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The most upsetting part of it to me is the complete lack of empathy for the other side (from either side).  When Trump was elected, one of the things I was hoping for from our society was that the Democratic Party (certainly the party that cares more about people) would realize that they'd been ignoring a big part of their base (lower income white people).  While Trump's campaign strategy was certainly racially motivated, I think one of the things he did was tell lower income white people that the Democrats didn't care about them.  And it worked because, for the last few elections, the Democrats haven't.

The Democrats took lower class white people for granted.  They assumed that, since they're in a similar situation to minorities, they'd always be a reliable part of their base.  And since it was more "cool" to campaign to minorities, to women, and to Hollywood elites, the Democrats essentially ignored the lower income white people in the Rust belt.  And Hillary lost all those states.

Unfortunately, the Democrats didn't learn.  They haven't spent the last three years trying to understand what they did wrong, re-evaluate their strategy, and get the low income white Democrats back.  Since Trump was elected, they've done....nothing?  They've been angry at Trump.  They've made some gains in Congress.  But they haven't done much else.  I don't know if they learned anything from 2016 except to blame outsiders like Russia and the GOP.

There was someone on Twitter (I think Jason Alexander) who said something like "The GOP are going to trick us into another war.  Why do they do this?  And why do we let them?"

A ton of people responded.  Almost every one of them answered the first question.  No one focused on the second one.  I think Democrats have a problem of self-reflection.  I think they're on the right side of history, but they're a little too interested in playing the victim card.  No one focuses on the fact that the Democrats didn't have a real primary in 2016 - they had a coronation (and that's not even about Bernie Sanders.  Since he was an Independent, that means zero Democrats ran against Hillary in the primary).  No one focuses on the mistakes that were made in 2016 and how to fix them.  It's all about Trump.  It's all about Russia.  Democrats might've had their house broken into and vandalized, but they haven't gone through the trouble to fix the broken door or the broken windows or paint over the graffiti.

Even with impeachment, Democrats are essentially ignoring their party's part in things.  Tons of Democrats scream "IMPEACH HIM." No one seems to be asking Democrats to do it.  There seems to be some sort of hope that Republicans will simply change their minds and impeach him themselves.  If Democrats wanted impeachment, it could be done whenever.  The Democrats don't seem to want it.  I sorta agree with them, but the people that scream "IMPEACH HIM" aren't screaming it at their own party.  They're screaming it at Republicans.

The whole thing sorta drives me crazy.  There's no empathy.  There's no real debate.  There's two sides that *hate* each other that have left the other side to burn.  And, honestly, I don't see anyone trying to recruit moderates or independents.  The Democrats and Republicans are running to their fallout shelters, requiring a loyalty oath for admission, and they're getting ready to launch their nukes.  The rest of us be damned.

There's an image from the CW Upfronts that said that the Crossover would be 5 hours and "2 quarters"

Since it's a financial meeting, I have to assume they mean two financial quarters.  Since it's 5 hours, it would have to include all 5 connected shows (including Batwoman), and the picture on the image also would indicate this (as both Sara and Mick were in the picture with Batwoman, Kara, Barry, and Oliver).  Since LoT was held until midseason, that also makes sense.

The crossover might start in November, have a big cliffhanger at some point, and conclude in January or February.

Yeah, I could see that.  It could be cool to do it that way, and they've definitely positioned both the Flash and Arrow to work that way.  You could even have Arrow have a mostly-new cast and have any of the Arrow cast move to the Flash full-time.

I don't think we'll see LoT involved full-time, and I'm also not sure Supergirl will go there.  I guess we'll find out after those finales.

*Edit - Legends is being held until midseason.  So there might be some aftermath from the crossover (and they might appear), but it seems like they're just skipping the whole thing.  I also forgot about Batwoman - it'd be hard not to have that show be involved, but would they want to bog down their first season with a huge event like this?

So I'm not sure I fully understood where they're going with the Arrow finale.  And, by extension, I'm not sure where they were going with the season as a whole.  I never really bought the Ninth Circle or Emiko as a compelling villain.  In fact, part of me thought that there was going to be a revelation that she'd lied about being related to him in the first place.  I don't think the connection they tried to make between Oliver's guilt and Emiko worked.

At the end of the day, I hate bringing in a long-lost sibling this late in the game.  I don't think it worked.  I almost would've rather had the villain be someone like Huntress or even Roy.  If the whole point was that the team is what made Oliver a great hero, then show someone who tried to go Oliver's original route and it turned them on a darker path.

So where do we go from here?  It's a shortened season that seemingly ends with the crossover.  But....what's Oliver going to be doing?  Is the Monitor going to put him back on Earth in secret where he can never speak with his family?  I thought for a second, while they were wrapping things up, that he might be taking down the Ninth Circle (because that seemed to be the reason they went into hiding).

Is Season 8 going to be fully....is "galactic" the right word?  Will it be Oliver and the Monitor prepping for the Crisis?  Do we even need 10 episodes of that?  Or would it be better for Arrow to end there and have Oliver simply make his return in the Crossover?

Did season 7 give us the right closure?  Because I have a feeling that Season 8 is going to be more of an epilogue than anything.

Yes!  That's great news.

I do think a lot of was cut out for Steve and Bucky.  I thought the scene, the way they did it, worked.  But if Bucky and Steve didn't talk, it would be highly disingenuous to the characters.

My guess is that Cap did talk to Bucky first.  My guess is that Steve offered the shield to Bucky first.  My guess is that Bucky turned it down.  He's a character who's working hard on redemption, but I don't think he's a character who will ever truly forgive himself for what he was forced to do.  I think a part of him is afraid that he'll always be the Winter Soldier, and it'd do more harm than good for Steve's legacy if he was ever activated again while donning the Captain America suit.

If I had to guess (again), my theory would be that the Bucky/Falcon show will be about this on some level.  That Sam is the new Captain America, but that he wasn't the first choice.  And it'd be somewhat about that and somewhat about Sam proving that he was the right choice - which I think Bucky would actually agree with.

It's just weird that they didn't go with Bucky since they'd alluded to him having the shield so many times.  I agree that a black Captain America is a good thing for many fans, but I'd like the Sam/Bucky show to make us believe that it actually makes sense in-universe.

Because it feels a little like the end of the Dark Knight Rises.  Sure, John Blake is a good man.  Yes, he has proven himself to be a hero.  Yes, he has access to all of Bruce's toys.  But John Blake is not Bruce Wayne, and I have real fears that he'd get killed in his first night as Batman.  Sam is a hero.  But while he'd have Cap's shield, he doesn't have Cap's strength or his years of experience.  Bucky does.

Two thoughts on the Black Widow movie:

1. My first thought is that it'll be about the Budapest incident that's been referenced so many times.  It'd be cool to get a period piece that goes over what happened there.

2. Was the Black Widow movie fake?  Will it actually come out?  Or was it put on the schedule to throw fans off, and it'll be some sort of "gotcha" by Marvel?  Considering the scene that happened in Endgame, they could even avoid criticism from people wanting another female-led solo movie by replacing it with an A-Force movie.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-Force

Regarding Endgame (SPOILERS if you haven't already stopped reading this thread).

You're right - because of the way they left it, that world might have huge legal and existential problems.  Peter's going to go back to school with all his friends that were snapped, but he's going to have a lot of friends who are emotionally scarred (and now 5 years older).  They'll probably be in college now, and those friendships are almost-certainly never going to come back.  Those scars weren't unsnapped.

What about people like the man at the therapy session who was dating again?  If someone lost their spouse and then remarried, what would happen to the second marriage?  What would be the legal ramifications of the first one? 

What if the president was snapped?  Would he have a legal claim to the remainder of his presidency, or would he lose it since he was technically incapacitated?  What about Wakanda?  Someone was king while T'Challa was gone, and it seems like he's just king again when he gets back.  But what if Wakanda thrived under the other king?  Even if the king was okay giving it back to T'Challa, would Wakanda?  Would other countries in other situations?

And it doesn't even have to be at huge levels of power?  If the sales manager at Marvel Paper got snapped, they'd have replaced him in 5 years.  Does he have a legal claim to his old job?  Technology would've improved in 5 years, if not at a slightly slower rate.  Some people might be (slightly) less qualified than people that weren't snapped.  Would there be a protected class for people who were snapped to catch them up or to find them work?

Then there's weird entertainment stuff.  I assume TV and movies still happened (they talk about missing the Mets and show an abandoned (?) stadium, but I assume entertainment would go on).  How many shows would've had to write in character deaths and then would have to awkwardly write back in resurrections?  How many shows would write the snap into them?  Would something like Blackish or AP Bio have a snap-related arc?  Or would they just pretend it never happened?  Would there be a new Bond film where 007 flies into space to take on Thanos?

The people are all back, but the world wasn't restored.  And, honestly, just because of Morgan Stark, you could argue that the world is much more complicated and possibly damaged.

Some of this could be dealt with in a future movie, but Spider-Man: Far From Home doesn't look like an existential piece.  And since most of his classmates look like they're on a class trip with him, you gotta thing *all of them* got snapped.

**************

I'm sure we've talked about this, but while it would be an insane tragedy to have 3.5 billion people disappear...I don't think it would've accomplished what Thanos was going for.  We'd still have 3.5 billion people on the planet...and that would've simply put us back to the late 1960s in terms of world population.  Unless there was some sort of pushback to keep the population down (either out of fear of another snap or because of worldwide sadness), the world would be back to its pre-snap population in 50 years.  Thanos' plan would need to be much more aggressive to have the impact that he's looking for.  It took us over 200 years to get from 1 billion to 7 billion so if he snapped everyone but 1 billion, that might actually save the planet.  Taking half might only delay the inevitable.

I saw Endgame last night.  It was a wonderful culmination of 20+ films and 10+ years.

Yeah maybe we can buy that Stammets had some sort of unique ability to control it, and only he can do it.  I can see a thousand reasons why Starfleet might stop working on it.  But there are a ton of species that wouldn't have a problem killing thousands of people to get a working spore drive.

I mean it is what it is.  If I can accept all the other changes, I can accept that one.  It's just maddening to completely re-write the rules of space travel in a prequel and then just say no one replicated it for hundreds of years.

Oh gosh....

I wouldn't even know where to begin.  First of all because I don't think I've seen a whole episode of Smallville since the finale aired.  And secondly because it's like comparing apples and the concept of dark matter.  That's not a commentary on anything but the fact that Gotham is the most unique show on television as far as I'm concerned.

Gotham takes itself both 100% seriously and 100% unseriously.  It's both a gritty, realistic street-level cop procedural, and a show where a boy and a crazy woman can stab an immortal being with a magic knife and make him turn to dust.  It's about the life of a cop trying to save a city from real-life corruption, and a show where there's a mad scientist who is regularly turning human beings into monsters.

The best way I can describe it is that they took unused scripts for Batman: the Animated Series and threw them in a blender with Law and Order: Gotham, and then they took the Batman parts and divided them between Gordon and a Bruce Wayne that 1) was de-aged and 2) didn't remember he was Batman.

The show is either the most perfect 5-season run since Supernatural, or it's a show that stumbled into being absolutely insane by pure happenstance.  The show is either written by the most devoted comic book fans on TV, or it's actually written by the criminally insane.  Neither would surprise me.

Even when you look at modern superhero shows, it doesn't have anything to compare to.  I guess I'd say it's like Arrow....except if Arrow both took itself as seriously as Netflix's Daredevil and existed in the bright colorful world of Legends of Tomorrow.  And instead of focusing on a superhero, it was about Captain Singh.  That's Gotham.

I didn't want to tack my Discovery thoughts to the back of that, but I had to talk about it.

Sigh.....

So in the end, the writers had nothing.  After getting boxed into a prequel by Brian Fuller, I think the writers realized that they were in trouble.  That they'd gone too far with the prequel changes, and that they didn't have the answers they always promised they did.  To simply write off all the stuff they did with some Starfleet regulation saying "NONE OF THIS HAPPENED OFFICIALLY OR TREASON" is just insane to me.  It's the Trek version of "a wizard did it."

I give them credit for at least doing that.  Or, really, do I?  Is this better than just assuming Spock talked about Michael before and we just never heard it?  That maybe spore drives are everywhere and we just don't know them (maybe Starfleet has a bunch of Discovery-class ships)?  That maybe Michael was eventually pardoned so it wasn't technically a mutiny?

From the limited number of interviews I read after watching the finale, they're going to the future.  Based on the Short Treks (which I was impressed because they had a decent impact on the plot), they'll be about 900-1000 years in the future.  It might be a bit too far in the future to follow the technology curve, but it's better than nothing.  There won't be any more burdens of previous continuity or bringing on someone like Scotty or Kirk.

They can doing their own thing.  Chart their own course.  I think it'll be really good - because I really do think it's a very enjoyable show.  It wouldn't take more than a few cosmetic changes to fix their prequel problems, and if they did that, I think it's easily up there with DS9 as far as quality goes.

I just thought their way of ripping off the bandage was so lazy.

Haha, that's completely fair.  I assumed based on the way you spoke about her that you weren't going to say.  But when you said she was credited as "Woman Number Three" I immediately checked to see whether Allison was Number Three and she was.  So it was either a Freudian slip or a coincidence.

There also aren't a ton of women on the show, despite Ellen Page getting top billing.  So it'd be Ellen Page, Emmy Raver-Lampman, or Mary J. Blige if you're talking about main cast.  If it's a guest character, there's a handful of people it could be.  Four of the seven "recurring" characters (according to Wikipedia) are female.

I started and finished "Umbrella Academy" from Netflix.  I thought it was pretty fun, and I'm looking forward to another season.  Has anyone else seen it?

I have a complicated relationship with the sequels, but I'm pretty happy with the revelation that Rey is no one.  I hope that doesn't get retconned because I think it creates a great symmetry.  Kylo believes he's royalty.  That his control of the universe is deserved because of his bloodline.  For the Force to choose a random person to rise up to meet him is a great narrative work.  Kylo and Rey are true opposites.  If they end up as cousins...I don't know.

I think you're right - it's a designation of some sort.

I was more intrigued by the Emperor's cackle.  Is he back?  Cloned?  Was he Snoke?

So I watched the most recent episode which features a vision that Pike has of his eventual fate.  I thought they did a pretty great job of recreating the scene that we were told about in The Menagerie, and I thought they did a fairly faithful representation of Pike's life support chamber.

But then I started thinking about the Talos IV recreation.  How they updated the flowers and the Talosians.  How we need to imagine that everything looks the same as it did in the 60s TV show.  And while we usually do a better job of picking apart the aesthetics of TOS, should we be doing the same for TNG?  When we get angry about the technological inconsistencies in Discovery, should we, instead, be retroactively adding those technologies to TNG/DS9/VOY?

The holographic communication makes sense.  It would be a better way of communicating with someone, and it feels like a natural progression of our technology.  If there were truly any issues with it, it would've been fixed in the 100 years between Discovery and the Dominion War.  So when Picard and Sisko and Janeway communicate with viewscreens and PADDs, maybe they were actually communicating on even more advanced holographic communications.  Maybe the Enterprise D was flashier with advanced screens and flashier uniforms.

Maybe the Klingons always looked like this?  Nah...the Klingon stuff still doesn't make any sense.

If we need to look at the 60s episodes with updated 2019 eyes, maybe we should be doing the same with the later sequel series.  It actually kinda makes it exciting.  Each Trek series takes place with their own technology as their lens.  TOS, despite being 200 years in the future, has technology that is laughably behind some of our own technology.  In the same way, some of our technology puts TNG's technology to shame.  So if we're projecting another 30 years to the Trek mythos, how advanced would the Enterprise-D be with another 100 years of advancements?  It's the kind of thing that makes Trek great and how Trek has helped our own technology grow and advance.

At the same time, someone (I think TF) once said that the Trek timeline is a weird version of our own timeline.  The TOS era was the 60s.  The TNG era was the 80s.  If Discovery had been set 100 years after the Dominion War, it could've been our time.  But maybe a new projection makes just as much sense.

So now Idris Elba is playing someone else (Bronze Tiger?), Viola Davis is back as Waller, and Margot Robbie is back as Harley in "The Suicide Squad"

With Aquaman and Shazam critical successes, maybe an interconnected DCEU isn't actually over.

So it wasn't Michael but Michael's mom.  Pretty cool twist, and I thought Sonja Sohn (from the great series The Wire) was cast perfectly as Michael's mom. 

The time travel stuff is intriguing, and I sorta like the idea of a crazy AI taking over a too-computer-dependent Starfleet.  It might go towards explaining why there's so little AI in the universe, but since this is a prequel, it's hard to take the whole "destroying all sentient life" threat seriously.  The good and bad of doing a prequel, I guess.

I'm assuming she gave more advanced notice than yesterday because they're probably done shooting now, right?  Or, at the very least, done writing.  Again, with the flash-forwards, we know that Felicity stays in that cabin outside of town with her daughter.  If those flash forwards are canon, there's the reason for her to be gone.

One interesting question will be what time period an eighth season would take place / where season 7 ends.  Are we going to end a month or so from where we are now?  Flash forward to the cabin after Mia is born?  Or, as someone online suggested, maybe the 8th season takes place entirely in the future with the future Team Arrow.  Unless that storyline is resolved, it's something they could do.  I mean, it didn't work on Fringe, but maybe it can work here.

*****

I don't know a ton about it because, frankly, it's all quite exhausting to follow all these sects of Arrowverse fandom.  Just like there were Felicity and Laurel sects, there are also Caitlin and Iris sects.  So whenever I tried to go down the rabbit hole, everything is tainted with some form of bias, and it's hard to tell what's true and what's rumor based on assumptions from a comment that may or may not have been innocuous.  So take all this with as much salt as you'd like.

Candice - As you might know, racist assholes have been bothering Candice for her entire run on the Flash.  Whether they don't like the race-swapping or the interracial aspect, she's had to deal with a bunch of crap in what was supposed to be a fairly big break.  While she's taken it in stride, some feel that she's bothered by Iris' lack of a clear role or lack of any storyline that she can identify with.  Caitlin fans say that she can't act, and that Caitlin (despite not being the romantic lead) is the female lead of the show.  There was also some drama with Danielle Panabaker behind the scenes that I don't know anything about.  She apparently made some sort of comment that made it seem like she was the only female in the show, but I couldn't find too much about it when I just scanned twitter. 

There's been rumors that one or both of the actresses are leaving the Flash.  And rumors that Carlos Valdes is leaving.  And accusations that Grant Gustin is phoning in his performances.

Katie - The only problems with her stem from her getting killed off originally.  I know she wasn't happy about that.  What's strange is that she had that contract that was supposed to let her appear on all the shows, but I'm not sure she ever appeared on Legends after that and only appeared on Flash once.  There's apparently rumors that she might go to Legends next season.

Emily - The only thing I know is the thing she mentioned that she didn't want to see a pregnancy storyline.  From a TV Guide interview:

So maybe the writers were going to make her more of a "mom" character (or worse, someone who abandons her baby to do "more fun" stuff) and that's not what she wanted to do.  So she thought if that's what they want her to do, Felicity can be that offscreen.

Apparently Emily Bett Richards isn't coming back for the 10-episode season 8.

If the flash-forwards are real, Felicity is in hiding while Oliver is...somewhere.  So he could be doing something while apart from Felicity and then potentially die in the crossover.

I know Informant will be happy, but I don't really know what Arrow looks like without Felicity.

I agree with most of what you wrote, but I wanted to focus on this.  I think it's legitimate, but like a lot of the DCEU, I think there are too many inconsistencies.  Snyder definitely wanted to try and do this realistically, and some of the more realistic items are the more controversial.  Namely the Battle of Metropolis and Batman's killing.

Would a fight between Superman and Zod result in a city-destroying event?  Absolutely.  You have two gods fighting, and the evil god is the better trained one.  I think Superman did the best he could because I don't think Zod would've been drawn out of the city, and I don't think Superman could've made him if he wanted.  The fight was realistic.  My issue is with the aftermath.  The Battle of Metropolis would've been the biggest thing to ever happen, and it's, for the most part, written off.  Snyder wanted to do the realistic thing and then move on.  There's a disconnect between realistic Superman and the comic book Metropolis he wants.

Would Batman end up killing people?  Absolutely.  Not only would his strength and skill make him lethal for almost any human to fight, but Batman would need to use lethal force to quickly move in and out of dangerous situations.  To save Martha in time, Batman had to crush people quickly in the warehouse fight.  I honestly believe he used excessive force in the Batmobile chase prior to his first confrontation with Superman, but maybe he did what he needed to do.  Again, I don't have a problem with the realism - again, my problem is with the rest of it.  If Batman kills, that's fine.  But would Gordon be okay with a Batman that regularly kills?  Did Batman always regularly kill, and if so, when did he start?  Because Gordon seems pretty okay with Batman in Justice League - there isn't any sort of "as long as you've stopped killing, we're good again" stuff.  There's a disconnect between realistic Batman and the comic book Gordon he wants.

So Zack Snyder has come out again in defense of a Batman that kills.  His argument is, essentially, that people that don't think Batman would kill need to grow up.  He's out there fighting and people are going to die as a result.

I think that's a fair statement, but then what separates Batman from the Punisher?  If Batman kills, what separates him from someone like Azrael?  Should there be a separation?

The biggest argument against Snyder-Batman's style of killing, in my opinion, is "if Batman is willing to kill for the greater good, why is the Joker still alive?"  I think Bruce knows in his heart that he's putting people in danger by letting the Joker live, in whatever version of the story you want to consider.  The Joker regularly breaks out, people end up dead, and Batman puts him back.  It's their character dynamic.

And yet you have a version of Batman in the DCEU that is willing to kill and there's a version of the Joker that's alive.  Those two things don't jive together.  If Batman is willing to kill a random thug who just happens to be working for the real bad guy, why wouldn't he kill the real bad guy?  To be fair to Snyder, we never see anyone else in the rogue's gallery.  Maybe the Riddler and Two-Face and the Penguin are all dead.  Maybe there's a psychological block to being able to kill the Joker.

But at the same time, he let Harley live.  He let Deadshot live.

I think I'm okay with a Batman that kills.  But then he's just high-tech Punisher.  And you have to explain what his code is, if he has one.

Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman used to (they don't much anymore) talk about their version of Sherlock and how they'd love to come back and do a "series" of it every few years.  Their plan was, they used to say, to have Sherlock and Watson "grow old together."

I'd sorta love for that to be the case for Sam and Dean.  And while I do think it would've been cool to have Wayward Sisters (or even the other weirder spinoff) work, I think it's sorta appropriate in-universe to have these attempted (then failed) spinoffs.  Sam/Jared and Dean/Jensen would love to be able to retire - they've done the work/show for a lot longer than anyone thought they would, and they'd love to be able to pass it on to someone who could take it over.  Whether it be the Men of Letters/Bloodlines or the new hunters/Wayward Sisters.  But they realized no one could do it better than that.  So if anyone is going to hunt/do Supernatural, it needs to be them.

I know it wouldn't allow for a great wrapup if they left things open enough for Sam and Dean to return every few years, but maybe that's the best for this show.  Maybe Supernatural doesn't need Sam or Dean to die but just drive off into the sunset, allowing us to await the day they show back up.

Funny enough, I think their best bet (movie or TV show) is to do it Ghostbusters (2016) style.  Full reboot.  New actors playing the four main actors with guest spots / cameos from the original actors. 

My reasoning is twofold:
- JRD is 74 years old and acknowledges that he couldn't do it for much longer.
- I think there's more nostalgia with the concept than the actors themselves.

If JOC is the driving force, he can either have a bigger role or he can play Arturo.  Sabrina could play Mrs. Mallory.  Cleavant could play Rembrandt's dad/uncle or maybe his manager.  Or some sort of bigger role on whatever Earth they slide to.  JRD could do the same.

For plot, don't overcomplicate things.  I'd essentially remake the Pilot.  Quinn finds sliding, recruits some friends, something bad happens, Rembrandt is taken along for the ride, and they get stuck somewhere.  Update the alt-world jokes, update the main world they go to, and that's it.  If it's a show, you end with the realization that they're not back home.  If it's a movie, maybe you just hint that something is wrong and end Inception-style.

That's, of course, if you're doing something mainstream.  If this is a Veronica Mars - style show with a targeted audience, I like the TF/ireactions stuff quite a bit.

One last thing on Section 31 before I retire this argument.

Did the writers on Discovery even watch the S31 episodes from Deep Space Nine?  Or did someone give them a brief summary, and they ran with it?  I don't know if the Enterprise episodes broke the organization like these episodes are, but this just seems completely lazy.  Just like with some of the other stuff, they could've easily created a separate dark ops department that they could've played around with.  But they wanted the buzzword.

Essentially, everyone on Deep Space Nine looks like an idiot for not knowing about Section 31.

It's a really weird story.  If it was just a "let's wait for this to blow over and we'll rehire you" then why did Gunn jump to DC to direct Suicide Squad?  It sounds like someone at Disney made the call unilaterally and everyone was able to wear that person down until they just relented.

Yeah, that all makes sense.  I guess I just don't have much nostalgia for TOS or much of the old series.  I'm much more interested in going forward than continuing to stay in "the past." 

I'm the same way about Star Wars.  They seem obsessed with the same 90 or so years of history, when I'd be much more interested in seeing many other time periods.  In fact, part of the reason I didn't love The Force Awakens was it's seeming obsession with simply recreating the past in the future, when I saw much more possibilities for something new and different.

Would that work?  She was able to come back in time to save herself?  I feel like that would be a time anomaly and wouldn't work.

Maybe it's Culber.  It'd make as much sense as him being alive now.

And yeah, I understand that they're fictional characters and that they can be recast, but it's just sorta awkward and something they didn't really need to do.  So far, I haven't noticed any reason why Sarek has to be Sarek and Spock has to be Spock and Pike has to be Pike.  To me, they could've created original characters without having to tiptoe anything.  A friend of me was telling me that it seems like there are only about 5 Vulcans in the universe because Spock and Sarek seem to do so much.\

I mean even if they wanted to do a connection, they could've had it be a relative of Tuvok or even Vorik.  Or someone that isn't from Voyager haha.  Have it be a rival of Sarek's.  Maybe Burnham was a rival of Spock's instead of a sister.  If they want the "ooh, ahh" moments from TOS names, they could still name drop.  And any captain from any ship could've taken over the Discovery.  CBS wanted the name recognition that comes along with casting PIKE and SPOCK and SAREK.

What's strange to me is that they keep reaching back to the TOS era when the people who watched TOS in its original run are all senior citizens now.  You'd think in a time when 80s nostalgia is such a big deal that they'd be trying to connect to TNG more.  At least the people who watched that on its first run can figure out how to get CBS All Access

In my opinion, this is now canon and the only explanation I will accept