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I never touched RPO but I did listen to 372 pages we'll never get back's read through of it, and Armada, Cline's book that even RPO fans thought was absolutely dire. http://372pages.com/ Even with Michael J Nelson as a companion it was quite a journey.
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Jan 15, 2020 01:57
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watho posted:doesn’t rpo have the main character drive a mashup of the delorian from back to the future, kit from knight rider, and the ecto 1 from ghostbusters? like just one would’ve been kinda eye roll inducing but he went the extra mile The author actually OWNS that car, so it's extra eye-rolling. Also RPO doesn't just do surface references, it'll occasionally pull the brakes on the plot and talk down to the reader about some references, like you briefly mentioned a film they like at a party and they managed to successfully crowd you into a corner to talk down to you with a diatribe about it, for several pages.
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Jan 15, 2020 01:58
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Inspector Gesicht posted:To the normal person wasn't IG-88 a Star Wars character who showed up in one scene in the movies with no lines? You'd have to be a real nerd (in the negative sense) to know who the gently caress he is. Yes. IG-88 shows up for two* scenes in Empire Strikes Back and is neither named in nor the focus of either. He's there in the group of bounty hunters Vader summons before the Cloud City sequence, and then in the smelter in Cloud City when Chewie finds C-3PO's body, you can see IG-88's head (spray painted pure white) against the furnace mouth. He has like 5 seconds of screen time total.
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Jan 15, 2020 02:01
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But since IG-11 showed up on Mandalorian you'll see a billion hot takes from clickbait websites giving you all the inane lore and backstory of the IG droid model line. But none of it will be as good as the story where IG-88 hacked the Death Star 2 and trolled Palpatine by closing doors on him.
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Jan 15, 2020 02:03
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Leal posted:In my will my petty savings will be given only to those who can properly dance the Lambada I shall leave my collection of tabletop rpgs and old video games "to the strongest".
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Jan 15, 2020 02:17
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MonsieurChoc posted:He gets to have whatever Mech he wants and chooses his favorite even though it's not that strong. And I get that, but the plot is still ongoing, there's supposed to be huge stakes! Take one of the absurdly overpowered ones like Ideon or Zeorymer or Gunbuster or whatever rights you can amnage that's still ludicrously overpowered! And then maybe the bad guys get one of the other ones and we see titans clash or something happens or whatever to make sure the opposition isn't just curbstomped. But the point is, this is a race against the bad guy, act like it matters! The real reason is because Cline doesn't know what any of those anime robots are and he can't be assed to even do a google search to know if what the things he's talking about in his book are correct or not in regards to the brief window where he does talk about them.
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Jan 15, 2020 02:27
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HK-47 is the only important star wars droid. I think he even had like clones being the Republic security droids?
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Jan 15, 2020 02:29
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Eek I seem to have unintentionally started a big RPO convo when I only wanted to talk about how Renegade Cut tends to be a bit of an rear end with his arguments
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Jan 15, 2020 02:31
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dead gay comedy forums posted:I don't follow film news so I saw this post and thought HOLY loving poo poo they finally did it they are doing a Russian Revolution film for our day and age and no, it is a WW1 film i like ww1 stuff. its facinating and depressing to see how a turf dispute spread because a bunch of inbred fucks who were all family wanted to be richer or prove stupid points. Arcsquad12 posted:One of my favourite bits of info about Ernest Cline is how he was involved in the movie Fanboys. He's listed as the writer for the film, but Jay Baruchel came out and admitted that the script Cline gave them was unusable so they sat down and did a page one rewrite of the whole thing. Cline disputed this claim and declared that the movie was released the way he intended it to be. But, being more familiar with his work now, I'm inclined to believe Jay Baruchel's side of things. Fanboys is a bad movie, but it's more of a boring stoner comedy kind of bad with some need ephemera glued to it than the kind of self indulgent pit of media references that defines an Ernest Cline product. So now I'm left wondering how much worse Fanboys would have been if they had used Cline's original script. lol, jokes on him, i actually went to lucas ranch and the archive. saw the death star 2 prop and fought with real lightsabers. i went there 15 or so years ago for make a wish. yeah i have pictures. maybe post later.  
Dapper_Swindler fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Jan 15, 2020 |
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Jan 15, 2020 02:31
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Raenir Salazar posted:HK-47 is the only important star wars droid. I think he even had like clones being the Republic security droids? gonk. droid.
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Jan 15, 2020 02:34
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dead gay comedy forums posted:I don't follow film news so I saw this post and thought HOLY loving poo poo they finally did it they are doing a Russian Revolution film for our day and age and no, it is a WW1 film I saw the trailer and when the posh officer looked afraid that he would lose 1500 men I laughed. No officers gave a poo poo about losing their men, certainly not so few compared to how many they sent to the slaughter.
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Jan 15, 2020 02:37
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Inspector Gesicht posted:To the normal person wasn't IG-88 a Star Wars character who showed up in one scene in the movies with no lines? You'd have to be a real nerd (in the negative sense) to know who the gently caress he is. He was also a boss in the N64 Shadow of the Empire so you could also just be a kid in the 90s/early 00s.
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Jan 15, 2020 02:46
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MonsieurChoc posted:I saw the trailer and when the posh officer looked afraid that he would lose 1500 men I laughed. kinda. its near the end of the war and 1917 was still uncertain for victory in europa, russia just poo poo itself and is only sorta in the war and while the middle east campaigns had went well, it was a mixed bag with the allied offensives.
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Jan 15, 2020 02:50
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Ernest Cline deliberately endangered himself and others on the road in his dumb Back To The Future car specifically so he could get a ticket for speeding at exactly 88 miles per hour. gently caress him.
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Jan 15, 2020 02:50
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Raenir Salazar posted:HK-47 is the only important star wars droid. I think he even had like clones being the Republic security droids? There is the cut content of the HK droid factory in KotOR 2
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Jan 15, 2020 02:55
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poetically when he hit 88 miles an hour he adjusted the rear-view mirror so he could give himself an congratulatory smile.
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Jan 15, 2020 02:55
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MonsieurChoc posted:I saw the trailer and when the posh officer looked afraid that he would lose 1500 men I laughed. Officers actually had a disproportionately high casualty count in WWI, which had some interesting effects on postwar British society (like the Labour Party coming completely out of nowhere to displace the Liberals as one of the two main political parties in the country). By 1917, a few of them were definitely going 'oh poo poo, I might be one of those 1500'.
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Jan 15, 2020 03:04
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Yeah British officers had fairly suicidal doctrines for a stupidly long time. A captain needs to serve as an example to his men, which means standing tall and showing no fear in the face of the enemy. Which means putting yourself in full view of the enemy and marching very slowly and properly towards them. This behaviour continued into WW2 and even into Korea and the Falklands. It's still part of the British army nowadays, albeit in a much more muted fashion. You still set the example and be posh, but not at the expense of being suicidally dumb.
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Jan 15, 2020 03:09
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Arcsquad12 posted:But since IG-11 showed up on Mandalorian you'll see a billion hot takes from clickbait websites giving you all the inane lore and backstory of the IG droid model line. But none of it will be as good as the story where IG-88 hacked the Death Star 2 and trolled Palpatine by closing doors on him. You missed the best part: he gained complete control over the station literally 1 second before Lando and Wedge destroyed the main reactor.
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Jan 15, 2020 03:41
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Arcsquad12 posted:Yeah British officers had fairly suicidal doctrines for a stupidly long time. A captain needs to serve as an example to his men, which means standing tall and showing no fear in the face of the enemy. Which means putting yourself in full view of the enemy and marching very slowly and properly towards them. This behaviour continued into WW2 and even into Korea and the Falklands. It's still part of the British army nowadays, albeit in a much more muted fashion. You still set the example and be posh, but not at the expense of being suicidally dumb. It worked when the prequesite for battle was that the enemy should under no circumstances carry guns.
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Jan 15, 2020 03:42
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Kim Justice posted:It worked when the prequesite for battle was that the enemy should under no circumstances carry guns. It was a viciously sharp mango, Dougie.
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Jan 15, 2020 04:05
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Baka-nin posted:I never touched RPO but I did listen to 372 pages we'll never get back's read through of it, and Armada, Cline's book that even RPO fans thought was absolutely dire. Also I hope they move on to something batshit and fun again once the slog through shadowmoon is over, I would take more Tek War over Chris Claremont's expanded willow universe at this point.
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Jan 15, 2020 04:15
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Mr Phillby posted:I listened to Wil wheaton read the whole of RPO for this podcast and thats probably the best way to enjoy it but boy did I not want to read along with Clines second book and it turned out the podcast is fine even if you don't participate in the book club aspect at all. did wil at least mock it or something?
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Jan 15, 2020 04:26
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I think they were saying they listened to the audio book to get context for the podcast, which I’m guessing is the Mike Nelson one. Which was pretty good.
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Jan 15, 2020 04:34
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Clerical Terrors posted:I don't disagree with the video's supposed thesis that Rick is a bad person and not to be admired but it's not delivered very well and it's honestly kind of a shame that he doesn't go in deeper. There's probably some comparisons to be made to series like Archer, Aqua Teen Hunger Force etc. on the subject of bad people who nonetheless make us laugh. He does briefly make a comparison with Bojack Horseman, which I don't disagree with. Groovelord Neato posted:And the only way to make a good one is to do a satire of the book. I'd love to have seen someone give this the Starship Troopers treatment.
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Jan 15, 2020 04:46
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The way you people describe RPO/Cline reminds me of the patriot fiction (I'd say bad but that's inherent to the genre) TFR used to do let's reads of. In those, basic gun trivia or shooting knowledge were always presented as some secret special forces operator knowledge and I never figured out if it was intentional ego stroking of the audience or just the author jacking himself off. Tbf it also reminds me of mgs, especially 3 where any time you saved, you had to listen to Kojima's proxy talk about his favourite old movies.
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Jan 15, 2020 06:25
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Nuebot posted:The real reason is because Cline doesn't know what any of those anime robots are and he can't be assed to even do a google search to know if what the things he's talking about in his book are correct or not in regards to the brief window where he does talk about them. Maybe he does know a lot and just chose that exact moment to exercise something resembling restraint 
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Jan 15, 2020 06:35
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Dawgstar posted:See also 'people dressed like the 80's.' Which is.. what? Feathered hair? Late-stage death of disco? Parachute pants? Air Jordans? Yeah, there's no one mono-style to the '80s. Depending on what place in the decade and what class was involved, they all tend to be different. Your '80s Sex Pistols-inspired punk is going to be different from an Adam Ant New Romantic, the proto-Ska Rude Boys, the working class Skinhead, the radical Devo-esque New Waver, and we're not getting into Metalheads, Preppies, and early Adidas-clad Hip Hop.
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Jan 15, 2020 06:56
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Dapper_Swindler posted:did wil at least mock it or something? Ready Player One was written specifically for people like Wil Wheaton, and he has a cameo in the book as the President of the Internet or something, which was Cline specifically sucking up to him in the expressed hope that he would narrate the audio book. Don't hold out hope for that one, my friend. As for Armada, I also tried to do that read along for 372 Pages back when they were going through the book live and I made it to the end of their recommended first stopping point and was loving done with it. 50 pages, and nothing worth recounting happened, yet there was one five-page double spaced bullet point list of pop culture events from the 1980s to 2003 for basically no reason. The people who said Armada was a salvaged barely first draft trunk novel that was rushed out the door to capitalize on RP1's success were right. Even bad authors usually don't backslide in basic level skills like Cline seems to from Ready Player One to Armada so it had to have been written before RP1 and shelved because it drowned in rejection letters for literally being Last Starfighter original character fanfiction.
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Jan 15, 2020 07:15
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Trojan Kaiju posted:He was also a boss in the N64 Shadow of the Empire so you could also just be a kid in the 90s/early 00s. it me
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Jan 15, 2020 07:22
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Augus posted:it me IG-88 left a big impression on a lot of kids in the 90s as an N64 boss because it was the first real terrifying boss of Shadows of the Empire. The AT-ST in Echo Base was intimidating, but IG-88 was flat out scary.
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Jan 15, 2020 07:31
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the way ig-88 just bolted around the boss arena destroying your rear end while it made those weird sounds was indeed quite terrifying
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Jan 15, 2020 07:34
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I remember him just burning through all my health before I could even register where he was attacking me from lol. Made him scary as hell to younger me
Augus fucked around with this message at 07:44 on Jan 15, 2020 |
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Jan 15, 2020 07:37
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Darth Walrus posted:While there's obviously plenty of ways to go badly off-track with it, linking RPO to GamerGate seems like a pretty obvious play? It's a perfect time-capsule of the old, privilege-oblivious white male nerd mindset that eventually metastasised into GG when other people started examining its underexamined assumptions and its adherents started lashing out because 'they weren't allowed to enjoy things any more'. RPO is a loving self-portrait of the time-bomb, and GG is the explosion. cline's a gen xer so his life is the impossible ideal that gamergate guys feel like they were promised as children and then had stolen from them by the sjws
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Jan 15, 2020 12:23
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DEEP STATE PLOT posted:the way ig-88 just bolted around the boss arena destroying your rear end while it made those weird sounds was indeed quite terrifying Don't forget the scrapyard train level just to GET to IG-88 too.
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Jan 15, 2020 12:35
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Farm Frenzy posted:cline's a gen xer so his life is the impossible ideal that gamergate guys feel like they were promised as children and then had stolen from them by the sjws I didn't think you could get sad enough to be envious of gen-x.
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Jan 15, 2020 13:02
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nine-gear crow posted:The people who said Armada was a salvaged barely first draft trunk novel that was rushed out the door to capitalize on RP1's success were right. Even bad authors usually don't backslide in basic level skills like Cline seems to from Ready Player One to Armada so it had to have been written before RP1 and shelved because it drowned in rejection letters for literally being Last Starfighter original character fanfiction. Mike and Conor talk on it a lot covering it, and certainly anybody who... well, reads can see it, but it is amazing how many things are in that book that any first year Creative Writing teacher would flunk your draft for. And that's just in RPO.
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Jan 15, 2020 14:12
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Groovelord Neato posted:The best thing about Ernest Cline is his follow up to Ready Player One was just "The Last Starfighter but with a lot of 80s references". I was in a bookshop and skimmed around a bit, reading a couple pages. One moment really stood out to me; so the main character's dad left him when he was a child. He loved his dad, and he just up and vanished one day - no explanation or anything. He spends the rest of his life wondering what happened to him and why he left. The kid eventually gets teleported onto an alien ship and becomes a starfighter. He rises up the ranks and is introduced to a senior hotshot starfighter, only to discover it's his dad, and the exact same thing must have happened to him. The main character's father, who he has been wondering about his entire life, is now before him - the mystery revealed, and a darkness about the organisation along with it. They kidnap people and destroy lives, and surely he must have his own loved ones worrying about him. Did his father miss him? Wonder about him? Try to return home? What must it have been like, all these years? But instead of any of that, the main character thinks, immediately, before anything else; "Man, this is just like Star Wars". gently caress Ernest Cline. He is the least talented person to ever write a best-seller.
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Jan 15, 2020 14:45
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nine-gear crow posted:IG-88 left a big impression on a lot of kids in the 90s as an N64 boss because it was the first real terrifying boss of Shadows of the Empire. The AT-ST in Echo Base was intimidating, but IG-88 was flat out scary. You could completely own the AT-ST by staying behind it too, which I think may have been mentioned in the manual, and no such strategy existed for IG-88.
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Jan 15, 2020 16:04
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Dawgstar posted:Mike and Conor talk on it a lot covering it, and certainly anybody who... well, reads can see it, but it is amazing how many things are in that book that any first year Creative Writing teacher would flunk your draft for. And that's just in RPO.
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Jan 15, 2020 16:39
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