I think you sort of met my inner Jaeger, who didn’t always know why he’d get into fights. I felt like maybe you were like Jack, with the lemon-piss squirt gun, and I responded the way Jaeger did when Jack pulled the trigger.

Anyway, I still hope to see you post. I promise I won’t beat on you. At least, too much.

Peace.

- Chris

I haven’t heard from you in a week. I hope you’ll post again. I like your thoughts. I just get the feeling you were trying to change me, as Brecht tried to change the world. Was I the slime? Was I the butcher? Were you trying to change me with words of love and peace, and a verbal kidney punch thrown in? If you really want to change me, try to love me, and not just with glib words. And before you try to love me, come to know me. And if you want to change the world, I’d suggest the same process with the world. Maybe in that process, you’ll see not as much change is needed as you thought. Sometimes our misperceptions are part of the problem.

I do appreciate the Brechtian philosophy. It has its place and season in the way of revolution, as does anger and violence, as does acceptance and nonviolence.

I was both having fun with you, and being personal, at the same time. I thought you could take it. I hope you can see that. I hope to see your posts again. This forum is for all Finder fans. I’d hate to think that anything I said keeps you from posting again. Maybe I was too rude in my American way for your British sensibilities.

Take care. Be well.

- Chris

I feel just a tad silly now. Not entirely. Just a tad. I did think “brandi” meant you were a woman. Thanks for the clarification. Some of the energy behind my words were playful flirtation. And some of it was just some rather personal views. So while I knew all along you meant none of your words to be a personal attack, there was personal energy in what I said. Now I have no idea what the point of your perspective/argument was. Seems you were just being contrary. Which is contrary to your professed preference for sinking into the “slime”. I suppose NOW you sink into the slime?

I do hope that when you say this is your last word, you only mean your last word on this particular thread, and not in this forum. I’d miss your thoughts if it were the latter.

I’m not familiar with the British Action comics, sorry.

Best back to ya,
Christopher

My last word, I promise.

Nothing I said was meant as a personal attack on you.

I have no problem with Speed’s depicting a world in which kids get beaten. Depicting something isn’t endorsing it. Nor do I think she has to editorialize: “this is what happened, but of course it is wrong” – yuck!

(Indeed, as a kid, I was a big fan of Action — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_%28comic%29 –; anyone remember the fuss about that?)

Best,

matthew brandi

I relate to Jack a lot. And Glasses reminds me of my dad. My dad’s a stickler for rules.

And, brandy/m? Thanks for opposing corporal punishment as a tool for raising kids. If you’d done that passionately in my defense when I was a kid, you would have been my hero.

- Chris

Yes, there is a long history of violence in comic books, with so many focused on superheroes. Carla puts the violence in the context of a rich cultural history, and doesn’t give it so much of the foreground focus as the superhero books did.

Interestingly, with the direction that the discussion took, I ended up trying to defend a stance I don’t exactly hold. It was just one I was musing upon. I wonder how different the discussion would have been had I been more precise in my words and said first-off “MAYBE Coward is right… hm…”? Coward’s statement prompted me to re-consider the place of corporal punishment in my own life.

- Chris

I could have left my response the way it was, but what’s the fun in that?

I didn’t say that cultural norm is justification. I am saying that cultural norm is relevant. You do seem to believe in some kind of absolute morality, though. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Actually, I’m very open minded, but deep down, I’m quite conservative. There. No more mask. *rolls eyes* I am aware enough to have a sense of my own subjectivity, and recognize them as just the way _I_ see things. I don’t have all the answers, though many times in my life I felt I did.

What you gonna do? Have Carla write you into the story so you can right the wrongs? Tell them how to run things? Or are you the kind of person to shout at a movie screen as the movie’s playing?

And I didn’t say that EVERYTHING about Jaeger would be shared by other Ascians. I was just saying that there’s enough shared so that it’s reasonable to conclude that some parallel is justified. But you knew that already, didn’t you? That’s what made it a sneak kidney punch. Sheesh.

And I do admit that I wasn’t very good at trying to keep this discussion focused on what was really this issue – the morality (or something like that) of corporal discipline in Coward’s tribe. But I have a fuzzy everything-connected kind of way of thinking. And stories have always had that place in my life. And that’s one of the things Finder does for me that I like – gets me thinking in other ways than I’d done before.

After this discussion, I ought to marry you or something.

Peace and love,
Chris