u/littletoyboat

I heard someone say recently that if Christopher Columbus had never been born, some other European explorer would've landed on the New World more-or-less around the same time. Events would play out differently, but there's not really a circumstance where no one lands in the Americas around 1500.

It made me wonder who could you pluck out from the timeline and actually prevent major events. For example, if Gavrilo Princip had never been born and thus Archduke Franz Ferdinand wasn't assassinated, does World War I still happen, only with a different match lighting the fuse?

Does the Roman Republican turn into an empire without Caesar? Can the US win independence with a different general leading the continental army?

Are there scientists so singular in their genius that, without them, their discoveries could never have been made by someone else?

What about artists? Does film become a popular medium without the Lumière brothers?

I'm sure there are big, obvious ones I'm not thinking of.

Suppose you didn't have access to your missal for whatever reason.* Would you be able to perform the mass from memory? Would that be allowed?

---

^*I ^don't ^know ^what ^circumstances ^you'd ^have ^to ^be ^in ^to ^not ^have ^access ^to ^your ^missal ^or ^even ^the ^internet. ^Maybe ^a ^military ^chaplain, ^your ^missal ^got ^damaged ^in ^an ^attack ^and ^you ^won't ^get ^a ^resupply ^for ^some ^time?

(Forgive me if this is a little rambly; I'm trying to work out my thoughts and I'm hoping the Reddit hivemind can help.)

In theory, we'd like to go into every movie blind, but the reality is, few people have the time/money/inclination to watch everything. We watch trailers, read reviews, talk to friends to get a sense of what a movie is about and whether we'll probably like it.

Of course, we don't want anyone to spoil the ending. That's true of most movies, but it's especially true of movies with surprise or twist endings. (The distinction being "surprise" is simply unexpected, while a "twist" recontextualizes everything we've seen up to that point.)

But a certain kind of movie has I'm going to call a "twist beginning" (unless there's a better term I'm not aware of). Sometimes the setup is so surprising, it's better to not know it going in.

For a recent example, there's The Drama. It's about an engaged couple who play a game where they reveal the worst thing they've ever done. Although it's clearly something big and dramatic, the trailers never actually reveal what Zendaya's character did. Most reviews avoid stating it, or at least mark it as a spoiler. Most casual conversations seem to avoid discussing it without clear spoiler warnings. I can think of a few movies like this, like Coherence or Better Watch Out.

But to clarify what I mean, a counter example is needed. Nobody would describe Spider-Man as "the story of a nerdy boy who's too shy to talk to his crush," and leave out the fact that he becomes a superhero.

But arguably, that is as big a "twist" as what Zendaya did in The Drama. So, the thing I'm not able to articulate is, what's the difference between those? Not those specifically, but in general. What makes a beginning twist that you don't want to spoil?

My daughter suffers from an incurable disease. People often ask if there's anything they can do to help, and I tell them the only thing that anyone can do is pray for her. As you might imagine, many people have given our family rosaries, water from Lourdes, and stuff like that.

One of our neighbors is Muslim. He prayed for my daughter and brought us Zamzam water, which is water from a well in Mecca. He told me they believe it has healing properties (not unlike Lourdes water, from what I gather).

So, anyway, I asked my priest about it, since obviously Islam is not Catholicism and they believe very different things from us. He told me the neighbor meant well, but it's just water. I should take it in the spirit in which it was intended, as long as it's not something occult.

He was in a bit of a hurry, so I didn't ask the obvious follow up question that I'm now asking you--what's the difference between "occult" and just a different religion, like Islam (or Judaism or various protestant denominations)?