite Rian Johnson and fans of The Last Jedi?

I think that was the film we changed the least.

We ironed out the idea walking home from TROS.

My favourite part of the response to the Imoen Romance video is all the people going "what the fuck? Why is this cute? This is not supposed to be cute!"

The are people buying BG2 just to play it and they are so utterly confused at why they want to.

One guy said it game him his "most confused d'aaw"

Welcome to the freaking Twilight Zone.

Did SWTOR have any good controversies?

In the Sith Warrior storyline, while you're undermining Darth Baras you learn that he was keeping an ancient Sith spirit chained up in his basement. So you go to free it, where she talks about being in love with Vitiate.

It's a very weird chapter where we just find a "powerful Sith who held the galaxy by the throat three hundred years ago" that nobody ever heard about even thought 300 years ago would have been around KOTOR 1 and 2, and given the Sith Warrior also interacts with Revan and the Exile you would think they'd have mentioned-

Oh...

OH NO...

It turned out not to be the case, and the only suggestion otherwise came from a writer who wasn't even involved in the story basically just guessing and clearly not having played those games at all. But MAN people were ROYALLY pissed because if that had been true it would have been the worst disservice possible to the best written Star Wars character of all time.

So in the Jedi Alie AU, why is Luke suddenly abusive?

He isn't so deliberately. He has a student who is roiling with the Dark Side, and is trying to do what he can to quell it. He doesn't realize, and in fact not even Alie knows, that she cannot help what she is and the Dark Side is an integral part of her.

It juts so hard against the instincts of a Jedi. As is the case when Alie first tries moving away from Kyber crystals.

In truth, their relationship comes off more like any other impatient or impetuous Padawan, the only difference is that Alie is actually right when she clocks that something is wrong while Luke is only doing the same thing that any Jedi Master would say to their pupil, not realizing his pupil has very different needs and capabilities.

The Jedi have never encountered this before.

Luke's actions are severe, but unintentional. Hell a freaking Sith Ghost says the same thing to him

Ultimately Alie comes down to the latter. By the time she escapes this version of Alie doesn't hate Luke, hence why she saved him, but at the same time doesn't want Luke anywhere near her.

The thing I've always noticed about your characters is they all do very heroic things, but they aren't nice. Niva will save people from a meteor, but she won't hide the fact that she hates her job. Anevay will save the world from cosmic horrors but she's racist. Aliana will lead the galaxy against oppressors but she's bitter and cynical.

I wonder if that's why some people are so mad

Yeah, pretty much. A lot of people care more about a character being nice than being good. And a lot of it directed at me is just about not showing proper respect to the formula.

When I write fanfiction, it's almost always deconstructive because I bring my critical analysis and beliefs about the franchise into it.

TSR throws away the Disney-fied version of the Dark Side because the more nuanced Dark Side from Legends was better.

Horde Champion openly chafes against the Alliance-centric and nice guy-centric writing WoW is currently suffering under.

Avatar Niva openly challenges the "Avatar Formula" that's been choking the franchise to death for years.

I've kinda always been this way. I don't turn my critical brain off and when I write fanfiction I write it the same way KOTOR 2 is written in relation to the rest of the franchise.

A lot of people get angry when I do that because they can the criticisms I'm making. In the case of Niva, that criticism is "Stop copying The Last Airbender's formula. Do something different. Anything different."

If I could physically grab Bryke and shake them like they're a first year Wii game, I'd be screaming in their face "STOP DOING JET AND OZAI EVERY FUCKING STORY! TELL A DIFFERENT STORY!"

Niva throws most of that shit away because it's a problem. She's characterized in such a way that the Jets and Ozais don't work because she'd fucking one-tap them. And her story is about examining what the Avatar is after so much of Korra was dedicated to the rabble yelling unwarranted criticisms at her and her taking them way too personally.

Aang had a big arc about how even if he doesn't like it, he IS the Avatar so better get with the program. Niva extends that to everyone. She IS the Avatar. Don't like her? Sucks to be you, you weren't consulted.

And the thing is, these guys can see the criticisms I'm making, and they're mad about it because they LIKE the fact that Avatar moves away from philosophy and closer to a shonen anime. They like that the new movie did away with philosophy entirely to just being about Aang and Tahga Armor Digivolving into Super Saiyans and screaming at each other in the voice of the Legion.

And me suggesting that the franchise would be better served by getting less cosmic, less explosive, less bombastic, and more meditative, like the episodes of the original show people actually liked the most, is profane because they won't want that boring shit. They want to watch the element monks shoot kamehamehas at each other.

relating to that ground news anon, wasn't there a study that found that when news outlets did only report factual information with no obvious bias it was still taken to have a liberal bias? even if I am misremembering, what point is there in wanting to read conservative opinions in the first place? not only are they likely to simply lie about reality but they just have bad opinions not worth listening to.

The whole point of Ground News is that it makes you feel smart for using it when it's as useful as a political compass.

The best thing Niva could do for the world is die as soon as possible and hope the next avatar won't be a failure

I'm imagining someone actually saying this to Niva's face and her response.

Well if I'm being honest her response would probably be-

But instead I decided to write this out.

I think one of the reasons that "polyamory could fix this" Is a thing, is that so many shows, movies and anime pull the love triangle trope for cheap drama and handle it so poorly that some fans just don't want to put up with it and headcanon polyamory out of spite. I've seen other fans say that one or more characters in a love triangle is ace for the same reason (which is hilarious). Some people are just sick of hack writers being hack writers.

A love triangle isn't hack writing, it's just an overused trope you don't like.

Process your emotions like an adult.

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