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Hellraiser97

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by Hellraiser97

  1. On 7/2/2025 at 5:12 PM, Rimbo said:

    I'm struggling to finish the first one.

    Yeah, I struggled with it too.  WAY too much setup for me.

    On 7/2/2025 at 5:19 PM, Chewbacca said:

    I really enjoyed the first 3.  The 4th dragged on in spots and the 5th was a struggle to get through.

    I enjoyed Books 2 and 3 a lot.  I think I actually may have skipped booked 4.  I have it on Audible, and it says finished, but I think I might have accidentally marked it finsihed.  There was a lot going on in Book 5 that I didn't remember.  

    On 7/2/2025 at 6:00 PM, Chewbacca said:

    Reading these books with a due date would be tough indeed.

    I read the Game of Thrones books largely that way.  I ended up getting Calibre and stripping the DRM from the checked out books so I could finish them.

    • Hook 'Em 1
  2. Pumped for this.  I am curious to see how they handle Ryland's resistance to the mission.  It seems from the preview it will be different than the book, but maybe I'm not remembering it well.

  3. 12 minutes ago, linux said:

    TFA until recently, TFA was widely praised on release but I came out of the theater angry I got sold essentially the same product.

    Gilroy has made an open case against memberberries, directly telling modern writers that the Star Wars toybox is not something they should abuse, I hope they learn.

     

    Thanks for the explanation!  I enjoyed TFA, but I quickly realized it was a total rehash of ANH.  My brother absolutely loved it and we had many debates about whether they should have done somethng original.

  4. The streaming era really is a difficult thing to quantify and compare over periods.

    Side note, what doe the "memberberry era" mean?  I vaguely remember the South Park episode, and I googled it quickly, but didn't get the relationship to Star Wars.

  5. 4 hours ago, mdmost said:

    Who is she going to tell the plans to that would make any difference on a prison planet that's had bolstered security after the previous breakout? All we know is she went from the interrogation room to the jail cell in ISB HQ to the prison. After the Death Star comes online in Rogue One, nothing matters about who knows because the Empire then wants everyone to know and fear them. Maybe she's on the team making widgets for Death Star 2.0. 

    She knows a lot of stuff outside of the Death Star plans.  It's a prison and prisons always have corruption.  Part of the manifesto is about how hard it is for the Empire to control everything.  It's a pointless risk to let her live, much less be around anyone else.

     

    2 hours ago, Captainant said:

    I gotta disagree hard on that. Cassian knew he would not be able to leave Bix, and that he had work yet to be done. They were both committed to the mission. All in.

    In many ways, the people that Cassian lost is what defined and fueled him. It's what makes him get up and fight the Empire and dare to hope. Between his sister, Marva, Brasso, B-2, and now Bix - Cassian has lost everything. 

    Cassian had just said he was going to walk away when she left.  He had a right to know about the baby.

     

    1 hour ago, Rimbo said:

    And how is that information going to be (1) believed and (2) escape, when for almost everyone on Narkina it's a death sentence? She is too busy building pieces of the Death Star (the second one by that point) to discuss things. She's as good as dead from the Empire's POV, and her health and obedience are being put to good service.

    (And likely, given her personality, WHY would she snitch? In her mind, she is wronged for letting information get out; in her own mind, telling people things NOW would no longer make her imprisonment unjust? Granted, that's not the Empire's concern, it's hers.)

    Said it above, but it's just a pointless risk.  She knows a lot of stuff that isn't about the Death Star too.  As for her motivation, she's been burned by the Empire.  She feels she did nothing wrong.  That's all the more reason to snitch.

  6. 9 minutes ago, mdmost said:

    I'm sure there were backup plans but Galen only knew of the ones on Scariff. I'm sure there are plans in the Emperor's tower on Coruscant. 

    And the Dedra ending was what Gilroy wanted to her to have which was the begining and end her story in an Imperial block. She was raised in a kinderblock and she'll probably die in their prison. It's a better fate than just showing her gunned down on screen and he already had that for Partigas. We know how hard the imperial prison life can be and how it breaks people. Also, it helped to keep her alive because her still being alive after Krennic pushed on her head and then threw her in jail led to Kleya being hunted and almost captured. And let's be honest the real bastard of the Empire is Tarkin. He's the one who does not hesitate to blow up or murder people. Krennic only did that when it was necessary. And as we saw, he runs a leaky ship as did a lot of the ISB. 

    If she was in solitary, it would make more sense I think.  I can see the punishment of imprisonment being worse than death, and a good bookend to her story, but she's clearly an intelligence risk with everything she knows just outside of the Death Star.  

    Going to have to disagree on Krennic.  He doesn't hesitate to murder Erso's engineers.  Tarkin is certainly even more ruthless, but Krennic is keen to immediately blow up a full planet, not just Jedda city.

  7. 1 hour ago, Murfdogg21 said:

    Agreed that it's unbelievable the Empire would send Dedra to prison where she will get more enraged and has valuable intel she could dispel to anyone. It would've been nearly impossible to imprison every employee on Scariff and was easier to just nuke them all and the evidence.

    [Rogue One criticism] I find it hard to believe the Empire kept no backup copies of project plans anywhere else. Later on they enacted several of those, like cloning/resurrecting Palpatine and the tracking ships at light speed. Scariff may have been the easiest place for the rebels to get the Death Star plans in a surprise attack, but the plans had to exist elsewhere. Hell, they started building its replacement immediately.

    They actually were already building the second one before the first was completed IIRC.  And it must use different power sources/fuel since they made such a big deal of needing all that stuff for the first one and not being able to find enough.

    • Hook 'Em 2
  8. 12 hours ago, MagicSoccerSpray said:

    There was a deleted scene that explains it all. Basically Perrin always knew what Mon was up to, and covered for her to the ISB. Sculden owned a broadcast channel that, when ordered, refused to cut the feed to Mothma's speech to the senate, which is why the imperials were scrambling to cut power to the senate chamber. Perrin and Sculden's wife both lost their spouses to the rebellion, which better explains them being together later.


    There are videos and interviews on yt and the net, from the episode writer, and Gilroy, talking about it. Some were linked a couple of pages back in this thread. 

    Thanks.  That definitely explains that part of it, but it still seems that Perrin would have been in jail.  It's not like the Empire is known for leniency.

  9. I'll go the other direction, audiobooks where the narrator makes it worse.

    1) Jefferson Mays on the Expanse and Capitve's War.  Some may like it, but the way he draws out certain words, the whole cadence, drives me nuts.  I largely still listened to the expanse but I nearly turned off The Mercy of Gods.  I'll be reading the next one.

    2) Dick Hill - the Acacia trilogy.  I read somewhere one some list that this was a really great series, so I decided to give it a try.  I don't know where Hill is actually from, but he reads it in what seems like an over exaggerated attempt at a middle ages English accent.  It killed me.  Maybe I'll read the remaining two books, but I barely mnmade it through the first one.

    3) Scott Brick - The Shannara Chronicles - dude just gets WAY too excited and over emphasizes things.  I enjoyed the first book, bit desipe having bought a couple of them, I haven't been able to listen to anymore.

     

  10. That's a good take Rimbo.

    I just binged it this past week. Agree with most of what's been written about Syril.  Really a great character and added a lot of depth to the show IMO.  The first three episodes were killing me, even if I got the point of what was going on.  While I really did enjoy the show, a few other notes/questions:

    1) I don't get the scene with Perrin at the end - After her speech, Mon Mothma is a fugitive, public enemy #1.  Yet a year later, Perrin is just partying around Corusant at the end, banging the crime dude's wife?  They would have locked him up 5 seconds after that speech and probably exectured him shortly thereafter.  Am I missing something?  A shot of him in a jail cell makes more sense.

    2) Dedra - It's so incredibly important that the Rebels have no information about the Death Star that in Rouge One they send out Vader to recover them from the Rebel command ship and as a last ditch effort they vaporize the Sacriff base and thousands of otherwise just normal Imperial personel, while Dedra's incompetance is what leaks the Death Star existance in the first place and all she gets is prison?  Given Krenik's propensity to pretty much kill anyone and everyone that doesn't perform adequately, and Tarkin's too, that seems highly unlikely.  Her before a firing squad at the end would have been more accurate.

    3) Bix is a selfish cunt.  Assuming of course that baby is Cassian's, which it seems is implied, after going on several times about making choices and even scolding Cassian for not making his own choices, she denies him the right to make a choice about whether he wants to help raise his kid or keep fighting?  All because some Force healer thinks he has a destiny.  Screw her.  That was for Cassian to decide, not her.  And why go back to Mina-Rau?  She's illegal, no visa there, and while it HAD been 8 years since the Imperials came around to do an inventory when things went to shit, there's no guarantee they will wait another 8 years.  Seems she should have gone elsewhere.  But again, she's a selfish cunt so screw her.

  11. The Expeditionary Force books would not be near as funny without the way the guy does the voice of Skippy.

    Going back to the original post, I listened to the first Thrawn book (I think it was the first one) and the way the guy kept doing "Double Vision" made me nearly turn off the damn thing.  Not sure what was worse, the author writing that or the guy performing it.

  12. Finally finished book 5 of the Stormlight Chronicles.  I like Sanderson, but I really feel this whole series was way too wordy.  He does an amazing job of world building but damn, this last book was a beatdown at times.

    Onto Gateway, Book 18 of Expeditionary Force, then I'm trying something new.  My brother recommeded Dungeon Crawler Carl.  

    • Like 1
  13. 21 hours ago, texashorne said:

    It will be Jack Black

    On reddit, a couple users were going back and forth about how they should spoof what Disney did with CGI Tarking and Leia.  Basically make it really bad CGI and splice in lines from the original for him that sounds off, then have some scene where they say "That's not barf!  That's just a crappy CGI emulation of him!"

    • Hook 'Em 2
    • Haha 1
  14. On 3/10/2025 at 11:14 PM, Blotto said:

    including alleged threatening text messages toward his wife and children.

     

    Fuck ET3 if true.

    On 3/11/2025 at 7:10 AM, The Earl of Texas said:

    "Let he who is without psycho ex cast the first stone" - Jesus of Nacodogches

    I'm OUT!

  15. On 3/1/2025 at 5:04 PM, randomhorn said:

    Recently finished the Silo series.

    Currently halfway through the Zones of Thought series by Vernor Vinge. I finished the first book “A Fire Upon the Deep” and part way through the second “A Deepness in the Sky”. Very interesting universe, characters, and concepts. Really enjoying it.

    The Hyperion Cantos and “3 Body Problem” are on the list, but may not be next. One of these days I may pick up Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy again. Only made it halfway through “Red Mars”

    I listened to the Silo series last year.  I really liked it.  Have you listed to his Sand series?  I just finished the second book and enjoyed it.  

    3 Body Problem is on my list as well, but I've read that the translation isn't great.  Not sure how much that will bother me.  I too only made it halfway through Red Mars.  Fantastic detail but just got BORING.

  16. On 1/29/2025 at 4:28 PM, NeverMarryAStripper said:

    I just finished a reread of Dune and am still amazed at what an incredible book it is.  It really hammered home to me how poorly the movies rendered it.  I'm going to go ahead and work my way through a re read of the rest of the original books.

    I've considered that.  I think I only got through the first 2 or 3 books when I read them 10 or 15 years ago.  How far do the original books go?

  17. On 1/5/2025 at 7:17 PM, Captain Ron said:

    It’s been a decade since I read the books. I don’t feel like the books spent as much time on the happenings in silo 18 once Juliette failed to clean.

    I will say I loved the books my thoughts …

      Hide contents

    My biggest thing is that Judicial is a construct for the show. They weren’t much of a thing in the books. I feel like much of the strife was created for the sake of that construct and is weighing the show down. 

    There shouldn’t be. The books alone easily had 5 seasons of material, IMHO. 

    They spend a lot of time in Silo 18 once Juliette makes it there.  It's a large part of the second half of the book.

    Even as someone that has read all the books, I've found this season a bit of a letdown.  Disjointed.  Sticking with it though.  It was renewed for 2 more seasons and that's supposed to run through the end of the books, so hopefully it will pick up some steam in Season 3.

    19 hours ago, Chet Steadman said:

    This show has become such a beating.  

    And as distracting as Common is in each of his scenes, the woman who plays Walker may be the worst actor I’ve ever witnessed.   

    She drives me up a wall.  She needs a lot less screentime

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