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xhonzi

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Join date
30-Oct-2005
Last activity
13-Oct-2020
Posts
6,428

Post History

Post
#561805
Topic
What do you LIKE about the EU?
Time

Harmy said:

I must agree. It was completely forgettable, I read it once, a few years ago and don't remember anything about it at all.

You sort of owe it to yourself to pick it up every once in a while.  It is so bad, it's almost good.

The part where the Hapans arrive and throw a parade and shower Leia with gifts right before Fabio Isolder proposes is sufficiently mocked on that page I linked to... But there's nothing quite like actually reading it and your brain refusing to believe what you're seeing.

Post
#561768
Topic
What do you LIKE about the EU?
Time

Dethryl said:

The Courtship of Princess Leia. A very good one-off. The witches of Dathomir are GREAT characters. It's amazing to see Dark Side users who aren't Sith. That alone makes it worth the read.

That's just ridiculous.  CoPL is the worst SW novel of them all.  That's even taking the "Jedi Prince" series into account.  At least those books were written for kids... 

Well, I take it back...  perhaps it is The Best SW Novel.  Ever.

Post
#561333
Topic
Idea: for a 'Transformers: A good Movie' edit?
Time

I’m not the guy to do this, but I’ve had this idea recently.

  • There’s about 7 hours of Michael Bay Transformers.
  • You could replace all of the lines of the robots and not have to worry too much about lip synch
  • You could use dialogue (perhaps) from the ~100 episodes

Therefore:

  • You could basically make any movie you wanted with any plot you like and you could get rid of all of the human characters and just focus on the robots

However, I haven’t seen the Dark of the Moon and I only watched Revenge of the Fallen once through one half closed eye.

But what do you think?  Possible?

Post
#560157
Topic
Collaborative Fanediting: An ROTJ Proposition (BACK ON TRACK WITH EMANSWFAN AT THE HELM--SEE POST 1488 OR OP FOR A LINK!)
Time

timdiggerm said:

Isn't part of the point of ROTJ that you're supposed to worry about Luke? If you don't, there's no tension in the Emperor's offer.

Luke's dance on the dark side at the end of RotJ is so convincing to me... that had Anakin's been remotely like it- had we seen something very similar, but one thing had gone another way... it would have amped up the tension for RotJ.

I'm sure Anakin turned to the dark side because he started doing a few bad things (wearing black, kissing his sister) but was still doing them for a greater cause (saving the galaxy, sounding like a separatist) to the point that no one, not even himself, was that aware of how vulnerable to the seduction of the dark side he had become.

That is how you should worry about Luke in RotJ.  Luke's arc is like Orpheus- descending in to Hades to rescue a loved one without getting stuck there himself.  And Vader is struggling with whether he will let Luke save him (can he be saved?) or go through with converting him. 

When Luke lunges out at Vader and taps into the dark side long enough to defeat him, we shouldn't be too clear on who won the spiritual battle at that moment.

Post
#560119
Topic
Collaborative Fanediting: An ROTJ Proposition (BACK ON TRACK WITH EMANSWFAN AT THE HELM--SEE POST 1488 OR OP FOR A LINK!)
Time

MrInsaneA said:

I don't think anyone thought Luke was going to be a villain at the START of ROTJ. And he seemed fine at the end of Empire, albeit with a robot hand. I think this might be reading too much into things. But again, just my opinion.

 My friends and I were all a tad worried.

Post
#560100
Topic
Video Games - a general discussion thread
Time

I just had a terrible thought.

As some of you know, I stay comfortably about 2 years behind the game curve.  This is how I afford this rather expensive hobby, and also how I manage my time.

The Black Friday and other Pre-Christmas sales have left me with as large a backlog as I've ever had.  Also, playing 3 100 hourish games in a row hasn't helped either.

None of this is too bad, however... until... New consoles will be announced at E3 (probably) for release in fall of '13 (probably) which means I will buy one in fall of '14 (probably) which means I will still buy 360 games with full intent of playing them well into '15 (probably) but any so-called "current gen" games that I haven't played by 17 Mar 2015 will NEVER BE PLAYED!

Just like how I never finished Terminator Redemption.  Or the last hour of Advent Rising.  :(

Summary: I only have three years to plow through my current back-log (which on its own might take that long) plus all of the games that come out in the next 2 years.

 

Woe is me.

 

AND THIS IS NOT A PAGE THREE THREAD!

(fixed)

Post
#560095
Topic
Collaborative Fanediting: An ROTJ Proposition (BACK ON TRACK WITH EMANSWFAN AT THE HELM--SEE POST 1488 OR OP FOR A LINK!)
Time

I won't be the first person to say this, but I will be the first person to say this in this thread:

As much as I agree that it makes storytelling sense that Luke was with Yoda since the end of ESB, and that the "now I am a Jedi" and whatnot is well placed ahead of his assault on Jabba's palace...

I think it really wrecks Luke's introduction in the film.  Unknown months have passed since we last saw Luke, and he was pretty messed up.  Regarding the reveal that Vader is/was his father, the audience isn't quite sure if Luke will be the hero we need him to be, or the villain he could be.

When he shows up all in black and uses his Jedi powers to still the gamorreans and mind trick the twi'lek... well... I think we're supposed to be a little unsure of the guy.

Also, who's under the hood isn't revealed for a few moments either.

I also think that the Yoda scene is a nice 2nd act scene structurally, and it doesn't really fit at the very start of the film.

Obviously this noble quest you're all on will at best produce an alternate RotJ, so if the rest of you prefer to sacrifice the film logic for story logic, that's fine... but it probably won't be definitive to me.

At any rate... good luck!

Post
#560091
Topic
Collaborative Fanediting: An ROTJ Proposition (BACK ON TRACK WITH EMANSWFAN AT THE HELM--SEE POST 1488 OR OP FOR A LINK!)
Time

TV's Frink said:

darth_ender said:

BTW, I included the Ric Olie cameo as only a semi-serious item, and suggested Frink voice him as a complete joke I made up at the last minute.  I'm surprised how well Olie is doing and Frink's voicing him is doing!

lol wut

He means in the voting.  Not in the actual voice acting part, which I'm sure you'll do fine.

Post
#549537
Topic
BioShock!!! (1, 2 and Infinite and SPOILERS)
Time

xhonzi said:

C3PX:

I am really enjoying Rapture so far. Haven't been able to read as much as I'd like since I got it, only about 1/4th of the way through.

Well, blast. I had a sizable post here with my comments but I accidentally got away from it and now it's lost to the internets.  :(

I got my copy, which was the paperback by the way, incase that makes you feel better for the price I got, and started reading it.

I can't say I'm overly impressed with the first 20 pages.  I don't think Shirley has convinved me he knows Ryan.  I think the first couple pages had Ryan saying things I can't imagine the Ryan in my head ever saying.  I think the writing of Ryan in both BioShocks treated him as a very sympathetic character with some human flaws.  The few pages I have read have shown me a really shallow Ryan.  It seems to me that Shirley doesn't really have any idea what would make a man like Ryan tick...

Hopefully it gets better.

 

CP3S said:

<<>>

I never did finish that Bioshock book I was so excited about... I was REALLY enjoying it, but kept tripping over parts where I felt the author completely misunderstood the source material, or wrote major players completely out of character.

Another annoying habit the author had was forcing direct long stretches of quotes from the game into his dialogue. Tannenbaum, a character who speaks with broken English in the game, is a good example of this. At one point in the book she is in the middle of conversation with another character, speaking in the style the author writes her in, where her English is considerably less broken than in the game, then suddenly for a few sentences the author has her quoting some of her dialogue from the game verbatim and her English gets more broken, once she is done quoting herself her English immediately improves. All this in the course of a single paragraph. Little things like that happened a lot. I eventually couldn't take it anymore. I guess I should appreciate the authors attempt at trying to include as many references and nods to the source material in his book as possible, but I honestly think he took it to an exhausting length. So what if Bridget Tannenbaum doesn't have exactly the same style of broken speech as in the game? I really don't mind, hardly a big deal at all to me. However, once you start having her randomly feel the necessity to start quoting her audio diaries from the games and mixing the two different speech styles within the same sentence, you have something that will pull you right out of the book. It would be like mixing quotes from OT Yoda with quotes from PT Yoda, the result would feel really uneven.

In the game there is an audio diary by Eleanor Lamb, it has her as a child playfully carrying on a conversation with the tape recorder, like a little girl might do with a doll. Eventually she tells the tape recorder that she is going to take him apart, but not to worry, because she will put him back together again. In her mock tape recorder voice she protests, ending in a drowned out "Nooooooooo..." The audio diary went a long way in telling us that Eleanor had a pretty lonely childhood, and also that she was an extremely curious child who liked to take things apart to figure out how they worked.

John Shirley decided to include this scene in his book. He quotes the whole audio diary verbatim, then ends it with Sophia Lamb staring in horror as she watches her little girl start hacking the tape recorder to pieces by stabbing at it with a screwdriver. It make Eleanor come off as kind of a psycho child, rather than lonely and curious.

End overly nerdy nitpicking rant.

I think I wrote more once upon a time that was lost with a posting error.  But I steadfastly agree.  I read about the first third of it and haven't continued though I've meant to.  It doesn't sound like I got as far as you did, but I noticed the same things.  As I wrote previously, I thought Ryan was especially very mishandled.  Much more shallow than the Ryan I got to know through the game.

I also felt that the author was too afraid to stray from the established events/speaches...  Not that I wanted him contradicting things... but he mostly seemed to be writing the context around the audio diaries, as opposed to anything else.  One point in particular: I really disliked the scene on the surface where Ryan drops in on Sander Cohen and snaps his fingers and taps his foot long enough for you to go "Hey!  Sander Cohen!"  It seemed to me to be the BioShock equivalent of Yoda and Chewie being buddies. 

Or Stupid Kid Han Solo.

Post
#549528
Topic
Video Games - a general discussion thread
Time

dark_jedi said:

Uncharted 3 tomorrow(Nov 1) and next Friday(Nov 11) The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim, and on Nov 15th, Assassin's Creed Revelations!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lots of GREAT games this month.

So are any of you grabbing any of these titles? I am grabbing all 3.

I will play all three of them too!!!*

 

*(Sometime in the next 2 years, but no sooner than 6 months from now)