It’s like getting “Lord of the RIngs” movie, but about some gang war in a village southeast of Umbar.

Hey, War of the Rohirim was actually pretty alright! :p

Look I’m a simple man, I can’t get enough of Optimus Prime’s stellar voice work. :D

It’s not an incredible franchise. But hey I think they had some fun with a series that was basically designed to sell 80’s toys lol.

Luke casually tossing away an item that had been set up as important in the previous film were not the right changes.

Agreed big time. This felt less like “cleverly unexpected” and more just a total disrespect for the source material.

“Hey remember the symbol of hopeful optimism you followed through trials and tribulations for 3 movies a long time ago? He’s now a cynical burnout drunk uncle lol. Isn’t that sooo unexpected but relatable and grim? SUBVERTED! I’ll take my Oscar now…”

It felt like if some grimdark-TV-bros got ahold of a sequel to the LOTR trilogy, and we were to suddenly find Aragorn a heartless wannabe totalitarian ruler in the middle of a bitter divorce with Arwen. There would also be silly gags where he drunkenly shatters Andúril trying to cut a melon or something, and the kids absolutely loathe him because dysfunctional interpersonal drama is trendy. “Didn’t expect that, did you?? Lol!”

…Then being told your expectations were childish and stupid when you find yourself upset by this. Lol

I really hate what they did to Luke’s character. It felt like they deliberately trashed him and everything he stood for so some random nobody gimmick character doesn’t look as 2-dimensional. :(

The Ben Swolo memes were hilarious though.

Andor is an incredible espionage thriller and I do absolutely love it.

This is also why I liked Rogue One and also the series “Rebels.”

It made the Empire believable, and the Rebels really are an insurgency, the galactic situation is dire and against overwhelming odds. It doesn’t just feel like a hero fantasy.

(Rebels can sometimes, it’s geared to a younger audience, but it takes itself surprisingly seriously in a great way.)

The “subverting expectations” thing is was ruined it for me.

You could feel the “Too-clever TV writers” at work here. It felt like later-GoT and LOST where stuff randomly “just happens” and has zero payoff because it was written without any kind of grounding or plan, but it sure was surprising and subverted expectations!!! …and then you catch on that there never was a plan, it was just a moment to get an emotional rise out of you, and nothing makes any sense outside of a very limited 5-minute window.

But it’s a self contained story and doesn’t get potentially-numerous “seasons” to come up with a reason “This totally makes sense, you guys. I had it planned all along!”

So yeah, what we’re left with is a “deconstruction”…as in:

“Someone kept loosening bolts and pulling off panels until the hangar was a total mess, but they still don’t understand how an X-Wing works…annnd CREDITS ROLL!”

Also, the way they completely dumped Finn’s character and relegated him to “Guy who shouts ‘RAAAAAAAAAY’ every 10 minutes.” is an absolute insult to competent acting and what could’ve been a beloved and deep character.

why haven’t both sides been doing that all the time?

I feel like this can at least be backed up. It should be ridiculously costly in terms of sheer resources and personnel, and therefore utterly foolish in 99% of scenarios.

We can posit that hyperspace generators should be expensive in terms of resources and credits, and should get exponentially more expensive as the ship size increases, so making “hyperspace warheads” should also be foolish…

But on the other hand, to take down something like the Death Star, I imagine such a maneuver would have seemed worth it!

I think that sums up why the last two sequel films bothered me so much: They went for emotional "woah!"s by pulling things out of nowhere unexpectedly…But then you think about it for 5 seconds and it all falls apart quick.

They really took original Star Wars’ “WWII in Space” battles to the ridiculous extreme there, for sure lol.

Sure thing! So glad I could be helpful! :D

I don’t blame you. It’s the only thing I’m keeping a Win10 dual-boot for right now, and to their credit, it does work quite well in Windows. We’ve had a ton of fun with our set.

In the meantime, I’m keeping up with the project but not actively tinkering with it myself, because it’s exciting but also not quite there yet. It’s at least given me hope that it can be done though! I’m confident we’ll see significant gains sooner rather than later. Hats off to them. (Once my income stabilizes I’ll gotta pitch them some funds…)

Envision has made it VERY convenient to get set up, but the whole process still saps more time than “Fire it up and play.” So maybe play with it at some point, but either way definitely keep your ear to the ground. :)

I’m hoping in the future we’ll get to use it for things like Godot XR or Blender integration. :D

Ah I see, yeah you’re right!

That is something that occurs to me too. It’s weird to me now, imagining couples separating to go to work or whatever, and you just gotta believe everything is gonna be fine, and if there were an emergency, someone has to be near the right landline.

Although I grew up with earlier cellphones and pagers, I got my first cell way later than a lot of highschool kids.

But yes, definitely, If me and my wife couldn’t reach each other during the day, that’d be a ton of anxiety! The world’s too insane these days to not have rapid communication on hand.

I only wish technology evolved as a tool for the user and the people, rather than primarily as content consumption and surveillance devices.

Then it would be more normal to have a setup like we do: We chat on Signal and can send our location voluntarily and it stays between us, without a dozen third parties quietly listening in, analyzing, and selling that information.

I do however, think there would also be a certain serene peace in being unreachable by undesirable contacts but not by loved ones.

For example, it’s dystopian how non-emergency jobs evolved to expect that they can just zip a message to you whenever they feel like, and you’re almost coerced to receive it and respond, and setting boundaries against that can be risky. It brings an unwanted cop or nanny into our personal lives.

And cheers to you for mentioning that 2018 Substance is still useful!

…Yikes, I hope I kept that license key somewhere, I’m sure I did…

If only to learn it because it seems to be a hard requirement with so many artist positions. =\

(Although…if we really blew them away with Blender tools and they couldn’t tell the difference, would they really care? Hm…)

Well, I’ve got 99 opportunities to succeed…

…but management ain’t one!

Swear that sounds like the inside of my brain sometimes lmao.

It’s so weird seeing the reaction they’re having to this noxious…erm…“dish.”

Weird because I guess I’ve been blessed enough to have very few memories of smelling something so bad it made me actually want to vomit. Like it’s hard to relate to and yet terrifying imagining how bad it must be.

When I saw someone comment something like “That is an aggressively country child.” I laughed so hard lol

We reference this all the time now. It’s a permanent memory artifact. XD

“Ah, Moses but a pirate.” Is not something I was planning on thinking today LOL

May the laughs and memories last forever XD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN6jkWxxm2Y

See Also: My digital games collection

It seems the Ukraine conflict and the U.S’s plans to counter China’s push on Taiwan indicate that the future of warfare is:

…Just…a gazillion, never-ending swarms of coordinated, “cheap”, militarized drones…

doesn’t make any sense.

My theory?

The real conspiracy: It always goes back to the desires of capital.

Why is it always that climate change is a huge con job and it’s all a secret control plan that we…need to stop burning and breathing known carcinogens?

Oh, because the evil shadow government orgs like the EPA and OSHA want to take all our good ol’ jobs (tey derk er jurbz!) with their “regulations” and “standards” and “penalties for pollution” right?

And they’re trying to make America “less great” by no longer being a mass-polluting post-war economic powerhouse! Think of the lost profits! Think of the widespread misery and poverty wrought by a secret New World Order of…(Paper flip) corporate regulation! What’s next? Unions?!

Yes, chem trails are ultimately a path to such horrors as a less wealthy C-suite and not putting clean air on the commodities exchange market. (gasp)

…And all these conspiracies are seeded and peddled by the very sources that told people to take veterinary dewormers or inject sanitizer to cure a virus, have brought us the highest unemployment rates seen in a century, dismantled and fired safety regulation and watchdog agencies (deh DERK-A-DURRBS!), are trying to bring back child labor and company towns, and conveniently rail against taxation which they dodge anyway.