Thread:Vorknkx/@comment-3547390-20170901233307/@comment-3547390-20171101230253

So I have made it to the Second Edition of the Star Wars Roleplaying Game. Not that significant, but it is like the start of a new era of pointless documents.

I also got the G903 mouse today with Powerplay, which is supposed to keep my mouse charged without requiring a cable and also freeing up a USB slot. So far, so good, though it is too early to tell if it is actually charging or not. It was a bit bigger than expected though, the mousepad is a lot larger than the ones I am used to and allegedly is more accurate with my mouse than the cheap ones I got from Walmart before. Not sure how true that is, but it is convenient to have these few improvements if it is indeed better. It isn't worse, which is a plus.

I could care less that there is a world outside of my house when on my computer. It is hard enough to handle even the subtle noises that go on in the background.

The way I work is that I often will go through an entire band's discography, b-sides and all, to find out what I like. Anything I like and have listened to the discography for gets put on my music player, which is set to shuffle the songs randomly. Bands I like I can throw on as background noise, for example After Forever's second album, and often will do such in an area where it is a bit noisier like work. You would be crazy to listen to music you actually wanted to hear, because everyone is talking a room away and the music must remain very low, so it works to have stuff that is "good background noise" without being something I would generally like. Plus I like less than 400 songs, I will listen to things I dislike just to add some variety.

Indeed, most bands have those concepts to explore, but with Therion it feels like they are so focused on the references that there is little substance elsewhere. Just saying Babylon is a whore doesn't exactly say much, if the entire song was about it we could have a good song, but instead it is less focused on detail and more focused on just throwing these concepts out there...concepts they do every album to the point you are already getting sick of the references to Set.

I have continued on to Vovin, apparently one of the best albums beside Theli which I found entirely boring. Of course, Vovin changes some things, suddenly making it mostly soprano female vocals that remind me highly of Tristania and male chorus voices that work as a decent dirge. In fact, this is the first album I can say I actually like the general sound to, though The Wild Hunt was atrocious. Unlike last album, the music felt more bombastic and epic, it finally is showing those elements you were advertising. In fact, this album gives me a vibe at times like it features the guitars of Wishmaster and the musical style of Decipher. Both of those are highly praised albums and thus it makes sense why this is so big, it was the precursor to all of those and had an amazing sound. Of course, just like those two albums, this is an album that works better as background music than as something I actually love. Most of the songs had an epic sound, but either dragged at some point or just felt lacking overall. Contradictory I know, but it is the same exact vibe I got during Decipher, and re-listening to that album hasn't really produced the answer I seek. Just like Decipher, it has a great sound, but the songs feel flawed. The Key was a decent song off Decipher, but nothing entirely noteworthy. Wine of Aluqah is essentially put in the same role here, it is a good song, but just isn't as jaw dropping as the first time I heard The Shining Path or Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. Still, it is a sign, a sign that Therion can make good music and that the sound they have here is actually rather good. Of course, now the matter is hoping they retain this much in the next album, or at least redesign it in a way that is even better sounding. After Forever managed to do the latter, I can hope Therion can pull off their own Digital Deceit. In any event, 1 song out of seven albums isn't that great, but it is a sign that things are getting better.

Heh, you are referring to Dark Empire, which is actually the big thing comic-wise in 1992. It is pretty bad, though not at all as horrible as the infamous Jedi Prince series. Essentially, the story is that Luke joins the Dark Side since Palpatine otherwise keeps resurrecting himself since that was a power he happened to have. He just took 6 years to do it for some reason (when he could have literally killed all the rebels on Endor using any body, even one of the Rebels themselves, which begs the question as to why he doesn't enter their bodies and force them to kill each other), aging his body once again because the Dark Side eats away at your body to the point you die quickly (which begs the question, Darth Vader survived 20+ years, so where are his clones if you die in 6 years? Even if the good guys decide not to kill their buddy who is controlled by Palpatine, the body ages until it dies in a quick period of time) Palpatine can travel across space and can enter any body that is living. He keeps threatening to enter the bodies of the rebels, but never does because... I don't know, he made a lot of clone bodies for some reason and wanted to use them (they are 15 years old, because an angry teenager is totally a better idea then just entering Luke). So Luke joins the Dark Side (he had to see what his father saw, which sounds like a horrible reason to do something based on how bad Vader had it), a thing said in the story to be essentially impossible and will result in the total destruction of a Jedi (this is explained away by saying that Leia's pregnant belly strengthened the force and completely blocked off Palpatine's power, this was the real reason to join the Dark Side apparently, so Luke could block Palpatine's power. Which makes what Vader did in Episode 6 REALLY stupid). But Luke is resistant... he just needs to find out Palpatine's weakness. He figures it out after 5 issues in a grand climax, Palpatine needs living bodies (the sixth adds the part where that was a cop out and it was actually that the Dark Side beings suffer a lot of fear...because Yoda sure didn't talk about fear and its connection to the dark side)! So if he kills the living clones, Palpatine can't enter them! You know, totally ignoring the fact that he has been threatening to enter Luke's body with him still alive or the fact that everyone essentially knew Palpatine entered living bodies back in the first issue (Palpatine's main strategy consists of teasing family members to play them against each other, since we know how well that went with Vader, who had been a Sith for a great number of years). This is a story where Luke literally risks everything, faces the impossible to the point other Jedi failed doing this, and the logic behind it was to get some info he pretty much was told before he joined the Dark Side (at least until the guy who says it was impossible then says that it is possible to escape the dark side as long as you fulfill this awesome prophecy (The prophecy, carried thousands of generations, is that Palpatine is evil and will kill the heroes if they don't do something). People tease Return of the Jedi for Luke's plot, but he makes zero sense in this one (the only reason he gets freed is because Leia came as a prisoner and pretty much repeated the plot of Return of the Jedi with Luke as Vader), and Han Solo pretty much leaves him to die. Don't forget this story includes a part with Boba Fett just to have him say the Sarlacc found him indigestible, he was a bit character that appeared for a few panels just to make it all the more awesome (seriously, he never returns and it is just sort of there). Admiral Ackbar meanwhile is panicking about the World Devastators, ships worse than the Death Star as they raze entire cities! I mean, forget blowing up planets, the destruction of a single city on Mon Calamari is obviously worse than a turblolaser blowing it up. I guess it is because it can pull raw resources from what it destroys, but somehow it still sounds like an exaggeration to say worse than a Death Star. Let that sink in, Palpatine built a nearly perfect Death Star in secret in the 4 years from A New Hope, but 6 and he hasn't decided to retry. I mean, this guy can't die and can build things that can destroy everyone else in an instant. Palpatine fails because of a force storm he created that he can't control because he was blocked for a few seconds, the big reveal is that Luke knew that the Dark Side was hard to control, which might be some secret until they mention at the very end that PALPATINE HAD TWO AUTOBIOGRAPHIES PUBLISHED WHICH ADMITTED HE WASN'T IN CONTROl. Luke went to the dark side and nearly turned into another Vader to find out something said by Palpatine at the beginning and to find out a nugget you could pick up at your local library. Yeah, the plot is a mess, and plays off like a giant fan story. Besides the introduction of Holocrons and being one of the earliest stories in the 90s upsurge, it just isn't worth bothering with.

Jedi Prince is atrocious. The second book essentially reveals Yavin IV was an ice planet before the Jedi took it over to make it a storage location for the history of the world, then decided to devote a lot of hours making vents from the core of the world to make a rainforest on a surface of a world nobody would be on besides droids in the core of the world. The third book had a plot where a ship went down to the surface of the hot liquid and was polluting the planet, yet the Crisis on Cloud City module taught us that Bespin has so much pressure that it would crush anything that dropped below a certain line, far before it ever hit the surface, to the point no ships can be down there. Then the Marvel series had Bespin have water for some reason and Ugnaught pirates. Forget the inconsistent plot, we can't get details like what happens on the surface of Bespin.

Pretty much, the games focus your attention elsewhere mostly and give you more leeway with those inconsistencies. As I keep saying, the Thrawn trilogy is indeed worthy of the praise it gets. Some of the Marvel stuff wasn't too bad, the Shira Brie stories in particular, but the Thrawn trilogy was the only thing that felt like it entirely belonged. It was responsible for the craze of the 90s, introduced Coruscant, and convinced Lucas there was still a love for Star Wars. Maybe that could have happened regardless of quality, but it stands out as one of those islands. I find myself actually remembering names from those stories, I remember the new planets and the new characters, plus plenty of the new things introduced. I can't say that for Politics of Contraband, something I read just a few hours ago.