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I prefer the word “rival” because you can even be good friends with a rival, while the connotations of “nemesis” don’t quite work for that.
by mordymoop 5y ago
I prefer the word “rival” because you can even be good friends with a rival, while the connotations of “nemesis” don’t quite work for that.
- AmericanChopper 5y agoIt’s also just a more accurately descriptive word. Nemesis was the Greek god who punished hubris. A Nemesis is somebody who delivers (a usually unavoidable or inevitable) retribution to you. An archetypal nemesis is somebody you have wronged, and somebody who successfully manages to enact a retribution. I get that it’s come to mean basically any serious rival, but that’s dumb imo, and the original definition of the word is better.
- bee_rider 5y agoFor some reason, which is not quite clear to me, the author explicitly brings up the term rival and rejects it without any clear explanation. > It has to do with what sportswriters and fans call rivalries. But I view it as something different—I refer to this same phenomenon as the Concept of the Nemesis. Then he goes on to use the term rivalry a bunch.
- andrewflnr 5y agoHe seems to be trying to name a more specific concept than "rivalry", an especially intense one with that mirror aspect.
- grouphugs 5y ago