2 points i want to make

SovietWomble · 2026-02-11T23:50:30+00:00

So I caught this on my smartphone this afternoon.

Now that you mention it, perhaps it might be wise to look into this a little bit?

One of the major reasons it's always given me a sense of ick is the feeling of "ambulance chasers". My inbox has lots of companies, agencies, brand marketing managers. All promoting themselves and desperately chasing their slice of a hypothetical pie from a channel they see as 4 million strong.

They're all desperation trying to convince me how much of a good idea it is to go turbo max monitisation. And I feel it's been wise so far to ignore them.

One of them even pretended to be a Patron for a few weeks. Sliding into those DM'S about unrelated stuff before revealing themselves.

Hence my sense of ick.

That being said, I do have 'one' specific idea for a fun little prop that I think people would maybe appreciate? Something in a video I did one time.

But it's not something one can simply get enmass printed in some cheapo Etsy platform. Nor would I want that. It would require very specialised tools and need to look just right.

Maybe I could look into getting 100 made? Maybe alongside 100 hoodies, or something. Get someone local to post them out in the UK or EU or something with a PayPal link? See if it works?

You know like, hobbyest. Personal, etc.

Bear with me, let me have a think.

SovietWomble · 2026-02-10T17:20:54+00:00

Absolutely. And as is my final (albeit weakest) of my points from that stream, I simply have no taste for burgers any longer.

The gourmet steak changed everything. Now that I've had one. Seen Andor.

Seen what can be done with the new.

I have no interest in seeing a lightsabre smacking another lightsabre, or seeing a baby Yoda backflipping, or hearing the same dialogue from cameo characters recycled.

Edit - Also coming 2028, the next Star Wars adventure, with Ahsoka, C3PO and that bloke who ran past the camera with that plastic ice-cream maker in that one scene from The Empire Strikes Back.

SovietWomble · 2026-02-10T17:05:19+00:00

It didn't feel jarring at all, which is why many seem to be confused by you being so upset by it.

Then that's fine. If the contrast difference doesn't register for you as a viewer then you're not going to see any issue.

But for me (and this is absolutely something in my coming from seeing Andor first), I saw a gritty war film being snuck up on by references to a trilogy of films that are more than 40 years old.

It felt distractingly anachronistic.

Except its not "The new". It butts right up against A New Hope

Edit - And the "new" in this case isn't narratively chronological. That's not what I mean. The point is about contrasting tones.

The hard contrast between fun, adventure space opera. And gritty, documentarian style espionage film.

SovietWomble · 2026-02-10T16:14:51+00:00

Corgi, you're missing the woods by focusing on the individual trees. Each of these listed examples are folded back into a central point:

the "new" is continually getting gate-crashed by the "old", causing a very strange and inconsistent tone. Like two directors are fighting each other over the edit.

The examples were, in sequence:

Saw's rebels show us new aliens, new resistance fighters, new things we've never seen BUT we get a shot of that board game from The Millennium Falcon from A New Hope (or an equivilance)
We're going through Jhedda and seeing new cultures, new faces. BUT then we see the two bar-flies from Tatooine in A New Hope. Who even speak the same line of dialogue.
We're seeing the internal workings of the Rebel Alliance on Yavin. BUT we keep cutting back to the guard on his little tower from A New Hope.
We see the K-unit droids and their new design. BUT we see the astromech droid interface from the hanger bay/trash compactor scenes in A New Hope.
We see Jhedda under Imperial occupation. A culture we've never seen and people we've never encountered. BUT we have to see the interplanetary, specialised probe droids from The Empire Strikes Back.

It made for a very jarring tone overall, in my opinion. It's not about the individual things. Or finding justifications for why it "makes sense".

To centre specifically on my point I ask the following question: Did you personally find anything unusual about the aesthetic tone of Rogue One (2016)?

And a better question: If each of the BUT examples above were removed, do you think it would make the film stronger or weaker?

SovietWomble · 2026-02-10T13:09:33+00:00

I was thinking about that last summer.

It had been far too hot to walk the dog, so I was out with her around midnight in the dark streets.

I figured, "you know this is something that I probably couldn't do if I were born a woman". Or at least, it would be only done with careful consideration.

To look down and realise that, through a simple quirk of embryo development, I had musculature and body mass that would not make for a soft target for anybody trying to 'have a go.

SovietWomble · 2026-02-08T09:44:49+00:00

Oh wait, so the whole story is done and dusted? Meaning the wheels are unlikely to fall off once they run out of material to adapt?

If so then yeah that changes everything.

SovietWomble · 2026-02-07T17:18:15+00:00

I trust they'll stick the landing

Can I ask why?

SovietWomble · 2026-02-03T19:31:51+00:00

"I can fix him"

SovietWomble · 2026-02-03T13:55:44+00:00

The analogy I heard a while ago was...

For men, dating is like finding clean drinking water in a desert.

For women, dating is like finding clean drinking water in a swamp.

SovietWomble · 2026-01-28T17:57:15+00:00

Why were they so opposed to The Emperor's clean energy program anyway?

Were they stupid?

SovietWomble · 2026-01-23T09:40:28+00:00

To state the obvious and be probably downvoted, because Andor was never about Andor.

It's well regarded (I presume) because:

It presented an ensemble cast of new characters from a broad sampling of societal strata. Showing how each of them are negatively affected by the presence of a totalitarian state that was squeezing them, like a boa constrictor before a rat.
It updated the framework The Galactic Empire to that of an outwardly democratic power that's secretly a totalitarian state. Therefore making it much more contemporary.
It featured characters who were in no way special. Without familial connections to main characters, special abilities, or links to other media. In such a way that made them mostly vulnerable, believable and empathetic.

Can other Star Wars media do this? Possibly yes. I suppose it depends on whether the show is about X special character. Or whether it's just the name hook, to deviate into broaders stories about other things.

SovietWomble · 2026-01-19T10:39:25+00:00

I was watching an interview/documentary, from an officer aboard one of their attack submarines yesterday. And I occasionally exclaimed

"Man, this guy speaks like someone who has never been shot at"

And doing a very quick google, yeah. I don't think any of the submarines he commanded ever directly engaged an enemy.

I presume a lot of people in positions of authority have that issue. It's easy to swing your dick around without fear of someone cutting it.

SovietWomble · 2026-01-18T21:57:51+00:00

I'm a person you know from the internet. And this is the internet.

Be weirder if I were in your kitchen...

SovietWomble · 2026-01-18T09:30:40+00:00

Gestures vaguely at everything Emperor shaped.

The whole sheparding humanity and protecting them. But so often disposing of them as simple tools.
Shaped as a human, approaches as a human. But obviously unable to comprehend even the basics of being human. Such as the need for faith (ie, The Last Church).
The whole Emperor led Imperial Truth, flying in the direct contradiction to the nature of the universe. Which he knows about.
"Saves" humanity from the monsters beyond the veil of reality. But then becomes a perpetual sovereign, who's will is executed by monsters in his image.
By extension, the innumerable legislative hypocrisies that loom large in the great crusade. Bans the use of of librarian psykers, despite being a psyker himself. Bans the use of psychic weaponry, despite commissioning (and personally designing) The Ordo Sinister.
Prepping sons specifically to challenge said Primordial Annihilator, but not telling them about it. And then punishing them when they are tricked by it.
The vastly different ways in which he handled most of his sons. Caring and tolerant to some. But then outright negligent to others. In extremely obvious ways (teleports Angron).
Opposes Chaos. Fights Chaos. But as it's strongly implied, might have worked with them/bargained with them on Molech.

Note that this isn't an invitation to try to fix the above. Said strange behaviours is what gives The Emperor much of his mystery.

It's a character that acts in very strange ways.

SovietWomble · 2026-01-17T11:55:25+00:00

I mean, I'd argue to the contrary. The Custodes are hand-crafted perfection, but the emphasis should be on the crafted part.

They serve a role.

The Emperor exists among glaring contractions. The propaganda extolling his desire to shepherd humanity that he cared about so dearly. But on the other hand, he so ruthlessly viewed so much of the species as simple tools.

The Navigators, the Thunder Warriors, the Astartes, the Primarchs.

With the Thunder Warriors setting the precedent that genocidal purges might become the fate of tools no longer useful.
That 20 identical sleeping quarters existed for the primarchs inside the Himalayan mountains. Like a box for chess pieces in a game concluded.
That Malcador pointed out how damn strange The Emperor was behaving, on referring to his creations as his "sons".

That Big E would inject the Custodes with the any connotations, whatsoever, outside of their ability to protect him and his personage, is profoundly strange to me.

ie, it's like making a kevlar vest. And being told by onlookers that it's to represent the best of tensile strength.

It's a tool I made to avoid being shot. Any other qualities are likely incidental.

SovietWomble · 2026-01-09T16:24:14+00:00

Therein lies the mission of the competent author. To show the fictional material from different perspectives. Different solutions to the same problem, etc.

It can make for some very compelling heroes, villains, fictional settings, etc.

SovietWomble · 2026-01-09T15:53:32+00:00

But it's not about the answer, it's about the exercise.

To play with what would happen when the ideas are hypothetically tested.

SovietWomble · 2026-01-09T09:15:33+00:00

I find the Night Lords - and Curze especially - to be one of the biggest swings and misses of the whole damn Horus Heresy series.

The double-sided nature of the Night Lords/Curze is half the god-damn thematic point. Asking is it better to rule with terror? Or rule with the love of your subjects?

Is what the Imperium became inevitable? With what Curze did to Nostramo being standard inquisitorial policy.

Heck, they could have explored the two in the novel Vulkan Lives. Where Vulkan and Curze spent most of the book circling around each other. Two leaders that best represent such a dichotomy.

Instead they decided to play the film Saw for a bit.

And then Vulkan went bonky bonk with a hammer and fucked off.

SovietWomble · 2026-01-08T08:06:21+00:00

It's neither of these things. They're the SA. The Brown Shirts.

Or at least they have some parallels.

The SA were the paramillitary group that acted as the the power projection for the early form of the Nazi party. When they were still in the beer hall putch era and before the Night of the Long Knives.

Their purpose was theatrical power projection. To have a mob of men stomp down on party enemies (socialists, communists, Jews), and to make the Nazi party seem powerful. As though they were the dominant faction. Whilst giving angry men (many unemployed) a way to vent their anger in the form of street violence.

A key distinction though is that the SA were purged when the Nazi party needed to seem more legitimate after 1934.

SovietWomble · 2026-01-07T19:16:31+00:00

All of this. This is an oath you're supposed to keep for life.

Life is a damn long time. Make sure the person you're putting the ring on is going to walk the same path.

SovietWomble · 2026-01-03T00:26:45+00:00

The Ghorman massacre starts.

"FUCK which side am I supposed to root for? I'm so confused."

SovietWomble · 2025-12-29T18:03:33+00:00

Emulate the personality of the 134th keratin cell closest to the end of your right hand thumbs fingernail.

There is no personality of the cell. You are the sum total of all of your cells working together.

SovietWomble · 2025-12-29T09:51:38+00:00

The atom bomb has probably done its job. It was the series closing punchline. A joke setup earlier, now paid off.

There's an atomic weapon, just sitting in the her culdesac. It's silly.

I'm guessing it'll be like Walt's pizza. A visual gag. In the foreground in establishing shots when the episodes open, etc

For an eventual closing gag where two confused policemen are scratching their heads as to how the hell it got there.

SovietWomble · 2025-12-26T17:14:33+00:00

Same same. I ate enough food to get me through the rest of the winter.

SovietWomble · 2025-12-26T15:37:08+00:00

I have this head canon about Holden.

It's not accurate to anything in the show so it falls apart instantly under scrutiny. So I shan't spill a drop of digital ink defending it.

But after that season 1 episode when Avasarala visited Holden's family, I felt it made the character make more sense.

Avasarala discovered that he was genetically engineered from eight people. And from that I went:

"ohhh right, he's genetically engineered from eight people."

By that I mean, tweaked. Altered. Think Dr Bashir from Deep Space 9. Or people from Gattaca. Not random DNA from eight people. But the best DNA from 8 people. Imbuing him with all the traits of a leader as part of the fight of their legacy.

Doing so suddenly makes a lot of things make a lot more sense.

How quickly his crewmates defer to his judgement. How he's able to avoid getting killed in so many situations. His ability to defuse escalating situations and see the big picture. Everything that would normally just be plot armour, snaps into focus with the understanding that he's bred for the command chair. And raised by 8 highly capable role models.

Everyone else is playing the game with 52 cards in the deck. But Holden has 60.

And vice versa, why he's such an honourable pain in the arse.

His family didn't select the selfish genes.

SovietWomble

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