Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
- 206
- 1
What is this place?
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a
court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to
optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.
The weekly Culture War threads host the most
controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are
appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy;
if in doubt, post!
Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts.
You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.
Why are you called The Motte?
A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey",
originally identified by
philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial
but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens
this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for
the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired
propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
New post guidelines
If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it.
A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts
such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a
submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).
Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or
significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.
If in doubt, please post it!
Rules
- Courtesy
- Content
- Engagement
- When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
- Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.
- Accept temporary bans as a time-out, and don't attempt to rejoin the conversation until it's lifted.
- Don't attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity.
- Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
- The Wildcard Rule
- The Metarule

Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
You and I could probably discuss this for days. My friends and I were huge into SC1 and Battle.net back in the day.
Raynor always served his role well as the go-between of sorts between the different races as well as the Terran factions. The campaign story was a lot more extensive than a lot of the competitive players originally realized, and in multiplayer especially, SC1 reproved its replay value for years and years up until SC2 came out (which I was disappointed by, even in the SK professional circuit; and I used to watch Tasteless and Artosis commentary in the Code S bracket a lot).
After the first chapter of SC2, I let the story drop off for me after that, not being too satisfied with the direction of things they went. That said, did they ever finish the chapter or cliffhanger with Lieutenant Duran and his experiments he was conducting across the stars?
Same. Many, many late nights doing 3v3 and 4v4 on group calls with the boys.
Yeah,Duran shows back up in Heart of the Swarm as "Dr. Narud", and after Kerrigan's heel-face-turn he takes over as a Zerg villain personality. He was doing the Big Bad's work fusing zerg and protoss into the hybrid, which are very powerful elite enemy units that show up increasingly often as HotS and Legacy of the Void progress. Duran himself is slowly revealed to be a sort of high level eldritch horror. HotS does a lot to humanize the zerg, with actual characters that have personalities. Alexi Stukov is revealed to still be alive, if zerg-infested, and he takes the role of "human friendly zerg guy". He gives some missions to finish Duran/Narud to satisfy his vengeance after what Duran did to him and the UED at the end of Brood War.
I will say that a lot of the missions are very fun, with good replayability.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link