He says "bring balance to the Force" not "even out the number of Jedi and Sith."

Like, furry stuff, yeah.

Seems more and more like fibrous integument goes back a very long way.

PTSD is much more common than those horrors. As mentioned above, it was generally thought to have to do with "fear conditioning" - that is, becoming used to always being terrified for your life. The scientists seem to propose that there's other ways to have PTSD, too.

It's worth considering, too, that being prepared to take a life is not the same thing as not ever feeling guilty for doing it.

What I meant was more like Disney's take, but blue people works, too.

Green Lantern: The Power Ring picks those who have the ability to overcome great fear, and chooses those who also have great willpower. The fact that these power rings have not picked a woman yet is bullshit. I think women on average do have more willpower than guys, and I don’t see why women would be any more…

In fact, having a Mexican guy reinvent himself as a White person after his parents death - or even having Thomas Wayne anglicize his name when he moved to the US - is a pretty plausible backstory. (As in, lots of people do that.)

Anyone remember this little four-parter from Penny Arcade?

I disagree with that.

What I'm arguing is that, regardless of the quality of the writing (which can be pretty poor in LotR, too) having gods swoop in to save the day was often the point, not a consequence of the bad writing. I'm arguing that there's a qualitative difference between writing a deus ex machina because you're bad at plotting…

In what ways do you think Afrofuturism fulfills a different role than other science fiction?

To the Greeks and Romans, the deus ex machina was expected and made sense. The phrase refers not to the artificiality of the device but rather to the fact that there was a fair bit of stagecraft used to make an actor appear to be a God on an ancient Greek stage. Horace and others thought it was lazy, and it could be -…

Yes. It is pretty literally the definition of "deus ex machina."

The point the article - and a number of other people in this thread - is trying to make is that while you're positing it as a lazy storytelling device, Tolkien used it with purpose as a device similar to plagues and pillars of fire in the Bible. Tolkien…

The article makes the argument that the Eagles are a manifestation of divine grace, showing up to people that the gods are saving in that moment. Therefore, it's not lazy, it's just Tolkien's universe working the way he built it.

Ahem.

But then we might be equally attuned to the hero's pain, which isn't the case.

Tell her that the implied restrictions, limitations and restraint she wrote into the magic in her books made her stories better?

Peter Dinklage playing exactly this character in any for real project. Please.

I always thought the "spark of good" thing was more of a "glimmer of a doubt." Vader ruined his life. Vader figures out that he didn't actually kill everything he loved after all. Vader tries to bring his boy into the family business. And then, wouldn't you know it, the boy rejects him.