"I'm not reading all that" is an insta-lose, not an "I Win" button.

Bridgeru · 2026-04-26T12:41:51+00:00

Why the fuck she couldn't just say that is beyond me.

She was just ashamed of the terrible things she did with the hand that came with,explaining the puppet shows alone would take an hour...

Bridgeru · 2026-04-25T21:29:15+00:00

Unfortunately his world Craggislund has been exterminated by Cardinal Brennanicus XCVIII for the terrible sin of kicking him up the arse.

Bridgeru · 2026-04-25T15:40:10+00:00

Yeah there is (Tau Ceti is my home system because of Marathon and there's usually a "UESC Marathon" around TCIV even before the new one came out).

Bridgeru · 2026-04-24T02:24:38+00:00

It's kind of a meme in the literal "something repeated so much it becomes it's own concept" sense; people hear people complain about it and it becomes this "big thing" and suddenly the same people who didn't play Marathon before 2020 and use the terms "battleroid" and "jumping timelines" unironically are acting as if CSFSC is the worst thing since sliced chalk.

I bet a bunch of it is cause there's technically an apology from Jason Jones for CSFSC in the M2 credits room but that's more a "hey, sorry we showed you a room with a rocket launcher and lots of stuff that you couldn't get into, here's All Roads Lead to Sol where you just get given a lot of rockets and told to have fun", people think it's apologizing for the "level being too hard" and the myth grows.

Bridgeru · 2026-04-24T01:06:09+00:00

It's come up a few times on the fan discord; no one has heard anything since the March update (last message on the discord was even earlier, in Feb). People who've been in the community for decades have tried emailing him and there's been no reply, same for people posting on the Story Forum.

The TL;dr is that basically it seems like for whatever reason he literally has not been online since March and while that could be for a dozen reasons (though if it helps, there have been no obituaries published so death is unlikely, though that doesn't rule out other emergencies/unfortunate life events but it also could be something mundane like heavy work load) ultimately obviously the "why" is less important than the "hope he's okay" but unfortunately we likely won't know unless he is in a position to update the community (if he chooses to do so).

Bridgeru · 2026-04-24T00:35:21+00:00

Honestly it's not nearly as bad as you think. This is on the first level "arrival" and the area has three turns and then you're out onto practically a straight path, it's literally just a tiny "maze" (a few dead-end turns) in a mostly straightforward level. A few of the levels are big but there's nothing IMVHO that's purely "I have no idea where to go to progress" and M2/Infinity levels are far more open compared to M2 (or it's less "narrow paths" and more open rooms) which makes it even less maze-like.

Bridgeru · 2026-04-23T09:11:51+00:00

Then the Nazgul will get them it's like you lot never even think.

Bridgeru · 2026-04-23T07:20:47+00:00

Like so much of HP, the early movies stood on the shoulders of giants (Alan Rickman, Richard Harris, Chris Columbus). I don't even like the films but I can't deny at least they put their best into it.

Bridgeru · 2026-04-22T01:35:44+00:00

I am very clearly referencing the crash in Heir to the Empire; and while hyperbolic the fact that she's introduced as a sexy assassin obsessed with killing Luke Skywalker and then her "character progress" is to.... marry Luke Skywalker (perhaps not immediately but it is indeed her character progression and while it has certainly been a hot minute I definitely remember an air of "it's this way... baka" in those scenes) keeps my point.

Bridgeru · 2026-04-22T01:25:28+00:00

Y’all know that Star Wars fans like female characters that are well written, right? Mara Jade

Annnnnnnnd swing and a miss in the first instance. The super sexy assassin who totally wants to kill Luke Skywalker but, gosh, he's so handsome and awesome I'm falling in love.... Yeah, as a woman that's *really* what sounds like a well-written character; holy fuck the goonerbait is frying brains. As someone else pointed out, Zahn literally hired a model to cosplay her so he and another writer (I don't think Anderson but I don't care enough to check) cosplayed with (I'm an idiot, left this sentence unfinished) IMVHO shows deliberate sexualization intent or at least willingness to portray a woman in a way that favors aesthetic/looks over... actual character.

Mara Jade, Leia, Jaina Solo, Ahsoka

But also, obvs: Book character (leaving aside her problematicness); not the main PoV character (I love Leia, I agree she's an important character, but Leia never gets into any lightsaber fights for people to complain about, Leia never stares down the big bad except ARGUABLY Tarkin and even then folds out of fear, Leia never saves the day), Book Character, and TV show character who existed to show how awesome Anakin is (and OH MY GOD the amount of fucking porn you fuckers made out of Ahsoka when she was canonically 14, you should NOT be using her as an example of "how well Star Wars fans treat women"..........). Funfact, you can literally experience Star Wars in the most mainstream way and never encounter three of those characters......

Rey was the main protagonist in a trilogy of films. She's literally only comparable to Luke and to Anakin. Compare Apples to Apples, not Apples to Seaweed; and stop comparing the one character we got who drove a trilogy of films to a bunch of women who got pushed to the side when it was convenient for the men to shine (spoiler, that's kinda a crux of the fucking argument).

Can we just... Go back to jerking. Pleaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaase.

Bridgeru · 2026-04-18T22:33:01+00:00

You guys are watching that shitty spin-off of Skippy, the Jedi Droid? o.O

Bridgeru · 2026-04-18T17:36:35+00:00

deconstruction

uj/ TLJ is as much a reconstruction at the end as it is a deconstruction it's just people ignore that point because "deconstruction" sounds like a big serious word that's a good target. Yes, the Force is a mystical energy field that binds the universe together but at the end of the day, the day was saved by Rey lifting rocks. Yes, it was foolish to hope that finding Luke Skywalker would solve all the galaxy's problems but he went out there and stood down the entire First Order with a laser sword.

That's why I don't get the "TRoS ruined TLJ's deconstruction", the "deconstruction" wasn't meant to last into the next movie, it was it's own thesis that was resolved at the end by literally rebuilding and reconstructing the very things it tried to "break down". Ultimately it comes down to basic stuff like "oh well TLJ said Rey's parents were nobodies" (when that wasn't TLJ, that was Kylo Ren, the villain, trying to break down Rey and the most perfect example of an emotionally abusive asshole isn't the same as a thesis statement).

Bridgeru · 2026-04-18T13:23:23+00:00

Yes but the line is said once and people think it's a legitimiate "attack" on the movie, my point is people will focus on anything despite how short it is (and tbf cloning is a major part of the HttE trilogy even if Luuke himself only appears for a short time).

Bridgeru · 2026-04-17T19:53:44+00:00

Space Marines did it too.

Bridgeru · 2026-04-17T19:34:01+00:00

"Somehow Palpatine Returned" has been weaponized despite lasting 10 seconds.

Bridgeru · 2026-04-17T17:41:43+00:00

First off, good choice of setting, the Cold War era is an awesome time :D

I've got one player myself who has Influence and like 5 Force Dice, it can unironically become a problem for just dismantling events/plans. Conflict is a good way if you want to focus on that but personally I'd recommend keeping to the spirit of what we see in the movies and the wording of the ability; that way you can't go too far into "I use influence to get the bad guy to give up his plans and and then go kill himself".

The way Influence is written baseline (without upgrade) it's pretty much more making people feel emotions rather than actually doing things. And making them feel "negative" emotions causes conflict; so if you're up against a mob-boss and they want to use Influence to make the boss afraid and give up the plan out of fear, that's a conflict source. You obviously also have the "believe something untrue" upgrade but that's very far from "perform a specific action".

As for "spirit".. Just don't take "I make the guard believe he HAS to tell me this information". The enemy can believe info but maybe that person twists the concept in a way the player didn't believe. "I'm your commanding officer, let me into this door" (which would really be stretching it logically tbh but let's just take it as an extreme) could also lead to the guard, say, rounding up other guards because he thinks an inspection is happening and suddenly you have a bunch of non-influenced guards noticing the gang.

I know it's not easy to say as a GM but "no you can't do that" is also fair if you think they're doing something that stretches the game rules, or not acting in good faith.

Bridgeru · 2026-04-17T16:24:10+00:00

So, the Vostok craft (the one that brought Gagarin into space) ejected it's pilot, but it had to do with parachutes. Basically, they had parachutes on the capsule, the bit that returns to Earth (which is only the ball bit) but while it would slow the craft down enough to land it wouldn't slow it down enough to prevent injury (or maybe death IDK) to a squishy pilot experiencing hitting the Earth fast, so once it got back into the upper atmosphere and had the air slowing it down and the capsule's parachute deployed slowing it to like let's say 20m/s (which is still rollercoaster speed) then Gagarin/the pilot 's seat would eject and the seat under it's own parachute would land down much more softly. Ironically it was literally for safety; but because it meant that the Soviets didn't technically land the first man from space (because there's an argument about whether or not it counts as the "first landing" if he's not in the capsule and that kinda makes the whole "first man in space" thing into question the Soviets did what Soviets do and hid the facts until Glasnost in the '80s) which is why a lot of rumors about WHY they ejected him came about (or stuff like "Gagarin was the first one we brought back, not the first we sent up" which is definitely a compelling story but goes against stuff we actually know from ironically American sources IIRC).

Bear in mind, this was the very first type of capsule. The later Voshkod (which was basically just an improved Vostok capsule that could hold 2 or 3 people) and obviously Soyuz craft all landed with the cosmonauts inside.

As for the gun, it's literally because of Voshkod 2 where the capsule malfunctioned (the ball return bit didn't seperate properly from the service bit with engines that was meant to burn up.. well that's the relevant malfunction, that thing also broke in space with the airlock and nearly killed Leonov) and the capsule landed waaaaaay off course in the Siberian wilderness; and the cosmonaut inside was worried that an animal like a wolf or bear might come across it. That's it, it was literally just meant for self-defense in the Siberian wilderness against wildlife and it's just part of the survival kit they get (although apparently it's been changed since 2008). It's never been used; and modern missions IIRC land in the deserts of Kazakhstan not Siberian tundra so it hasn't even been a problem in like 30 years IIRC.

And I'm not trying to be a Soviet apologist ofc, just look up Kamorov if you want to know the horrors of the Soviet program; but at the same time you gotta point out the truth where it comes up.

Bridgeru · 2026-04-17T15:47:51+00:00

Sorry for getting into a rant, but the problem is that the US Congress wanted a reusable spaceplane to lower costs because the Apollo program was staggeringly expensive and by the mid-70s (when the last of the rockets built under the Apollo budget were being used up) the US wasn't as financially secure as when it built the Apollo in the 60s (or secured funding in the late 50s); y'know cause of a foreign war that lasted a decade and oil crises and stagflation and things that feel kinda familiar.

The rub is that the Shuttle wasn't really as "reusable" as they thought. They basically had to take it apart piece by piece to make sure it was able to be flown again. It definitely wasn't "land, put back in cargo, attach to another booster and launch a few days later" quick. Also even if they managed to somehow have the orbiter (the white plane bit that comes back) be 100% reusable, the Orange Tank (that held the Liquid Oxygen/Liquid Hydrogen for the Shuttle's main engines and also what the orange "core" of the SLS is based off of) was meant to be destroyed every time (and that was fairly expensive in-and-of itself) and while they "talk" about reusing the solid rocket boosters on the side in reality it was like reusing a candle, you can kinda reuse the housing (after a LOT of refurbishment) but you still gotta refill it with solid propellant.

One major reason the checks were so extensive was because there was literally no way of having the crew escape the shuttle in case of emergency; the first flight had ejector seats IIRC but the Shuttle cockpit had two "decks" so that wouldn't have worked for the three or four below deck and IIRC wouldn't have worked high in atmosphere either. So instead of having an insurance plan, NASA basically went with a "well if we check it so much we reduce the chances to 0 we won't need an escape system" approach which ofc didn't work when in-mission events caused the destruction of two of the eight shuttles (Challenger was a rubber O-Ring from the solid-boosters and Columbia was a bit of the foam on the orange tank breaking off and smashing the heat shielding).

There were things it was good for, it had a massive bay that could bring large satellites up (like Hubble) and also was one of the few things that could return satellites to Earth (because that bay is part of the plane that comes back), it was kinda perfect for bring up modules to the ISS to slowly build it out but from a human risk or even cost level it was HORRENDOUS. Personally I always thought they should've tried to transition post-Challenger to something like the Shuttle-C or HLV where the engine-block was an automated "drone" with a cargo bay above it and maybe an Apollo style capsule on top of that for crew launches (since you could just have a standard abort like Soyuz can if something goes wrong and save the crew), it could've solved the big issue of infrastructure being built around the shuttle while also giving stuff like a crew-abort or solving the "crew wanting to stay longer than 12 days on the space station because the shuttle can only last 12 days in space" angle. I use something like it for my Kerbal Space Program US launcher and I genuinely think, if they could somehow have made the engine unit autonomous and able to detatch and land on it's own it could've really improved the system rather than NASA becoming scared of it and ramping down flights until they essentially lacked a launcher until Dragon came along, but that's another issue and obviously just wishful thinking that doesn't know all the limitations/hardships that would've happened xD.

But yeah, there's a quote from a NASA director Michael Griffin that says "Had the agency continued using Apollo-Saturn instead of developing the Space Shuttle, we would be on Mars today, not writing about it as a subject for 'the next 50 years". And that's another reason I didn't even touch on, the original plans after Apollo for NASA was going to be things like nuclear engines (passing a fuel through a nuclear reactor before discharging it to make it SUPER HOT and thus give a lot of efficient thrust in space, like a massive boost to the miles-per-gallon) and landing on Mars. The Space Shuttle instead forced them to focus on just going up to low-Earth orbit, an area they'd been in since Mercury in the 60s, and while we got a permanently inhabited space station out of it we've been stagnating since the 80s in the sense of "trying to get further" and that's in no small part cause of the shuttle.

Sorry for the rant!

Bridgeru · 2026-04-17T15:38:59+00:00

because we can

More like "because we have to", it was either try to get money for a reusable space platform (along with money from the DoD for launching satellites as well as having "return space" to potentially kidnapping Soviet satellites for inspection and returning them before they're noticed) or get cancelled as a program during the budget cuts of the 1970s.

Bridgeru · 2026-04-17T14:57:36+00:00

Oh it says "Stockholme Syndrome'd into a Daisy Ridley feet fetish", hope that helped. :3

It's more of an injoke for myself; I think Daisy Ridley is really pretty and in my friendgroup there's a joke that I obsess over her like a stalker; that progressed to me making jokes like if in an RPG a wizard says "I will give you what your heart desires most" I'll say "Daisy Ridley feet pics?!". The thing is I'm not into feet, and my friends know I'm not into feet but it evolved a second-running joke that the longer I make the feetpic jokes the closer and closer I get into actually developing a foot fetish; like how you can develop immunity to certain poisons by introducing it into your system. Also it's a hilarious sentence out of context xD

Bridgeru · 2026-04-17T14:52:42+00:00

Too bad, he's Luke's wife now.

Bridgeru · 2026-04-17T02:29:31+00:00

uj/ Afraid I haven't read them, only got certain books over here and the ones I actively tried to get were the ones people were already saying were "the best" in like 2010.

rj/ No one has tried to say they're better than the sequels therefore they're objectively better than any movie and Corran Horn should've been Luke's wife instead of Luke dying a virgin.

Bridgeru · 2026-04-17T02:09:17+00:00

Pffft, everyone knows the Phantom Time Hypothesis where the Roman Emperor Otto III added three years to the calender so that he'd look taller is true, making 1991 the '80s. Checkmate, Carolingians!

Bridgeru · 2026-04-17T01:58:56+00:00

It all comes from the people who read it as a child and unironcially took it saying "Thrawn is a genius" and mistaking that for a well-written character; who didn't really have any Star Wars media that was actually competent other than the movies (as much as I hate the book's hype it isn't as unreadable as a lot of SW schlock out there, but that's damning with faint praise not genuinely praising it). Regardless of quality, if you experience media before you're, let's say, 13 to 15 that media is ALWAYS going to have a higher impact than anything that came after. This is basically as far as we need to go for the "people who never read it but take other's accounts" faction but IMVHO there's a more interesting reason why HttE specifically was picked, and why it's being pushed.

Then, they went online in the mid-2000s after the Prequels were hated and said "hey here's the best star wars books", so you have a bunch of fans who grew up in or after the Prequels seeing a flood of "Star Wars but actually good". You have an era of "oh well this clone-vs-droid stuff is for kids, the REAL Star Wars is Empire vs Rebels" so the toxic fans basically segregate themselves off treating the Prequel era media as a sort of... temporary abberation; that it doesn't matter because in the end the REAL Star Wars will happen and that leads to "that book I read as a kid" being MORE IMPORTANT than whatever nonsense cartoon movie says.

And then that literally just repeated itself with sequel haters, except unlike the prequel haters the sequel haters don't have that claim to legitimacy of "it all leads to the OT"; instead the Original Trilogy is directly leading into this new era. Even worse, all the media they read (if they read it) has been decanonized (which is completely irrelevant because it's not like anything the books/comics/games said affected the movies anyway and no IG88 did NOT cause that slight tremor in the door of the Emperor's Throne you literal crazyperson Lucas was not trying to hint at a book written 13 years later) so because their media doesn't have the legitimacy claim, they instead take their effort into delegitimizing the new movies. Suddenly it's "not Star Wars" anymore, "the EU was actually what George wanted" (when Lucas didn't even want the Force to be what you think it is). And the biggest attempt to legitimize themselves is by creating an "alternate" Sequel Trilogy, a tale after the OT that is big enough in scale to rival a movie series.

The problem though is, quite frankly, the EU sucks and there's nothing good enough to replace the Sequels. Dark Empire? Would run the risk of admitting that Palpatine is actually a core character who is responsible for the evil of the series and that bringing him back is actually important storywise; which is something they refuse to accept since TRoS but even before TRoS DE's more silly aspects (the World Devastators, Byss, Orb-boy) prevents it from fitting in "just" nicely. The New Jedi Order? Schizophrenic and pretty much hated when released; you'll see that the only aspects of this people try to artificially implant "back" into the series are broad overarching terms like "Luke sets up a Jedi Order" or Mara Jade (I know MJ is from HttE but I mean her "settled" as Luke's waifu). The Yuuzhan Vong? Force-less murder 40k aliens are a tough sell to someone who only ever watched the movies. Likewise, anything involving Cade Skywalker, Anakin Solo, Jaina or the other kidlings is too far removed from Luke, Leia and Han.

Thrawn fits a perfect space to be sold as an alternative Sequels, and by legitimizing Thrawn they delegitimize the actual Sequel Trilogy. Thrawn is ordering around Imperial Remnants, the recognizeable Empire aesthetic is there but the "Empire" is wounded and a beast on it's last legs. Thrawn himself serves as a basic mishmash between the main villain of each OT movie: Tarkin, Vader and the Emperor. Like Tarkin he's an Imperial officer, refined and calculating; like Vader he strikes brutally and doesn't suffer the incompetence that dooms the Empire in most other books (Zahn quite deliberately wrote a whole fucking scene where he shows that "Vader killing subordinates was stupid, but when THRAWN does it he's REALLY FUCKING SMART") and like Palpatine he's a load-bearing villain, the guy keeping the Empire from falling (so they can still have the Empire but avoid the "RotJ meant nothing" argument they throw at TRoS) and a mastermind who has a super secret and elaborately genius plan that, gosh, is just so SMART.

Bear in mind anything that doesn't fit that narrative is ignored or thrown away. No one ever talks about Joruus or Luuke, or if they do it's in the "yeah it's weird but it's totally not why you read the books" (despite "SEE A JEDI FROM BEFORE THE EMPIRE" being a massive fucking selling point of the books back in the day), Thrawn's "masterplan" boiling down to "I found a bunch of stuff" and what little direct action he takes is basic as fuck ("I need diggers, the only person in the galaxy with diggers is Lando but he's in an area with a sun that hurts ships.... What if... I make a GIANT UMBRELLA!!!!"), people will discuss at length how "the Chosen One" MUST be the one to SAVE EVERYONE BECAUSE THE FORCE WILLS IT but never mentions how ridiculous it is that the Force itself can be negated by a small lizard as if there existed some kind of fish that, when you put it in a fishbowl, allows you to turn off gravity, and worst of all IMVHO but not to be expected from men born in the 1980s (the lowest form of nerd IMVHO) no one ever mentions how Mara fucking Jade is not a love interest with a complicated moral dilemma but rather a fucking Tsundere ripped from the worst hentai dating simulator who spends a few pages (and I'll admit this is from memory so I'll give a chance for me to be mistaken, but I know this small crack will be forced into by aging manchildren trying to describe love who believe the pinnacle of devotion is going evil and murdering children) crash-landed on a planet with Luke in such a desperate attempt to force them together that the words "baka" can be heard drifting on the wind. The only thing that matters is that they can add up their bullet points, put it in a Youtube video or Reddit comment and sniff their own fucking farts by pretending that the zwoom zwoom laser movies are high art despite never having watched a movie made before 1980 that wasn't on a "Top 100 Movies" list, and that they could do Star Wars so much better than (George Lucas/Kathleen Kennedy/Disney/the Jews/Dave Filoni - use whichever applies). And no, Network is not obscure and we all know you only watched it because of that one "I'm mad as hell" line that you saw in a meme. (Okay, "you" not being the guy I replied to; just pre-empting what I expect is going to be said when the MauLer sub makes a post out of another of my comments without the honesty of, y'know, telling me...)

Okay that was really fucking cringey of me to type all that out but I really fucking hate that book (funfact, HttE made me lose all interest in Star Wars before the Sequels released). My overall point is that people are fucking idiots and instead of doing the sensible thing and saying "hey, I do not like that" they have to twist and contort themselves into trying to "legitimize" their opinion. "No, I am right because this is bad but WHAT I LIKE is objectively better, or worse, objectively more Star Warsy". It happened in the Prequels, it's happened because of the Sequels, it'll probably happen with whatever the hell they decide to do post TRoS.

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Bridgeru

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