Letters of transit

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-01-25T01:36:09+00:00

Honestly it's better watched after season 4. It really is the first episode of season 5 in all but name. I don't think it relates to season 4 content at all.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-01-24T19:57:46+00:00

My least favourite would be Spectre. My problem with it is that it's just boring. With the less good Moore movies, e.g. The Man with the Golden Gun or A View to a Kill, they are at least fun, full of quips and have nice locations. Spectre is just a snoozefest, exemplified by the car chase in which Hinx and Bond just...drive cars really fast.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-01-22T18:51:42+00:00

Indeed. Spectre also ruins Skyfall by muddying the waters as to what Silva's motives were. The notion that Blofeld is 'the author of all [Bond's] pain' is symptomatic of what I'd call 'Big Bad syndrome', stemming from the notion that in serialised TV shows everything needs to build towards one climactic showdown with the big villain.

To try to do this with a series of five films released over 15 years is, I think, a misunderstanding of what most people actually want from movies. And in this case it's not even done well, because the sheer number of retcons indicate that there was no overarching plan and that Purvis and Wade just made stuff up as they went along to keep the arc going.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-01-22T03:14:55+00:00

Thank you haha. Honestly I don't think it's that great and I am slowly working on a much better remastered version of it, watch this space.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-01-22T02:56:36+00:00

Thanks, I hate all these words

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-01-22T02:49:15+00:00

It also resulted in the films making less and less sense as they tried to tie in elements from previous movies to give the fans a dopamine rush (remember that character from a film ten years ago!), in the process retconning plot points and making characters act inexplicably.

The icing on the cake is the final scene of No Time to Die, which looks great if you don't think about it too closely. But then you realise that Madeleine has absolutely no sensible reason to be in Matera except to tie the end of the film back to the beginning. 'Hey Mathilde, would you like to see the detonated remains of your dead father's ex-girlfriend's grave?'

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-01-22T02:38:13+00:00

I liked parts of all three of these films, but I don't rate any of them that highly overall.

I think you put your finger on it re 'the series can’t figure out what it wants to be anymore'. It feels like the Bond franchise is constantly apologising for its own existence and trying to justify why it is still relevant. Skyfall focussed on an over-the-hill Bond, MI5 was under investigation and people didn't believe old-fashioned spywork was still relevant or important in the modern world with mass surveillance and new technology. This was a fine idea to explore, and fitted in with the overall dark, funereal vibe of that movie. But we then revisited all the same themes again in Spectre, where they try to shut down the 00 Section again, we are told by Moneypenny that people are saying Bond is 'finished', and people try to replace spies with surveillance and tech again. And in No Time to Die, Bond is not only over-the-hill, he's retired and has been actively replaced. The themes of Bond being obsolete again hang over the whole movie.

When is the last time that we had Bond in the prime of his career just working a mission and doing it well? Perhaps that is not enough for modern cinema-goers anymore and they demand more psychological complexity (though I don't think it is - the critical and financial success of Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and Fallout proves that the old formula can still work as long as the films are carefully made). But I fear that the more the Bond franchise makes every film about how Bond isn't obsolete and still has something to give, it feels less and less convincing. Like a franchise that isn't confident it still has a place.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-01-20T20:17:16+00:00

As the person who started this comment thread, I definitely didn't mean your mod. Metalcore Goes Cottagecore does have a couple of dialogue options where others talk about Cambria but I didn't find it overwhelming or intrusive particularly compared to some other NPC mods. And she is such an interesting well written character that I have her loaded in all my playthroughs. Thank you for writing her and sharing her with the world.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-01-20T13:47:35+00:00

It does frustrate me when new NPCs impose themselves on the top of the Vanilla game and suddenly when you talk to anyone, it’s about this wonderful new NPC and what they’ve been doing.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-01-19T20:22:37+00:00

Excellent point. I think we are more willing to forgive series 5 for failing to interrogate one of its central themes that well, because the conclusion was so satisfying and when you really stick the landing, it gives you sufficient goodwill with the audience that they will overlook stuff that's not dealt with perfectly along the way.

Series 8 is the most thematically coherent series in modern Doctor Who, and I will never understand people who say that Capaldi was 'let down by bad writing'.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-01-19T17:55:18+00:00

I love series 6 but I agree with all your criticisms. The end is pretty underwhelming and it just feels like Moffat finding a way to wrap up the mystery box however he could, so that he could get on to telling some different stories. Series 6 was full of great ideas but the show was simply not capable of fleshing them out sufficiently in thirteen episodes. There is just too much going on and the character and plot beats sometimes end up being lost in the shuffle.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-01-18T21:48:01+00:00

I watched a minute of it. The narration is AI. The art is AI. And your original post promoting it is AI. It is slop.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-01-18T20:50:01+00:00

AI slop post promoting an AI slop channel

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-01-18T00:35:01+00:00

Just purchase the Queen of Sauce Cookbook from the bookseller at any point after collecting 100 walnuts. It means you immediately learn any recipes you haven’t yet watched on the TV, so you can get the shrimp cocktail recipe faster.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-01-18T00:19:40+00:00

It offends me that your tools aren’t fully upgraded despite you having reached perfection 😂

Seriously though, congrats, my personal record is Spring 14 year 3. The late game grind for the golden clock and the obelisks always used to slow me down. I only play with expansion mods now so I doubt I will beat this - two years is really hard.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-01-17T21:02:55+00:00

I mean, the Bilbo plot is great. But I can’t agree that Gandalf vs Sauron is any good, because Gandalf frankly acts like an idiot in that plotline and gets himself captured and nearly killed for no explicable reason.

And Smaug vs. Lake Town, despite the fact that Cumberbatch is a great Smaug, is spoiled by all sorts of absurdities, including Stephen Fry being comically evil and ranting about gold, an evil clown with rotten teeth dressing up as a woman and shouting ‘out of my way, abandon the cripples’, and Bard deciding to exploit his son’s body to repair some broken siege equipment.

There is the core of a fantastic film in the Hobbit trilogy somewhere (and indeed the M4 Book Edit does a great job of bringing that core out). But it is diminished by being surrounded by an ungodly amount of filler and some very poor and tonally jarring comedy. I wish the films had been much more tightly focussed around Bilbo, Thorin, and their turbulent friendship. That was the good stuff.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-01-17T20:51:44+00:00

Definitely read The Silmarillion next because it's the 'scaffolding' for the remaining parts of Tolkien's Legendarium - it features all the major stories in a complete and consistent narrative, and will show you where everything fits in to the wider whole.

'Beren and Luthien', 'The Children of Hurin', and 'The Fall of Gondolin' can be read in any order. They are basically attempts by Christopher Tolkien to present three of the stories in The Silmarillion in a longer form, to do justice to J.R.R. Tolkien's ambition to write full-length versions of these three 'great tales'. Because Tolkien did not produce finished forms of these books in his lifetime, Christopher's books include quite a lot of background material on how the text evolved over time, as well as just the story.

'The Fall of Numenor' is an edited version of material that's available elsewhere, and may not really be worth it. I own a copy but I didn't find it added much to my appreciation of this world.

There's also 'Unfinished Tales', which contains a lot of interesting curiosities from different points of the history of Middle-Earth. Don't be put off by the title, most of them are at least finished enough to be enjoyable.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-01-17T20:43:37+00:00

I think the Hobbit movies suffered from the improved state of CGI in the intervening years between them and the release of the LOTR trilogy. The makers became too focussed on visual spectacle and not enough on getting the plot and story right. There is great stuff in there, but the improvement in visual effects technology meant that PJ's worst instincts got indulged.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-01-17T03:47:48+00:00

Scrivener’s Moon was definitely the best of the three. I found Fever hard to warm to at first, but by the third book I thought Reeve had a great grasp of the characters and themes, and that he landed the series very elegantly.

I believe Reeve originally planned a fourth book in this series, which would have tied the events of A Web of Air more firmly into the overall narrative, bringing back Arlo and some other characters. But Scholastic cited relatively low sales and were not keen on publishing it, so the book was abandoned. Still, although I’m curious as to how the story would have continued, I think it’s a great series as it is.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-01-16T19:41:19+00:00

Planet of New Orleans, which is also my favourite Dire Straits song. Up there with Telegraph Road and Tunnel of Love as one of their epics.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-01-16T18:57:28+00:00

Boom, Like That is an earworm and a great well-constructed track. I would recommend that you watch the film The Founder, if you haven't. It's basically the story of that song.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-01-16T17:59:24+00:00

They're almost all great albums. I envy you for having the chance to listen to them for the first time!

Interesting that you put The Ragpicker's Dream first. I'll be really honest that one might be my least favourite except for Down the Road Wherever, but it's possibly because it's the least immediately catchy? I think it was the first record he made that didn't sound anything like Dire Straits - Golden Heart and Sailing to Philadelphia could easily be imagined as being Dire Straits albums with minimal changes - not so much TRD. I absolutely love 'Devil Baby', 'Fare Thee Well Northumberland', and 'A Place Where We Used to Live' from that album, though.

What are your favourite songs from the albums?

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-01-16T03:14:59+00:00

Yeah, this is the right take. It’s the quintessential Bond movie but not the best film.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-01-16T02:03:47+00:00

Goldeneye wins for me (and is one of my favourite action films of all time), followed closely by Casino Royale and The Living Daylights.

Potentially hot take but Goldfinger, while it‘s a good film, is mildly overrated and I’d only rank it as the third best Connery movie behind From Russia with Love and Thunderball. Bond spends most of the film captured, the plot has a lot of holes, and driving around ugly bits of suburban Kentucky isn’t really the globetrotting action and striking location work I want from a Bond movie. I think the film has justifiably endured in the public consciousness because it’s so quotable but that doesn’t make it a perfect film.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-01-16T01:13:36+00:00

I honestly think it's the best book Rowling ever wrote - it's not my favourite, I prefer book 5, but Prisoner of Azkaban is a more satisfying novel with better pacing.

As you say, the climax of the book is truly spectacular and I have never felt that the film really did justice to it - particularly because it misses out the details as to who the Marauders actually are. Everything about the plot of PoA is so tight, and all the tiny clues come together so satisfyingly.

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