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Spartacus01

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Post
#1662168
Topic
The Terran Reclamation and the Galactic Trial: Humanity’s Total War Against the Saurak
Time

Over the past few days, I’ve been diving deep into creating a new piece of lore that’s been bouncing around in my head for a while, and I finally decided to put it all together. The story takes inspiration from Warhammer 40k, Hearts of Iron IV: The New Order, and Star Trek’s Mirror Universe. I also drew a little from the Independence Day saga to add that sense of alien threat and large-scale conflict. The goal was to imagine a timeline where humanity faces an overwhelming alien invasion, fights back with every ounce of strategy and willpower, and ultimately transforms itself into a galactic power. Hope you enjoy my ideas.

The Lore

In 1942, during the middle of World War II, a race of Reptilian warrior aliens, known as the Saurak, discovered Earth. Seeing that humans were too busy waging war against each other, they decided to take advantage of the situation. Humans didn’t even have time to stop fighting each other and try to unite into a common front before the Saurak had already conquered nearly the entire planet. The invasion was rapid and effective.

The occupation lasted for about thirty years. It was marked by mass killings, forced labor, and systematic exploitation of Earth’s resources. Entire industries were repurposed to serve the Saurak. Human workers were forced into mines, factories, and construction projects designed to fuel the occupiers’ war machine. Deportations of entire populations took place, with people relocated into controlled zones or work camps. Public executions, mass disappearances, and constant surveillance were part of daily life. Cities that resisted too openly were bombed into ruins and then rebuilt as military garrisons. By the late 1940s, humanity lived under total control.

In 1957, Dimitri Yazov, a former Red Army Cornell who had served during World War II, founded an underground resistance movement called the Human Black League, establishing its headquarters in Omsk, deep in former Soviet territory. The ideology of the Black League was militaristic, based on total war and the extermination of the Saurak. According to this ideology, humanity had to pass through a series of trials in order to ascend to greatness:

  1. The First Trial: World War I.
  2. The Second Trial: the Saurak invasion and occupation of Earth.
  3. The Third Trial, also called the Great Trial or the Galactic Trial: the planned war of extermination against the Saurak across the galaxy.

Throughout the 1960s, the Black League expanded across occupied Earth. Underground networks grew larger, with cells in Europe, Asia, the Americas, and Africa. Smuggling lines were established to move weapons and information. The League eventually succeeded in stealing and capturing alien technology, including energy weapons and small vehicles. By the mid-1970s, the League had transformed itself into a global underground army.

In 1975, the League launched a worldwide uprising. Coordinated attacks erupted in dozens of major cities. Saurak strongholds were destroyed by explosives and captured energy weapons. Human militias rose in the countryside, cutting supply lines and targeting smaller Saurak garrisons. The rebellion quickly turned into a liberation war. The Black League enforced strict policies: no prisoners, no mercy. Every Saurak encountered was to be executed. After decades of oppression, humanity answered with absolute vengeance. By 1982, after years of bloody fighting, the Saurak were finally defeated and forced off Earth.

After liberation, humanity was united under the Terran Reclamation Government, a global militaristic authority. Its first priority was the systematic reverse-engineering of alien technology. Teams of scientists and engineers examined captured spacecraft, weapons, and power systems. Factories were rebuilt to produce energy-based weaponry, advanced vehicles, and experimental propulsion systems. From the early 1980s through the late 1990s, Earth’s industry was reorganized entirely for war and expansion.

With this new technology, humanity began constructing large-scale orbital facilities, shipyards, and military bases on the Moon and Mars. Fleets of starships were assembled, ranging from smaller strike craft to massive warships equipped with advanced energy weapons. Alongside these fleets, new weapons were created specifically for planetary assaults: orbital bombardment systems, armored landing vehicles, and automated drones. By 1999, humanity had become a spacefaring civilization prepared for interstellar war.

After years of preparation, the Terran Reclamation Government launched the Galactic Trial in 2000. Human fleets attacked the nearest Saurak colonies, targeting their military outposts, mines, and industrial centers. Each conquest followed the same principle: no survivors. Entire colonies were eradicated. Populations were wiped out, and the territory was taken under Terran control.

Over the following two decades, the campaign expanded deeper into the galaxy. Human fleets fought large-scale space battles against Saurak armadas. Planetary sieges were conducted, where human forces blockaded entire worlds until they were ready to land and exterminate the inhabitants. Former alien slaves belonging to other species that had been enslaved by the Saurak were liberated, armed, and integrated into the growing Terran war machine. The alien races who had been enslaved by the Saurak were seen by the League as reflecting humanity’s own past suffering under oppression, so they were welcomed, though inter-species relationships were forbidden in order to preserve humanity’s purity.

By the late 2010s, the Saurak Empire was collapsing. One stronghold after another fell to Terran forces. Their industrial bases were destroyed, their fleets annihilated, and their ruling structures dismantled. Humanity’s determination, combined with the systematic militarism of the Terran Reclamation Government, ensured that no Saurak survived.

By 2020, the Galactic Trial was complete. The Saurak species had been exterminated, their empire destroyed, and humanity had risen as a galactic power under the Terran Reclamation Government. Shortly after the completion of the Galactic Trial in 2020, Dimitri Yazov died of old age. He was given a State funeral with full honors and was proclaimed the greatest hero of humanity. Following his death, the Great Terran Empire was proclaimed, encompassing all the former territories of the Saurak Empire that had been conquered and purified by humans. The trials had been completed, and the ideology of the Black League had been carried to its final conclusion: the total destruction of Earth’s former oppressors.

Post
#1662162
Topic
Religion
Time

When Was the Quran Collected and Standardized and Who Did It?

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicQuran/comments/1bdh9v1/when_was_the_quran_collected_and_standardized_and/?share_id=CVgDdR5_XLEdXGcPf79E6&utm_content=2&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1


Although the standard story of the collection and standardization of the text of the Koran maintains it occurred primarily under the Caliph Uthman (644-656 A.D.), here the contrarian view is asserted that this process actually occurred almost entirely under Caliph al-Malik (685-705) of the Uymayyad dynasty, with the crucial assistance of his right-hand man, al-Hajjajj. The main (secondary) source for this thesis, and this entire post, is Stephen J. Shoemaker’s “Creating the Qur’an: A Historical-Critical Study,” which cites the necessary and relevant primary sources to support it. The intention of the first part of this text will deal with why the standard Sunni story of the Quran’s compilation, as told by Bukhari that focuses on the role of Uthman in standardizing its text, simply isn’t true. Then I’ll give some evidence that al-Malik, with the able if ruthless assistance of al-Hajjajj, did this instead.

A standard common claim of Muslims is that the text of the Quran has absolutely no errors or variations in it. However, when the actual history of the Quran’s transmission, collection, and standardization is examined in reasonably contemporaneous primary sources, it’s obvious that it had many, many variations and different regional text types before al-Malik (r. 685-705) and al-Hajjajj used their imperial authority to forcibly standardize the “received text” of the Quran out of these sources. The standard story of the standardization of the Quran’s text appears in Bukhari’s important collection of hadith (sayings/teachings attributed to Muhammad), which the Sunni sect of Islam upholds and many Western historians uncritically have signed off on (i.e., the “Noldekean-Schwallian” paradigm, as Shoemaker labels it). In this telling, Abu Bakr (632-34), the first caliph and Muhammad’s right-hand man, was asked by the man who would succeed him, Umar (634-644), to collect together the recitations of the Quran together because many of those with knowledge of what Muhammad had said recently had died in battle, thus taking their memories to the grave. Abu Bakr initially objected, by saying if Muhammad hadn’t told his fellow Muslims to do this during his lifetime, why do it now? However, Umar persisted, and Abu Bakr said it was fine to do so and that the services of the scribe Zayd b. Thabit should be used for assembling the text of the Quran together. Oddly enough, Zayd made the same objection that Abu Bakr did, but Umar prevailed with him as well. So then, Zayd went to work looking for various fragments of Muhammad’s revelations as they were preserved in various ways, including stones, palm branches, camel bones, and “in the hearts of men.” Then Zayd gave the sheets of paper resulting from this project to Abu Bakr, who later at his death passed them along to Umar. After Umar died, he left these sheets with his daughter Hafsa, who had been a wife of Muhammad. Then roughly 20 years later, the Caliph Uthman (644-656) towards the end of his reign became concerned about the various differing renditions of the Quran in circulation among Muslims. One of his top generals, Hudhayfa ibn al-Yaman, told Uthman that in Iraq and Syria significantly different versions of the Quran were in circulation. He was troubled because Muslims would eventually become divided over which version was the best. Uthman acted on Hudhayfa’s concerns by getting the sheets that Hafsa had kept, which became the basis for an official version of the Quran that a group of scribes under the direction of Zayd produced. Then Uthman sent out copies of this official text to the major cities of his realm (Kufa, Mecca, Basra, and Damascus). He also directed that all the other defective versions of Quran should be gathered up and destroyed. So then, since these final events took place around 650 A.D, Muslims will claim that the Quran has no textual variations.

But is the mainstream Sunni story of the Quran’s compilation historically true? Even in this account, the Quran’s assembly and production was haphazardly performed. Furthermore, Sunni coercive imperial authority was applied very early on to the promulgation of a standardized text. There was no “bottom up” consensus of believers involved in this process, nor did the Muslim scribes have available the knowledge of the techniques and processes of textual reconstruction (as part of “lower criticism”) that the Christian West’s scholars eventually developed. (By contrast, no Christians had such coercive authority over the New Testament’s text for its first 200 years because they were a persecuted religious minority under the pagan Roman government’s watchful eye). When Uthman ordered the destruction of the alternative regional variations of the Quran, how did he know that they were wrong in all cases and that his was right?

Furthermore, there’s no unanimity in the primary Islamic sources supporting the story of the Quran’s standardization by Uthman. There are at least three other accounts of Umar’s or Abu Bakr’s involvement that don’t agree with Buhkari’s version as retold above. One version says that Umar did the work of collecting the Quran from disparate media without the involvement of Abu Bakr at all. Another rendition says that Abu Bakr ordered Zayd to write Muhammad’s recitations on palm branches, shoulder bones, and leather before Umar later had Zayd write these down into one document. Another telling of the story has Abu Bakr fully refuse Umar’s request to have the Quran written down. So when Umar became caliph, only then he had the Quran written down on leaves. Then there’s in both Shiite and Sunni sources the claim that Ali, who was Muhammad’s son-in-law and cousin, was the first one to collect the Quran together. There’s one account that Salim b. Ma’qil supposedly assembled the text right after Muhammad died. Another report says that Aisha, Muhammad’s favorite wife, had a copy of the Quran in the form of a codex. The rival regional versions of the Quran before Uthman supposedly had its text standardized have been called “the companion codices.” Purportedly four early followers of Muhammad were respectively responsible for them: Abd Allah ibn Mas‘ud’s version (in Kufa), Miqdad b. al-Aswad (in Hims), and Ubayy b. K’ab (in Syria), and Abu Musa al-Ash’ari (Basra). There’s hardly any unanimity in the tradition about how the Quran’s text was collected in the primary sources of Islam when other primary sources outside of Bukhari’s own harmonized story are examined. (See generally Shoemaker, “Creating the Qur’an,” pp. 24-25).

In other early Islamic historical works, outside of the hadith, more inconsistencies about how the Quran was compiled arise. Ibn Shabba (d. 876) in his “History of Medina,” has a collection of accounts about how the Quran came together, but surprisingly none of them mention Abu Bakr’s role. One report here says that Umar had begun collecting the Quran’s text together, but was assassinated before the job was done. Another tradition, by contrast, says that Umar owned a codex of the Quran. Yet another story says that Umar had disagreements with the version of the text that Ubayy b. Ka’b had collected. One report says that Zayd and Umar proofed a version of the Quran of Ubayy and routinely edited it based on the authority of Zayd. As one reads over the stories of Umar’s involvement in the collecting of the Quran, he actually wasn’t trying to compile the Quran but was trying to support the authority of one version among several that had already been collected together. According to Ibn Shabba, by the time Umar had become the caliph, several versions of the Quran had already been independently compiled, with each having its supporters in different areas. Umar wanted to assert the authority of the version of the Quran found in Medina against the versions enjoying favor in Iraq and Syria. Ibn Shabba dedicates an entire long chapter to the traditions about the efforts of Uthman’s compilation of the Quran. Besides the version of the story that Bukhari preserved, he gives a number of other accounts about Uthman’s participation in standardizing the text of the Quran. But much like the stories about Umar, Uthman wasn’t collecting the text from scratch, but rather was trying to correct versions of the Quran that were already in circulation to fit in with his caliphate’s preferred rendition. (See generally Shoemaker, “Creating the Quran,” pp. 25-26).

A somewhat earlier primary source than Ibn Sa’d’s is “Kitab al-tabaqat al-kahib” of Ibn Sa’d (d. 845), which is made up of biographies of the early caliphs and of Muhammad himself. He provides a wealth of reports about how the Quran was gathered together, which are hardly unanimous about how the process occurred. As de Premere writes about Ibn Sa’d’s perspective in the early ninth century, “the real history of the Qur’anic corpus seemed blurry and the identity of its architects uncertain.” Like Ibn Shabba, he says nothing about Abu Bakr’s supposed role in assembling the Quran together. Most interestingly, when focusing on the rule of Uthman himself, Ibn Sa’d says nothing about Uthman’s supposed role in compiling the Quran, which makes for a major inconsistency with Bukhari’s standard story. Even more surprisingly, in Zayd’s biography, Ibn Sa’d’s omits any mention of Zayd’s efforts to collect the Quran. Ibn Sa’d doesn’t make any mention of the sheets that Hafsa supposedly had, which were supposedly used to create the canonical version of the Quran that Uthman commanded to have made. In yet another account, Uthman indeed did command the Quran to be compiled, but his order went to Ubayy instead of to Zayd.

One problem in examining the accounts of the Quran’s collection concerns the ambiguity of the Arabic word “jama’a,” which can mean both “to memorize” and “to collect.” This makes the accounts of whether anyone wrote down anything Muhammad said during his lifetime unclear, since it could have meant the “memorization” of what he said, not its “collection.” In these reports, two men stand out, who were already mentioned above repeatedly, Zayd b. Thabit and Ubayy b. Ka’b, which later traditions say they were Muhammad’s scribes. Ibn Sa’d has contradictory reports about Umar’s role in compiling the Quran: One report says that Umar was the first to collect the Quran on sheets, but another says Umar was assassinated before he could compile the Quran together. Sa’d clearly didn’t know anything about the standard canonical story of Bukhari’s about Uthman, Zayd, and Hafsa’s sheets at the beginning of the ninth century. As de Premare observes, the silences and inconsistencies of Sa’d are disturbing about the real support that Bukhari’s story actually has in the primary sources. There’s no uniformity or unanimity in the relevant sources about how the Quran was compiled. (See Shoemaker, pp. 26-28).

A somewhat earlier version about the collection of the Quran appears in “Book of the Conquests,” by Sayf ibn ‘Umar (d. 796-797). In one key regard, his report agrees with Bukhari’s version in describing the general Hudhayfa’s sense of consternation about the different renditions of the Quran in use by Muslims in different areas of Uthman’s domain. In one regard, the reported conflicts were worse, however, since rival groups of believers were proclaiming the cases for their preferred versions of the Quran while condemning those found elsewhere. Since Hudhayfa was greatly distressed about these sharp disputes and major variations in the text of the Quran, he told Uthman in Mecca about this serious problem. To summarize the situation regionally, the Kufans favored the codex of Abd Allah ibn Mas’ud, the Syrians preferred that of Miqdad b. Al-Aswad (and seemingly Salim), and the Basran’s liked the rendition of Abu Musa al-Ash’ari. Oddly, the version of Ubayy b. Ka’b receives no mention in this source. Uthman commanded the partisans of each of these versions of the Quran to appear before him in order to make the case for their respective summary of the words of Muhammad. These are clearly discordant books in dispute, since Sayf ibn ‘Umar’s account identifies these productions as “codexes.” So clearly, from the bottom up, rival groups of Muslims in different geographical areas had written down what they believed were Muhammad’s words. Confronted with this mess, Uthman’s solution wasn’t to create a new collection of the Quran, but to take the version available in Medina, of which he had copies made and then he had them sent out to these other areas of his realm. He ordered that all the other versions should be destroyed. It’s not clear that his commands were followed or that he had the effective political/police power to enforce his decisions on this matter on believers who lived far from the Hejaz. So in the earliest account that we have of the Quran’s compilation in Islamic primary sources, Uthman made no effort to textually reconstruct the “best” version of the Quran out of various regional versions. There is no primary source before the ninth century that confirms that Uthman and the scribes he directed engaged in any kind of careful systematic process of textual reconstruction. (See Shoemaker, pp. 28-30).

One problem that also arises in the efforts to trace back the earliest version of the Quran as a text concerns the original ambiguities between what are now called “hadith” or the sayings/teachings attributes to Muhammad, and the Quran’s text, which purports to only be the words of God Himself. There clearly was confusion about how to make a distinction between these two kinds of records. For example, in an early letter said to have been written by Zayd ibn Ali (695-740), two of the hadith quoted are almost identical to what’s in the Quran (5:56; 21:24). Ibn Sa’d relays Salima b. Jarmi’s assertion that he has gathered “many qurans” from Muhammad together, which presumably were his teachings or hadith, not reports of direct revelations from God. So then, given these stories about how the Quran was collected by Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, Zayd, Ubayy, etc. they may not have been able in their time to make the clear distinctions that later Sunni scholarship made between the Quran (i.e., divine revelation) and the hadith (i.e., teachings/sayings of Muhammad). These regional versions of the Quran may well have been hadith to one degree or another. (See Shoemaker, p.30).

So when all these conflicting stories examined in the early primary Islamic historical sources about the Quran’s original compilation, it becomes obvious that that the standard Bukhari story, which the mainstream Sunni tradition has endorsed, is much too simplistic. The key error of many Western historians, such as those who endorse the generally reigning “Noldekean-Schwallian” paradigm, has been to uncritically endorse and support the mainstream Sunni viewpoint when it simply isn’t well supported in the primary historical sources. As Shoemaker quotes Burton as summarizing the relevant primary sources about the Quran’s compilation: “The reports are a mass of confusions, contradictions, and inconsistencies. By their nature, they represent the product of a lengthy process of evolution, accretion and ‘improvement.’ They were framed in response to a wide variety of progressing needs. . . . The existence of such reports makes it clear that the Muslims were confused. The earliest stage of the traditions on the collection of the Qur’an did consist in incompatible attributions of the first collection to Abu Bakr, to ‘Umar, to ‘Uthman.” De Premare somewhat cynically observes: “such variation among the reports [indicates] that each one seems to reflect later circumstances rather than the fact that it is alleged to relate.” (See Shoemaker, pp. 30-31).

The Muslims’ standard claims that there are no variations in the Koran’s text are simply not true. Most significantly, the variations that still are known to exist are those that survived the ruthless standardization process of the Quran during the reign of Abd al-Malik (685-705). Abu Hayyan al-Gharnait, who has been an important collector of the Quran’s textual variants, has explicitly noted that he has deliberately not gathered “those variants where there is too wide a divergence from the standard text of ‘Uthman.’” (See Shoemaker, p. 33). The Quranic inscriptions found in the Dome on the Rock on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount area are among the oldest in existence. (Since Jerusalem was mainly a Christian city at the time, these inscriptions often bore witness against Christian teachings and beliefs). However, as Shoemaker notes, these inscriptions, placed by the caliph Abd al-Malik (685-705 A.D.) “are our earliest surviving evidence for the text of the Qur’an, and yet they different from the now canonical version of the Qur’an.” He asked how this could be possible, if the text of the Quran had been standardized some 40 years earlier in the time of Uthman. (Shoemaker, p. 64).

One of the oldest Qurans, the Sanaa manuscript of the eighth century, has actually two differing texts. The newer one, dating to the middle eighth century, was written over an erased version that dates to the early eighth century. So why would the same folio pages have two different Qurans laboriously handwritten on them? Well, the older erased “palimpsest” version varies regularly from the newer “Uthmanic” rendition. In this case, it’s obvious that that when the newer standardized text of the Quran was promulgated throughout the caliphate of Abd al-Malik, the older version was erased from this particular manuscript’s pages. What was erased, however, is still recoverable and legible. It indicates that at least until 700 A.D. or later, non-canonical versions of the Quran were still being copied, which is long past the dates of Uthman’s reign (644-656 A.D.) (See Shoemaker, p. 77). Most likely the great majority of the variants that existed in the regional codexes of Ubayy b. Ka’b, Abd Allah ibn Mas’ud, Abu Musa al-Ash’ ari, and Miqdad b. Al-Aswad were totally destroyed; what has been preserved is a feeble remnant. So then, how do we know what was preserved is really what Muhammad allegedly heard from God as opposed to what was destroyed? Ha

Another interesting set of witnesses about the Quran’s formation comes from early Shiite witnesses from the first three centuries of Islamic history. The partisans of Ali as the legitimate caliph opposed the rendition of the Quran that mainstream Sunni tradition attributed especially to Uthman’s efforts. According to the Shiites, it was Ali, not Abu Bakr, Umar, or Uthman, who first gathered together the Quran’s text shortly after Muhammad’s death. However, the Shiites maintain that Ali’s version of the Quran was much longer than Uthman’s rendition. The first three caliphs that the Sunnis recognize (Abu Bakr, Umar, and Uthman) twisted and falsified what Ali had compiled. For obvious political reasons, the Shiites asserted, these caliphs deleted the section that clearly named Ali as Muhammad’s legitimate political heir. So the Quranic text traditionally attributed to Uthman is a distorted version designed to promote the religious and political program of the first three Sunni caliphs, according to the early Shiite writers.

It’s true, however, that starting in the tenth century Shiite scholars of the “Twelver” tradition began to repudiate their sect’s earlier witness and began to embrace the Uthman text such as it is. Because it had become very dangerous to cast doubt on the Quran by this time, they had obvious motives of self-preservation to change their opinions. Although mainstream Western scholarship has generally arbitrarily rejected the oldest Shiite viewpoint on the development of the Quran’s text, this decision to embrace the Sunni viewpoint has to be regarded as prejudiced. As already related above, the Sunni primary sources are full of inconsistencies and contradictions, so why should they deemed to be automatically reliable compared to the Shiite viewpoint by impartial historians? The Shiite viewpoint also has the advantage of being the “minority” viewpoint that lost, which may be all the more valuable since it reports details and has a general perspective that the (Sunni) victors have ignored, twisted, or censored. Interestingly enough, two of the discordant regional texts of the Quran were developed in southern Iraq, where Ali’s support was at its strongest, such as in Kufa and Basra. Indeed, Kufa was briefly the capital of Ali’s short-lived caliphate. (See Shoemaker, p. 40).

In this context, it’s important to realize how violently the Ummayyads persecuted and quelled the partisans of Ali’s cause in their realm. Unlike the case for the orthodox Catholics who counter-attacked the Gnostic Christians in the second and third centuries A.D., who were armed only with the power of the pen, the Sunni caliphs had authority over the sword and willingly wielded it to favor their cause. Amir-Moezzi explains the power of the Umayyad caliphs to impose their political and religious will on their opponents: “In an attempt to justify these measures [that distorted records of the past], caliphal power set up a complex system of propaganda, censorship, and historical falsification. First it altered the text of the Qur’an and forged an entire body of traditions falsely ascribed to the Prophet, drawing great scholars, judges, jurists, preachers, and historians into its service—all this within a policy of repression that was as savage as it was methodical, aimed at its opponents at large, but at Alids in particular.” (As quoted by Shoemaker, p. 37). The standardized text of the Quran is actually, according to Michael Cook, “a remarkable testimony to the authority of the early Islamic state.” The imperial efforts to find and destroy dissident Qurans were especially aimed at the proto-Shiites of southern Iraq. They were so successful, according to Omar Hamdan, “that one could only wonder in disbelief . . . if any remnant of a differing recension [of the Qur’an] were to come to light. Therefore, given the power of the Sunni caliphs by the eighth century, they easily could have thoroughly censored the viewpoint of Ali’s partisans from the historical sources that they controlled, in a manner bordering upon the fictional Ingsoc’s in Orwell’s novel “ 1984.” (See generally Shoemaker, pp. 35-38).

However, it’s unlikely that much of what Muhammad said was written down during his lifetime because the small, poor communities of Mecca and Medina were made up of people for whom the spoken word was primary and few were literate in a broader sense. Shoemaker spends a good amount of space making the case that those living in the Hejaz in Muhammad’s time in these communities wouldn’t have been able to write a complex text like the Quran; most of their writings are short personal messages placed on rocks that are the equivalent of “Kilroy was here.” He also makes a detailed case against any idea that Mecca was important in the spice trade, in the mining of minerals, or as a pilgrimage site. Patricia Crone’s work has been particularly devastating against any idea that Mecca was a thriving center of an international spice trade. Mecca, being a community incapable of growing crops, unlike Medina, was functionally the local version of an almost entirely non-literate, uncultured, impoverished “Gopher Prairie;” Medina wasn’t much better off despite it could irrigate some crops. Given this realistic portrayal of cultural and economic conditions in the Hejaz, it’s fully believable that Muhammad was indeed illiterate, much like many others in his community. (See Shoemaker generally, pp. 96-133).

Working from a skeptical, naturalistic perspective, Shoemaker and others who have examined the history of the development of religions and their texts find the standard Sunni Bukhari/Uthman story of the compilation and standardization of the Quran’s text to be exceedingly implausible. It would have happened way too quickly. Chase Robinson explains why this standard tradition of how the Quran’s text was collected is so unlikely (as quoted in Shoemaker, pp. 38-39): “The complicated and protracted processes that generated monotheist scripture in antiquity and late antiquity are generally measured in centuries or at least several decades; the [Sunni] tradition would have us believe that in the case of Islam they were telescoped into about twenty years. Are we really to think that within a single generation God’s word moved from individual lines and chapters scribbled on camel shoulder-blades and rocks to complete, single, fixed and authoritative text on papyrus or vellum? It would be virtually unprecedented. It is furthermore unlikely in the light of what we know of early Arabic: the nature of early Arabic scripture, which only imperfectly described vowels and consonants, and conventions of memorization and reading, which often privileged memory over written text, would militate against the very rapid production of the fixed and authoritative text that the tradition describes.” Here a strong contrast arises with the environment in which the New Testament was produced, which had much more widespread literacy, including the Founder’s own literacy (i.e., Luke 4:16), among Jewish people and also the educated gentiles with whom the likes of Paul rubbed shoulders, unlike the case for c. 700 A.D. Hejaz. The Old Testament was already a long standardized text upon which the earliest Jewish Christians would have found to serve as the obvious model to base their own faith upon when the Gospels were written down in Greek after a certain period of oral transmission in (mainly) Aramaic. The story of the transmission of Paul’s letters in this regard was simpler, however, since they started their lives as written text. As already surveyed above and as Shoemaker observes (p. 39), the primary sources that portray situation in which the Muslims received and produced the Quran have so many inconsistencies and contradictions demonstrates that historians shouldn’t mechanically place their faith in the standard Sunni Bukhari/Uthman story.

Another factor that likely retarded the collection and standardization of the Quran was the great authority given to the early caliphs over the community of Muslim believers. They were treated almost like vicars of God on earth functionally, because of the power they had to determine the beliefs and practices of the Muslim community, which was over and above their martial powers to wage war and to administer the law. As a result, the Quran itself gets very little attention from believers until the end of the eight century. Shoemaker explains the consequences of this dynamic (p. 41, italics removed): “This dynamic of a gradual shift from the caliphs’ direct authority as deputies of God to recognizing instead the authority of Muhammad’s teachings as remembers by the members of the ‘ulama also goes a long way toward explaining the Qur’an’s apparent absence from the Believers’ faith until the end of the seventh century, as evidenced by both the Islamic tradition itself and the various contemporary reports from writers outside of the community of the Believers.” Most strikingly, Muhammad isn’t mentioned at all by the early Muslim governmental authorities before the time of the Caliph Marwan I (684-85). According to Shoemaker (p. 41), the founder of Islam “is not named by any one of the papyri, inscriptions, or coins from this period.” However, by the time Abd al-Malik becomes caliph, Marwan I’s son, a pronounced shift occurs: Now the authority of Muhammad and the Quran are often publicly proclaimed to the Muslim community and to the wider world, when they had been neglected for 50 or 75 years by the Umayyad governmental authorities. A related reason why Uthman wouldn’t have been important in standardizing the Quran stems from his personal unpopularity and the weakness of the governmental apparatus at his command to coerce obedience in matters of faith at a distance from the Hejaz. He may have chosen a regional version of the Quran, such as that of Mecca or Medina, and then tried to impose its text on others, but lacked success in doing so. (See Shoemaker, pp. 40-41). Much like the standard weakness of the rabbinical sources making up the Mishna and the Talmud, who often projected earlier in time practices and institutions that actually came later, it’s overwhelmingly likely the same problem in reconstruction the past occurred here, in which what al-Malik actually did was projected onto Uthman and the earlier caliphs, who were seen as having more historical legitimacy since they lived and ruled in time closer to Muhammad.

At this point, let’s turn to presenting the evidence that Caliph al-Malik (685-705) and his right-hand man, al-Hajjajj compiled and edited the Quran. Although Muslims at times will admit that they had some influence on the text of the Quran, they attempt to limit those changes to minor amendments, such as the addition of diacritical marks and standardized spellings. However, many manuscripts copied after the early eighth century still lacked these features while others clearly did, which proves the falsity of this attempt to minimize al-Malik’s role in substantially producing the text of the Quran as we have it today. Francois Deroche perceives the problem with this kind of analysis (italics omitted): “If we turn to the reports stating that the diacritics were introduced in the course of al-Hajjajj’s ‘Masahif project’ and that ta and ya were selected in order to distinguish between the second and third person of some verbal forms, we have to admit that the manuscript evidence says otherwise.” However, these modest concessions to al-Malik’s role appear to be an attempt to arbitrarily harmonize the historical primary sources, which also mention the (supposed) roles of Abu Bakr, Umar, and Uthman as well.

Let’s examine some of the primary sources that attribute major roles to al-Malik and/or al-Hajjajj in editing and compiling the text of the Quran. One tradition attributes says that al-Malik said that he feared death in the month of Ramadan because (italics omitted), “That is the month in which I was born, it is the month in which I was weaned, it is the month in which I gathered together the Qur’an [jama’tu l-Qur’an], and it is the month in which I was sworn allegiance [as the caliph].” Another tradition maintain that al-Hajjajj sent codices with the new text of the Quran to all the major centers of the imperial realm, such as Medina, Kufa, Mecca, Basra, Damascus, and Egypt, with the goal of its replacing the local versions of the Quran then in use. In some cases, it was said that he was not only the first one to sent official codices to all the important cities of his master’s realm, but also he was the one who created the practice of having the Qur’an read aloud in mosques. He also instructed that all the older, local versions of the Quran should be collected and destroyed, much like it was said that Uthman had done in the official Sunni/Bukhari story. All the privately owned manuscripts of the Quran with the wrong text were to be seized and disposed of after paying the owners 60 dirham each. The Islamic governor of Egypt, confronted with al-Hajjajj’s order to accept the new text of the Quran, regarded his command as presumptuous, since he was of the same rank as al-Hajjajj. He replied that al-Hajjajj “permits himself to send a mushaf [codex] to the very military district [jund] where I am serving, me!” The Egyptian governor then responded by making his own edition of the Qur’an. This story completely undermines the standard Sunni narrative of Bukhari, which maintains Uthman’s efforts standardized the Quran’s text, since it indicates it didn’t exist in Egypt at the time al-Malik ruled. In Medina around this time, Uthman’s own family objected to al-Hajjajj’s edition of the Quran, according to Ibn Shabba. The people of Mecca were said to have asked Uthman’s family to produce a copy of the Quran of Uthman’s so they may read it. Uthman’s family responded to this request by saying that it had been destroyed on the same day when Uthman had been assassinated. (See Shoemaker, pp. 44-46).

Stephen J. Shoemaker, “Creating the Qur’an: A Historical-Critical Study,” is available for a free download at the University of California’s Luminos Web site, which provides Open Access to academic books. Click here for the details: https://luminosoa.org/site/books/m/10.1525/luminos.128/

Post
#1661148
Topic
What do you think of The Prequel Trilogy? A general discussion.
Time

JadedSkywalker said:

I think Anakin would have worked better if he was portrayed differently. He is so unlikable. So unrelatable. A problem of the prequel is there no Luke Skywalker to latch onto. No real central protagonist, even though Anakin is supposed to be that. Is he supposed to be an Anti-hero? Lucas didn’t seem to know where he wanted to go with the character.

Hayden acts like he is portraying dark and conflicted/selfish and arrogant. But where is the good friend and star pilot. Damn fool who follows old Obi-Wan on an idealistic quest.

I agree that Anakin was portrayed as too unlikeable, especially in Attack of the Clones, but at the same time I think making him too likeable would’ve been a mistake as well. If you make Anakin too likeable, it becomes almost impossible to believe that this same person could eventually turn into Darth Vader. That’s one of the issues I have with The Clone Wars, for example. In TCW, Anakin is so likeable that you never really think of him as the guy who’s going to become Darth Vader.

So yeah, toning down Anakin’s unlikeability in the Prequels makes sense, but going too far in the other direction doesn’t work either. For me, the Anakin we see in the first half of Revenge of the Sith is likeable, and I think that works well. The only real problem is Attack of the Clones. I think that movie needs some cleanup. In that context it makes sense that Anakin is more impulsive and rebellious than he is in the first half of ROTS, but Lucas overdid it and made him way too unlikeable. I feel like if you just trim some dialogue and cut a couple of scenes, the problem would already be fixed.

JadedSkywalker said:

You don’t have a believable through line of the Anakin who wants to use power to restore order to the galaxy, because he has zeal for justice, but the ends justify the means. And the more he uses the dark side, the more he digs himself into a place where he can’t escape and The Emperor is waiting to grab a hold of him.

That is what I wanted to see the Shaw Anakin become Darth Vader. The Horror Gargoyle in the Mask, the machine man.

That kind of gradual, slow transformation is impossible to pull off in just three movies, mainly because of limited screen time. Three films just don’t give you enough space to make it work. To really show that kind of gradual and slow change, the Prequels would’ve needed to be a live-action series with at least six seasons of twenty episodes each. Otherwise, it just doesn’t work the way you want it to.

Post
#1660211
Topic
What do you think of The Prequel Trilogy? A general discussion.
Time

Vladius said:

Dagenspear said:

Vladius said:

I wasn’t talking about you.

But I’m questioning why it matters that other people think these things about it.

Because it shows how the prequels failed to communicate the story, and why their legacy continues to make the setting worse. This mainstream interpretation of events is directly responsible for The Last Jedi and The Acolyte and lots of other bad EU stories, and like I’ve been saying, retroactively damages the original trilogy. I think it has some real life consequences as well but I won’t get into that.

Actually, the core message of The Last Jedi is that all of Luke’s criticisms of the Jedi were wrong. Luke is supposed to go through a redemption arc in the film. He eventually realizes that hiding was a mistake, that not confronting Kylo was a mistake, and that everything he said about the Jedi was nonsense. By the end, he even says he won’t be the last Jedi, which implies that he has realized he was mistaken about the Jedi. The problem is that the movie is so poorly written, and Rian Johnson did such a bad job, that Luke’s entire redemption arc barely comes across.

As for the old EU, most of the stories set in the Prequel era portray the Jedi as heroic and noble. At worst, you might find the occasional criticism of the no-marriage rule, but overall the picture you get is of the Jedi being selfless and admirable, even during the Prequel era. In fact, the EU fandom is full of people who share that view of the Jedi, precisely because most of the stories from that period tend to present them as fundamentally good people. The only real exception would be the Republic Commando novels, but those books were never particularly popular outside of hardcore Mandalorian fans.

Post
#1659735
Topic
UFO's & other anomalies ... do you believe?
Time

Since I’m a big UFO nut, I’ve read a ton of books on the subject over the years. A while back I published a post on Reddit where I put together a list of UFO books and papers that, in my opinion, are worth reading if you really want to dig into the topic. So I figured I’d drop the list here too, in case anyone in this thread is interested in having a pretty extensive bibliography to check out.

  • The Flying Saucers Are Real by Donald Keyhoe
  • Flying Saucers From Outer Space by Donald Keyhoe
  • Flying Saucers - Top Secret by Donald Keyhoe
  • The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects by Edward Ruppelt
  • The UFO Evidence by Richard Hall
  • Report on the UFO Wave of 1952 by Richard Hall
  • Report on the UFO Wave of 1947 by Ted Bloecher
  • The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry by J. Allen Hynek
  • The Hynek UFO Report: The Authoritative Account of the Project Blue Book Cover-Up by J. Allen Hynek
  • Project Blue Book Exposed by Kevin Randle
  • The Best of Project Blue Book by Kevin Randle
  • Invasion Washington: UFOs Over the Capitol by Kevin Randle
  • Scientific UFOlogy: How Scientific Methodology Can Prove the Reality of UFOs by Kevin Randle
  • Science in Default: Twenty-Two Years of Inadequate UFO Investigations by James McDonald
  • UFOs: An International Scientific Problem by James McDonald
  • Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects by James McDonald
  • UFOs? Yes! Where the Condon Committee Went Wrong by David Saunders
  • The UFO Enigma: A New Review of the Physical Evidence by Peter Sturrock
  • Unconventional Flying Objects: A Scientific Analysis by Paul Hill
  • UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record by Leslie Kean
  • UFOs and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites by Robert Hastings
  • Earth Lights: Towards an Understanding of the Unidentified Flying Objects Enigma by Paul Devereux
  • Crash at Corona: The Definitive Study of the Roswell Incident by Stanton Friedman and Don Berliner
  • UFO Crash at Roswell by Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt
  • The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell by Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt
  • Roswell UFO Crash Update: Exposing the Military Cover-Up of the Century by Kevin Randle
  • Roswell in the 21st Century: The Evidence as it Exists Today by Kevin Randle
  • Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe by Karl Pflock
  • Body Snatchers in the Desert: The Horrible Truth at the Heart of the Roswell Story by Nick Redfern
  • The Roswell UFO Conspiracy: Exposing A Shocking And Sinister Secret by Nick Redfern
  • Crashed Saucers: Evidence in Search for Proof by William Moore
  • UFO Crash Retrievals: The Complete Investigation – Status Reports I-VII by Leonard Stringfield
  • Crash — When UFOs Fall From the Sky by Kevin Randle
  • The Priests of High Strangeness: Co-Creation of the “Alien Abduction Phenomenon” by Carol Rainey
  • The Abduction Enigma: An Investigation of the Alien Abduction Phenomenon by Kevin Randle, Russ Estes, and William Cone
  • The Controllers: A New Hypothesis of Alien Abductions by Martin Cannon
  • The Space-Gods Revealed: A Close Look At The Theories Of Erich Von Daniken by Ronald Story
  • The Past Is Human: Debunking Von Daniken’s Gee-whiz Theories by Peter White
  • Ancient Atom Bombs: Fact, Fraud, and the Myth of Prehistoric Nuclear Warfare by Jason Colavito
  • Solving the 1897 Airship Mystery by Michael Busby
  • Project Beta: The Story of Paul Bennewitz, National Security, and the Creation of a Modern UFO Myth by Greg Bishop
  • Saucers, Spooks and Kooks: Disinformation in the Age of Aquarius by Adam Gorightly
  • X Descending: Two Extraordinary Films Reveal Lies, Deception, and Truth About Unidentified Flying Objects by Christian Lambright
  • Top Secret/Majic: Operation Majestic-12 and the United States Government’s UFO Cover-Up by Stanton Friedman and Don Berliner
  • Case MJ-12: The True Story Behind the Government’s UFO Conspiracies by Kevin Randle
  • The Secret Pratt Tapes and the Origins of MJ-12 by Brad Sparks and Barry Greenwood

Hope this helps anyone looking for good reads on the topic.

Post
#1659614
Topic
What do you think of The Prequel Trilogy? A general discussion.
Time

Dagenspear said:

As far as we saw Anakin never pursued seeking to visit his mom in the movies, until he thought she was suffering. This could be an interesting thing to build around, and I think the movie doesn’t do that, and it’s a flaw in the movies that we don’t see it be brought up. This is among the kind of thing that I think for me could have filled out the story more.

Anakin never went to see his mother before Attack of the Clones because the films heavily imply that the Jedi weren’t allowing him to. You can say whatever you want about Anakin, but one thing we know for sure is that he’s impulsive, rebellious, and doesn’t hesitate to take risks or rush to save the people he cares about. That’s his core trait and also his biggest flaw. If he had been physically able to visit his mother whenever he wanted, and if the Jedi really weren’t stopping him, then you’d expect him to go see her every chance he got. And as soon as he started having those nightmares, he would have immediately run to check on her. The fact that he didn’t, even while being haunted by those visions, means that something was holding him back. And since he was part of the Jedi Order, it makes sense to conclude that it was the Jedi themselves who were preventing him from going.

for both things Anakin could quit and do what he wanted. He’s not coerced. It’s suggested in AOTC that quitting is an option.

Yes, it’s true that Anakin could technically have walked away from the Jedi Order whenever he wanted. But it’s not that simple. If he’d left before Attack of the Clones, he’d basically be on the streets. Everything he owned belonged to the Order, so leaving would mean giving all of that up. He’d end up wandering the lower levels of Coruscant, trying to scrape together some crappy job just to survive. And if he’d left after marrying Padmé, sure, he could’ve lived with her, but Anakin wasn’t the kind of guy to sit around doing nothing all day. He’d still need a purpose, something meaningful to do, a goal to chase, and that’s not something you just figure out overnight. After spending over a decade in an institution that gave him structure and something to focus on, walking away wasn’t exactly simple.

Post
#1659496
Topic
What do you think of The Prequel Trilogy? A general discussion.
Time

Dagenspear said:

The Jedi didn’t get mad when Anakin wanted to have a girlfriend or rescue his mom, so I don’t think it does any of that.

I agree with you when you say that the Jedi were right about Anakin letting his emotions control him. But it’s not true that they weren’t upset about him wanting to have a girlfriend or wanting to save his mother.

Anakin had been having nightmares about his mother for a long time, and he told Obi-Wan about them. All Obi-Wan said was “Dreams pass in time.” So when it comes to his mother, it’s not like Anakin never talked to the Jedi about what was going on. He did, and they gave him bad advice.

This whole thing could’ve been solved so easily by just letting Anakin visit his mother to make sure she was okay. I mean, yeah, you shouldn’t let your emotions take over. But if you’re someone with Force abilities who starts having prophetic dreams about your mother suffering, it’s only natural to wonder if something bad is actually happening, and it’s only reasonable to check if everything’s fine. If you found out there’d been an explosion in your mom’s neighborhood, wouldn’t you call her or go see her to make sure she’s okay? It’s not even about letting your emotions control you, it’s just about having compassion for your mother.

And when it comes to Anakin having a girlfriend, the Jedi explicitly forbade romantic relationships, which is something Obi-Wan reminded Anakin of when Anakin told him that being around Padmé was intoxicating. So they didn’t approve the idea of him having a girlfriend.

Post
#1659283
Topic
What do you think of The Prequel Trilogy? A general discussion.
Time

Superweapon VII said:

Spartacus01 said:

Vladius said:

JadedSkywalker said:

I don’t believe in the doctrine of attachment it was made up on the prequel. It exists literally nowhere in the original trilogy or the expanded universe before episode II. In fact Luke wins because he doesn’t follow what Ben and Yoda told him, his attachment to his father turns the tide of the war bringing Anakin back to the light.

You’re correct that it was made up in 2002 for Attack of the Clones. But nothing about what Obi Wan or Yoda told Luke in the OT applies to it either.

Personally, I like the way the old EU handled it. There was a time when Jedi were totally free to get married and have families. Then, somewhere between Tales of the Jedi and the KOTOR comics, the no-marriage rule was introduced. But later on, Luke got rid of that rule when he started his own Jedi Order. I think this kind of development adds depth to the lore, and makes the Jedi feel more organic and grounded. It shows that the Order evolved over time, made mistakes, and tried to learn from them.

Children of the Jedi heavily implied that the Jedi during the Clone Wars/Great Jedi Purge were allowed to have romantic partners and children.

I feel the best way to have incorporated a forbidden romance into the PT without overturning previously established EU lore would’ve been to have made the prequel-era Jedi endogamous.

Children of the Jedi is a terrible book anyway, so who cares?

Post
#1658940
Topic
What is your personal Star Trek canon?
Time

One thing I’ve always forgotten to mention in this thread is my personal head-canon about the creation of the Terran Empire in the Mirror Universe.

In my head-canon, the Tunguska event of 1908 occurred over Washington, D.C. instead of Siberia. Since the explosion destroyed the entire city and wiped out the government, the United States fell into chaos. Seeing an opportunity, the U.S. military, backed by the biggest corporations, staged a coup and suspended the Constitution in order to “restore order.” Eventually, they transformed the United States into a corporatist and hyper-militaristic dictatorship fueled by paranoia, terror, and expansionism. Over the following decades, the American Empire used its resources to wage wars against other nations until it united the entire planet. The Terran Empire was proclaimed in 1950, with Douglas MacArthur as its first Emperor.

Post
#1658776
Topic
What do you think of The Prequel Trilogy? A general discussion.
Time

Vladius said:

JadedSkywalker said:

I don’t believe in the doctrine of attachment it was made up on the prequel. It exists literally nowhere in the original trilogy or the expanded universe before episode II. In fact Luke wins because he doesn’t follow what Ben and Yoda told him, his attachment to his father turns the tide of the war bringing Anakin back to the light.

You’re correct that it was made up in 2002 for Attack of the Clones. But nothing about what Obi Wan or Yoda told Luke in the OT applies to it either.

Personally, I like the way the old EU handled it. There was a time when Jedi were totally free to get married and have families. Then, somewhere between Tales of the Jedi and the KOTOR comics, the no-marriage rule was introduced. But later on, Luke got rid of that rule when he started his own Jedi Order. I think this kind of development adds depth to the lore, and makes the Jedi feel more organic and grounded. It shows that the Order evolved over time, made mistakes, and tried to learn from them.

Post
#1658110
Topic
What do you think of The Prequel Trilogy? A general discussion.
Time

JadedSkywalker said:

I was thinking about it today and I much much prefer the idea of Vader hunting down the Jedi knights. and not an order 66 killing younglings, none of that is what lines up with what Kenobi said in SW.

A Young Jedi named Darth Vader was a pupil of mine before he turned to evil. He helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights, he betrayed and murdered your father. Now the Jedi are all but extinct. Vader was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force.

Well, I don’t really see any contradiction, to be honest. Order 66 wiped out the majority of the Jedi scattered throughout the galaxy, but it was Anakin who personally slaughtered all the Jedi inside the Temple. So he did hunt them down and kill them with his own hands. And let’s not forget, after that, he was also sent across the galaxy to track down and eliminate any survivors of Order 66.

Post
#1656332
Topic
What do you HATE about the EU?
Time

JadedSkywalker said:

EU purists who insist it was a part of George’s vision and that the prequel and the EU all fits together as one piece.

Who insist the Saga was always about the father, the son and grandchildren. And the bending over backwards and stretching things to act like EU wasn’t just a way for George to make lots of money on tie in fiction. That he was in no way beholden to, but could borrow from if he so desired.

I may agree with them on Disney SW to an extent, and even on Filoni retcons and destruction of the EU lore. But to act like the prequel was perfect and also didn’t destroy SW canon is incongruous. And its George’s vision the original must be suppressed, George as godhead in a religion, I reject that.

There was one continuity and canon I’ll admit that before Disney made the Expanded Universe legends. But Lucasfilm always put films and tv projects above video games, comic books and novels.

And George allowed Filoni to do whatever he wanted and to throw out the EU completely. It’s like there were two Star Wars universes before there were three branches, but Filoni was taken up into Disney Star Wars and EU was abandoned, made Legends aka lies, tall tales.

My philosophy with Star Wars Canon is pretty simple: I consider Canon whatever I like, and I just ignore what I don’t. I don’t care what George thought was Canon, or what Lucasfilm labeled as “C-Canon” or “G-Canon” or “Legends” or whatever. If I like the story, the characters, the way it expands the universe, then it’s Canon to me. Period. And if something feels off, ruins characters, breaks internal logic, or just rubs me the wrong way, I don’t care how official it is. I just mentally toss it out. As simple as that.

Post
#1655961
Topic
What is your personal Star Trek canon?
Time

After re-watching the entire the Star Trek Saga, I’ve updated my personal Canon.

  • Star Trek: Enterprise
  • The Good That Men Do (novel)
  • Kobayashi Maru (novel)
  • The Romulan War Duology
  • Rise of the Federation (novel series)
  • Star Trek: The Original Series (selected episodes)
  • Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan
  • Star Trek: The Search for Spock
  • Star Trek: The Voyage Home
  • Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
  • Star Trek: Generations
  • Star Trek: Voyager
  • Star Trek: First Contact
  • Star Trek: Insurrection

I removed Nemesis from my personal Canon because I just can’t bring myself to accept Data’s death. I also removed The Motion Picture and The Final Frontier because, after re-watching them with a critical eye, I finally understood why everyone dislikes them. Finally, I included the Enterprise novels because I hated the show’s finale, mostly due to Trip’s death. I really liked the way in which they retconned the last episode, and I love how the books continue the characters’ stories.

Post
#1655548
Topic
What do you think of The Prequel Trilogy? A general discussion.
Time

For me, there’s only one moment in Attack of the Clones where Anakin comes across as genuinely creepy. It’s the scene where Padmé tells him that she feels uncomfortable when he looks at her in a certain way. As she’s leaving, Anakin turns to look at her and says, “Sorry, my lady,” while giving her an almost predatory look.

That’s the only point in the whole movie where I feel like his behavior crosses the line from awkward to actually creepy. In the rest of the film, yes, he’s kind of intense and says some weird things, but it mostly just feels cringey, not threatening. However, to be fair, I don’t think that scene was written or directed to come across that way. I doubt George Lucas or Hayden Christensen meant for Anakin’s look to feel predatory. I think they were aiming for a flirtatious or maybe even a little bit teasing look, but the execution didn’t quite work.

I think a big part of why Anakin’s look feels so off comes down to Hayden’s facial features. He has very Nordic traits: blue eyes, high cheekbones, fair skin, etc. And I’ve noticed that people with that kind of facial structure can sometimes come across as unsettling or even creepy when they try to pull off charming or smug expressions. It’s not about what they’re trying to communicate; it’s just how those facial features translate certain expressions. What’s meant to look confident or seductive can easily come off as cold or unsettling instead. I’ve seen it happen plenty of times in real life too.

So I don’t think the problem is in the acting or the directing. It’s more of a visual mismatch between intention and result. The moment was probably supposed to feel playful or a bit bold, but because of how Hayden’s face registers that particular expression, it ends up giving a totally different vibe.

Post
#1654764
Topic
What do you HATE about the EU?
Time

Superweapon VII said:

I think it’s a misreading of DE that Luke embraces the dark side in the story. Luke is attempting to understand the secrets of the dark side, both to understand why his father turned and as a means of conquering the dark side from within, but he underestimates the sheer oppressive nature of the dark side and comes dangerously close to succumbing to it, but Leia comes in at just the right moment to pull him back from falling into that abyss.

The problem is that Dark Empire basically rehashes something that already happened and was resolved at the end of Return of the Jedi. Luke already flirted with the Dark Side. He was right there on the edge, he nearly killed Vader in anger. That was his moment of temptation, and he overcame it. That was the whole point of his character arc in the Original Trilogy: he saw what his father became, he almost followed the same path, and he chose to stop and throw his weapon away. So when Dark Empire comes along and says, “He flirted with the Dark Side again, was almost about to fall, and it took Leia to bring him back,” it just undercuts everything that came before. It feels like going in circles instead of progressing the story. From a narrative standpoint, it is just not satisfying.

Post
#1652931
Topic
The Unpopular Film, TV, Music, Art, Books, Comics, Games, & Technology Opinion Thread (for all you contrarians!)
Time

As a longtime UFO enthusiast, I really love Close Encounters of the Third Kind for all the nods to classic UFO lore. The way Spielberg reproduced the five observables and the electromagnetic effects of UFOs on cars and power plants, the cameo by J. Allen Hynek, the French character clearly based on Jacques Vallée… it’s all great stuff.

But honestly, when I take a step back and look at the actual story, I can’t help but see the aliens as the bad guys. Think about it: they show up, abduct people, and take them away from their lives and families for years. They abducted both the military pilots who vanished back in 1945 and the crew of that ship they found in Mongolia, holding them for who knows how long. They even took a child from his mother for entire days, and drove the main character to obsession and ruin, completely destroying his family life.

Seriously, who the heck do you think you are? This is our damn planet, not yours. You don’t just get to show up and mess with people’s lives like that. Go back to Zeta Reticuli and don’t come here again.

Post
#1649049
Topic
What do you HATE about the EU?
Time

davidt0504 said:

I really hate the Dark Empire plot. It was the one thing I was happy to have gone when Disney took over…

Too bad they repeated that same plot in The Rise of Skywalker, with the only difference being that, at least, in Dark Empire they tried to explain how the hell Palpatine managed to come back, whereas in The Rise of Skywalker they did not explain anything.

Post
#1647677
Topic
The Prequel Radical Redux Ideas Thread
Time

It is not exactly a radical idea, but I would still like to propose it. Essentially, I believe I have found a way to integrate the scene from Attack of the Clones in which Anakin vents his grief to Padmé after his mother’s death, without necessarily including any mention of the massacre he committed against the Tusken Raiders.

My idea is quite simple: right after Anakin says, “It is all Obi-Wan’s fault. He is jealous. He is holding me back,” the scene would be cut immediately to the moment when he collapses to the ground and sits down, with Padmé approaching and saying, “To be angry is to be human.” I believe that, with the right cut, it could come across as realistic. This way, it would be possible to preserve the most important part of the scene — namely, Anakin’s desire for omnipotence and his determination to prevent people from dying — without keeping the part where he essentially admits to Padmé that he killed children.

To achieve this, I think the scene would need to be stripped of its original score and rescored entirely. However, I am fairly confident that it is feasible. What do you think?

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#1647376
Topic
Religion
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Vladius said:

Spartacus01 said:

Vladius said:

Superweapon VII said:

*yawn*

Our concept of hell doesn’t have biblical origins

yawn yeah it does

Can you elaborate?

I’m not going to watch that video but at the very least the title is misleading. Hell comes up in the bible as either Sheol/Hades like the Greek concept as a place for dead spirits, or Gehenna, which is named after a valley in Israel and symbolizes fiery torment and burning. It’s worth noting for all the people here who are fans of sanitized 21st century-friendly hippie Jesus that Christ talks more about hell (Gehenna) than anyone else in the bible.

Of course different Christians have different interpretations of how all this works, who goes to hell, how long it lasts, what the nature of it is, what the difference between Sheol and Gehenna is, etc. but it’s clearly right there in the text. The imagery and the concept of a place of punishment is obviously biblical.

I have not watched the video either, but I am familiar with the arguments of those who claim that the popular concept of Hell is not rooted in biblical tradition. I have always been interested in the history and study of religions, so I am aware of the various interpretations and debates concerning certain concepts and words. I presume that the author of the video — and I repeat, I am saying this without having watched it — does not deny that those terms are used in the Bible. Rather, I believe they argue that the modern Christian interpretation, which associates those terms with the concept of Hell as it is understood in modern popular culture, is not necessarily correct. To be honest, I am not even sure I can completely disagree, considering that Jews, for instance, do not believe in Hell and interpret those terms in a completely different way.

Personally, when it comes to the Old Testament, I tend to agree more with the Jews than with the Christians. After all, the Hebrew Bible was written by the Jews, so I believe it makes more sense to follow their perspective when it comes to vocabulary, lexicon, and the exegesis of Hebrew texts. Of course, I am aware that Judaism is not a monolithic tradition, but there are certain points on which all Jews have always agreed. For instance, 99% of Jews have never believed in the existence of fallen angels, with the exception of a few small messianic sects that existed during the Second Temple period. So again, when it comes to the Old Testament, I prefer to follow Jewish interpretations rather than Christian ones, primarily for a matter of consistency.

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#1647323
Topic
The Machete Order Revised
Time

I honestly prefer either the chronological order or the machete order. I just can’t bring myself to watch the Original Trilogy first and then the Prequels. For me, you’ve always got to end with Return of the Jedi, because that ending is the most satisfying. If you finish on Revenge of the Sith, the Saga ends on a really depressing note. But if you end with Return of the Jedi, you close things out on a happy, uplifting note. That’s why I stick with chronological or machete order: both let you watch Revenge of the Sith before Return of the Jedi instead of after, and that just feels like it makes way more sense.