JoelF847's page

I enjoyed S2 a lot, but it was a bit too focused on character stories and plots and was lacking an actual bad guy threat. That doesn't mean I didn't like what S2 had, but more missed what S2 didn't have.

James Gunn has said that he has no current plans for a Peacemaker S3, but I suspect he has lots of plans for the characters. Whether that means it will feature in a future movie, or if it will simply be the new show titled Checkmate, and be a bit less Peacemaker-centric.

And fully agree, Eaglie was badass and awesome in this season.

I saw it coming, but it was still done very well. And again, Hamish Linklater killed it just as much as Dean Cipher afterwards as he did before.

I also had the thought that Marie Moreau may be a critical plot point in S5 of the Boys, curing Butcher of his cancer (and likely taking the cancer super powers away at the same time).

Also, "making money" is much murkier with streaming services involved. Not only are there direct TVOD rental/purchases which are pretty easy to account for, but there are the harder to measure benefits of how many subscriptions to HBO does it drive - I did read that it had 13M viewers in the first week on HBO (and I myself subscribed yesterday for a month to watch it and Peacemaker). When you factor that in, I'm sure it made money, not to mention all the licensing.

Just saw it, and enjoyed it overall. I still think it would have been a better Superman 2 movie, even if they skipped the origin story, having more set up for Lex/Superman rivalry before this story would have made it better. Also, while I get that the movie is 3 years into Superman's appearance, Lex felt way to accomplished to just in backstory have created a pocket universe prison, as well as having a baby kaiju ready to go as a distraction when he chose.

Also, aside from just being there to be introduced, it felt like Hawkgirl could have easily not been in the movie at all. It would have also helped a bit with the huge cast of characters by having one less.

As for the message, I assumed that a) it was "real" in the sense that it wasn't doctored, but b) was still manipulated. We know next to nothing about how much was restored - so it could be that every frame of footage was real, but there was still a tone unrecovered, and if you were to fill in the blanks, the message could have meant many other things. It's possible that what was recovered was still less than 50% of the full message, or that other parts were recovered, and conveniently just kept secret by Lex and not shared with the world. More convoluted explanations could also work, but it's super common in the real world to conveniently exclude bits of footage to give a very different message, and in fact, that's often what's done with political attack messages.

Technomancer is the current stretch goal - another $65K or so which is likely for tomorrow.

I'm sure Amazon will have it to rent, but in terms of subscriptions, it will be part of Disney+

And the Kickstarter has launched, met it's funding goal, and blown through it's first 3 stretch goals, and likely will have hit their 4th (as yet unannounced) by the time it's morning in Spain and they can send another update.

Thought some folks here might be interested in this. Invincible TTRPG Kickstarter launched today!

Thomas, you know you can like The Boys/Gen V and ALSO like Invincible, it's not an either or situation.

I'm really happy with the first 3 episodes of season 2. Not only is it simply always good to return to the world of The Boys and Vaught, but Hamish Linklater is fantastic as Cipher, the episode descriptions continue to be perfect, but they also really did a fantastic job of handling Chance Pedromo's passing in the show. I'm not sure I've ever seen a character so present without being there at all in how his passing impacts all the other characters.

No, but there's a line early on in Thunderbolts that places it after Captain America Brave New World.

Finally saw it yesterday, and enjoyed it quite a bit. The earlier talk about losing money is a distraction, it definitely didn't lose money, even if it didn't make big bank in the box office, but it was close enough to break even there that it certainly made it up with direct sales, and whatever accounting they do to have D+ "pay" for it at fair market value.

I loved the post credit scene at the end, not cause of the reveal, which really just was saying what the next movie was in what like 2 months? But the banter of them as the new avengers was a blast. Glad it was a long enough scene to flesh that out, and I'm really wishing there was a way to see more of that, I'd be there for a New Avengers TV series with at least 20 minutes an episode of banter opportunities for them, and more fleshed out discussions about why Sam isn't a fan, and what he's been assembling instead.

Season 2 trailer. First half of the season comes out in December!

What lame scammers. Don't they know the new hip and "in" tech craze to scam on is related to Gen AI?

Owlcat had Pathfinder Kingmaker as their first game, so that's not a negative by any stretch, just makes it harder to see what their track record and inspirations are like. Hopefully they'll introduce themselves and that type of background soon either on the forums here and/or the KS campaign itself.

And yay for the original story. I loved the Owlcat games, but had wished they'd have done original stories.

Looks like a CRPG based on Starfinder 2e was announced:
Steam page
Kickstarter page

Other than the information on those pages, not a whole lot I can find, including on the developer,
Epictellers Entertainment. This seems to be their first game, but it would be great to get some more information on them - what games have they worked on at previous employers, etc.

Also, is this an original story, or an AP adaptation?

I expect more details will eventually be shared, and even a dedicated sub-forum for the game, but I'd definitely like to find out a bit more before the Kickstarter launch.

That could be why it's lower priority. Coogler is currently deep into Black Panther 3 development from similar recent articles I've read, so if there's interest and/or plans of him picking up Blade, then would make sense for it to be lower priority for after BP3.

I'm no longer a subscriber to anything at Paizo, so I don't really care either way personally, but my reaction to this is that it's simply too complicated to care. I shouldn't need a spreadsheet to figure out what discount perk I get. Just make it similar to before - subscribe to X things and get Y discount. Gaming rewards is far less fun than playing the games Paizo makes.

Yeah, that's a good way to ensure DC takes a multi-year hiatus from movies if they're successful enough.

Overall, does look pretty good, but still don't like how they handle him disguised at the little girl.

The reason could have simply been to show Nale had gone super EVIL. But it's better having Thog back for many reasons.

I'm not really concerned with what someone said in an interview out of context. When the movie is out, watch it, and then decide if they did a good job or not. Could have nailed the movie and fumbled the interview question, or there's simply misinterpretation of what was said.

Oh, and I forgot, the first season spent a lot of time with Andor as a kid flashbacks in some lord of the flies like planet where the kids survived on their own, but he was rescued, and how as an adult he was always looking for his sister, to the point where he didn't even want to be a spy since it would detract from the hunt for long lost sister. Season 2 never once addressed this. At best there was 2 lines of dialogue that Deidre was an orphan recruited from the Imperial Orphanage or something, so maybe if fans squint really hard and hope that Tinkerbell is in fact alive, then Deidre may have been Andor's sister.

Finally had time to write up my thoughts on season 2, it's super long and tedious, but that fits the show perfectly, so here it is!

When I started watching Andor season 2, my reaction was “Andor, now 20% less boring” and think that’s still a good quick summary of it. So my thoughts, not surprisingly, on season 2 are mostly negative. Having watched the entire season and had a few weeks to reflect on it, in general, I come away from the show with similar feelings to season 1, which at a high level, are that the worst part about the show is it’s horribly mis-titled. It’s not really about Andor, he’s at best one of 4 characters the show is focused on, and arguably the least significant of them. This show should really have been called “Birth of the Rebellion” or something, and even that is not super accurate, but at least wouldn’t be as horribly misleading.
When Andor first came out, it was described as showing the backstory of the Andor character from Rogue One, which sounded great. I was expecting a mix of Batman: Year One and James Bond, with Andor learning to be a spy, messing up, recovering from those mistakes, and growing into a super cool badass Star Wars version of James Bond. Unfortunately, season 1 didn’t deliver on that. Without re-hashing it too much, it had tons of boring things with very occasional bits that were good, even if they didn’t make a lot of sense. Season 2 was described by the show runner and Disney/Star Wars as being much more focused on Andor being a spy, coming into his own, and not having all that boring stuff. Well, it partially succeeded (by my estimate 20%). It was less boring, it had a lot less content where nothing happened, and even had a few cool action scenes.
Supposedly, Andor was originally going to be 5 seasons, but it only got picked up for a 2nd season and Tony Gilroy was told to wrap his plans for seasons 2-5 up in a single season. He chose to do this by taking his plot for each of the 4 seasons he had planned, and condensing them into 3 episodes each. Overall, this is likely the reason season 2 failed to live up to my expectations, since it showed. Tony was completely unable to let go of things to have a better narrative, and instead kept a lot from his original plans which simply didn’t work in the compressed episode count. I don’t know how true that narrative is, but having watched the show, it fits. If Let’s dive in:
Episodes 1-3 5 BBY (Before battle of Yavin) - We start off with Andor in the middle of a covert op to steal an advanced TIE fighter prototype. Cool, this is exactly the kind of thing I expected to be what the show was about, and they said season 2 would, so promise kept! Nice action/heist set up, some good humor of Andor not being able to figure out how to fly it since the prototype doesn’t fly the way most ships do, and then he escapes. He brings the TIE to some remote planet to drop it off with his contact, only to find out that his contact isn’t there, and he’s ambushed by a group of want to be rebels who think he’s an Imperial since he’s in one of their test pilot uniforms, and flying their ship. Then begins a super slow burn plot of him unable to convince them he’s also a rebel, and having to turn them into factions to fight each other. This part of the plot is cut up over 3 episodes, and drags on and on. It seems like these are the dumbest rebels of all time, since while their first impression of him is reasonable, the fact that he’s flown some new kind of ship to the middle of nowhere where some other ship was landed doesn’t seem very likely for a real Imperial, and it seems they’re stranded there and want to use the ship to escape. Why they’re on the planet in the first place, how they got there, and were expecting to leave, never mentioned. Why they shot up his contact’s ship so it won’t fly, also not really relevant. No one has anyone they can call to verify things. This group seemingly just appeared out of the jungle as rebels with no contacts, fighting the good rebel fight against the Empire which isn’t there. Also, the very fact that Andor is stealing a TIE prototype doesn’t make a lot of sense. At this time, the Rebellion is a bunch of scattered groups that aren’t coordinated, and don’t have facilities to reverse engineer a prototype ship and do anything with it really. Furthermore, the TIE Advanced isn’t even realistic to have a prototype yet, since it certainly doesn’t appear before or during the Battle of Yavin, 5 years in the future, and really only appears off camera in the X-wing and TIE fighter games in the 1990s, which are set during the height of the rebellion between the Battle of Yavin and Return of the Jedi. At that time, they’re brand new and in limited quantities, so seems off that there is a prototype to steal even. Finally, speaking of Yavin, when Andor finally does leave this planet, we get a panoramic view and see it has the stone ziggurat temples and that this rando meeting spot is in fact Yavin we all know from A New Hope. It also seems to be a planet inhabited by deadly forest predators who can pick off multiple armed rebels without a problem, but 5 years later they seem not a threat (even just a year or two later in future episodes of Andor S2.)
Meanwhile, there’s all sorts of other things going on too! Senator Mon Mothma has to pay the price from season 1 and marry her daughter off to the son of the criminal who helped her bankroll the rebellion. Oh No! We get to see just how wonderful this kid treats her daughter, and how much her daughter loves the idea. All season 1, her daughter spent doing nothing but rolling her eyes at her mom, like teenagers do, so now she’s developed as a character and seems calm, level headed, and in love, and happy to get married. When Mothma has a serious mom and daughter talk with her, and says, “you know, you still can call this off” her daughter naturally replies “Mom, WTF, why would I call this off. He’s dreamy, nice, treats me well, and you seem to not like his dad for reasons that you won’t tell me, and if you did in fact tell me, would make no sense, since he helped you actually start the Rebellion, which is good right? Or is the rebellion too hoity toity to work with say, a smuggler or something? But, this is a wedding in a tense spy drama, so if we spend roughly an episode of time seeing it, I’m sure there will be some kick ass payoff of cool stuff, like the Red Wedding from Game of Thrones, or the climactic wedding scene in the final season of Handmaid’s tale, right? Nope! Instead, we get a lot of Mothma being pissy that her daughter is happy, a lot of some wedding ceremony performed by a tree, and a lot of Mothma being so inconsolable over it all that she drinks. Not to celebrate, but to drown her sorrows. And then drinks some more, and drinks, and drinks and drinks. And THEN…..wait for it….she dances like she’s alone at some Star Wars rave or something. Oh, and Luthen is there instead of back on Coruscant in his antique shop, so you know some big spy stuff is going to go down too! Instead, he talks to Mothma some, and says her actual benefactor is in money trouble with the criminal she worked with, and therefore is a liability now. So, let’s have him killed, even though he hasn’t done anything but help us and make some bad investments. End wedding sequence with a shot of his driver/pilot being someone else who’s going to kill him in some cool dramatic and gruesome way to show that proto-rebel spies are serious….except, nope! Instead they just fly off, and we never see him get killed, or find out he was about to betray everyone or do something bad. He’s just offed off screen never to be seen again.
Also, we have a return to Dierdra and mopey accountant guy who’s too boring to look up his name. It seems they’re now a couple for….reasons. Sure, he saved her life at the end of Season 1, but he’s still a complete dweeb, but I guess she likes him because she’s clearly only able to be with someone when she’s completely in charge and he’s been walked over his whole life starting with his mom, so he’s the perfect doormat for her. But, we do get another scene with him in Imperial cube farm, and now, he’s an assistant manager (or assistant to the manager), and giving a rousing speech to the new cube dwellers about how if you diligently do your mind numbingly boring job that a droid could completely do in 10 seconds, one day, if you’re lucky, then just maybe you’ll discover some nefarious rebel thefts in the least exciting audits ever shown on camera. And then he finds out that someone has put his favorite stapler into a jello mold, and he can’t staple without first reaching his hand into the jello. Except that last part didn’t actually happen, since a Star Wars version of the Office would actually be a lot of fun, and fun isn’t allowed in Andor, so unfortunately, no Star Wars Jim pulling pranks. Instead though, he brings his mom over to see his new digs in the capital, and how awesome his life is in a stark white apartment, and they have fondue, and his mom hasn’t changed and berates him more for being a failure, so we get to see more of the most compelling mother son scenes ever to be filmed since Psycho, and he cries on his bed while his girlfriend tells his mom off and says “he’s mine to beat down on emotionally now, hands off!”
Also, since this 3 episode arc doesn’t have enough going on, we get to spend a bunch of time on some farm planet, with Andor’s friends from their home world being illegal immigrants without paperwork. Things are boring and slow, and one of them has a girlfriend, oh, and Andor’s love interest is there too, but having PTSD from being tortured and brainwashed by evil bad scientist back in season 1. But then, the Empire does an Imperial audit of the planet, since we don’t have enough audit stuff in this show. They send one tiny little ship and a handful of storm troopers there, plus a few officers, and the refugees have to move around to avoid the farms being audited. Riveting! But, one tiny ship of people can seemingly lock down the entire planet so our heroes are in trouble, they couldn’t possibly hide anywhere else on the ENTIRE planet. So slimey imperial officer says, he Andor’s girlfriend, you’re hot, to which she replies, I’m actually married, but my husband isn’t here. So he leaves. Only to later come back and say, I don’t see your husband, so I bet that was just you being hard to get, and now, to show just how evil the Empire is, I’m going to try to rape you. She naturally fights him off, cause even Star Wars trying to be edgy and adult isn’t going to take things too far, and then the refugees have to run but the guy who has a local gf goes to see her, even though he knows it’s only 4 people’s lives on the line, but whatevs. Then tense chase and fights through the cornfields, until they’re surrounded by storm troopers, so clearly they’re going to all die (crack shots that the storm troopers are known for being). However……just before this, Andor finally leaves the planet he was stuck on in his stolen Advanced TIE fighter, gets a message that no one has heard from them in a few days, and that there’s an Imperial audit going on there, so Andor flies off there, and miraculously arrives just in the nick of time from across the galaxy. Then we get to see another “stellar” action scene where he plays shooting gallery with all the troopers and officers on the ground, never being in any danger, and lands and rescues his friends. By the way, the 2 of them who I haven’t mentioned much never show up again in the show, so clearly are as important as they seemed these episodes. Same thing with Andor’s depressed BB droid - he’s there on farm world too, but hope you didn’t like him much, cause he’s gone from this point on also.

Finally after what seemed like a full season of boringness, we get to episodes 4-6, and a whole year has passed. You know this because it tells you in the beginning, and Andor is coming back from some mission which must have been really cool and exciting, since we never hear a word about it or see any of it, since exciting missions don’t belong in this show. Instead, he gets assigned the least exciting mission ever to be filmed, to go to the planet Gorman and do an assessment on their fledgling rebel group to see if they’re worthy enough to get help. Because the rebellion at this point is clearly so successful that they have to pick and choose which rebel groups to help since they’re so many of them. Gorman turns out to be a planet of high quality weavers, and their rebel group is just as tough and useful as you’d expect a bunch of weavers to be. We do get to see Andor go there in disguise as a fashion designer, which admittedly is vaguely amusing. Then he’s invited to meet the rebels, and we know they’re seriously not friends with the Empire because they have a monument to a massacre there from the name drop of Grand Moff Tarkin landing his ship on a bunch of peaceful protestors. So now that the Empire has set up some administrative office there, the Gormans are PISSED. Having a bunch of them killed years ago wasn’t too bad, but an office building, no way! It’s in danger of making their planet as boring as Imperial Cube Farm (....just wait, huge connection incoming). We also know they don’t like the Empire, because they’re the only humans in Star Wars that speak a different language, and they yell and shout at each other in it multiple times, with subtitles. It sounds vaguely Italian like, since Gorman spider silk merchants seem like they fit in the Renaissance. So Andor checks them out and decides they’re not good enough, and leaves. Most exciting Andor spy mission EVER!
Meanwhile, we find out there’s more going on at Gorman, since the Death Star can’t be built by wrongly convicted criminals on exotic island spires on some ocean planet alone. It actually needs the Macguffin Kalkite, a rare mineral that only exists on Gorman for some reason, but they seem to know is still the vitally needed component for the Death Star. Unfortunately, it’s buried so deep, that the only way to get it is to set up some giant mining facilities which will almost certainly cause the planet to implode and get destroyed. You know when they talk about that in fancy spy circle room that it’s going to happen, and when it does, watch out, super cool special effects showing the planet imploding, so just wait for it, it will be so super cool. But, the Empire, despite being shown all the way back in Revenge of the Sith murdering Jedi kids and babies, and in the Bad Batch show immediately following taking over planets and having an iron fist of control, they can’t go in and just mine Gorman for some reason. Because the Senate hasn’t yet been disbanded, so they could complain and form a committee maybe. Especially as we get to see just how effective the Senate is when Mon Mothma is around and stops all sorts of the Emperor’s plans (note, this does not in fact happen at all, not even remotely). So instead, they have to come up with an insidious plan. “How about we just control the media with propaganda and say those Gormans are really, really bad, so we’re taking over?” That idea is shot down, since it clearly would never work, no real society would believe blatant media lies about people who didn’t ever do anything wrong other than get massacred by a spaceship landing on them and making some amazing high quality silk just because the media repeated it over and over. That’s the realm of fantasy, and wouldn’t be believable in Star Wars. So instead, Diedra “I never smile” ISB lady says “What we really need to do, is have a super convoluted plan to make Gorman have a credible threat of rebels to give us an excuse to crush them”. They clearly don’t have any reason to rebel on their own, because the Empire is nice and sweet, and gives everyone puppies, and the Gorman’s haven’t been massacred or anything before. So, instead, lets send my boyfriend there to run the administrative office, since he’s good at that stuff, but we won’t tell him we plan to take over the planet and suck it dry of Kalkite. While he’s there, we’ll get to see him have weekly calls with his mom, and send her lifelike spider toys that everyone wants, but only Gorman has, collect all 323 varieties of them!) So we’ll send him there, and the rebels there will clearly spy on him a lot, cause they already hate the empire, but we still need to manipulate them for reasons. So then he’ll secretly pretend to be a double agent and feed them information on what we’re REALLY doing, shipping weapons in secret there, because the Empire couldn’t just you know, ship weapons there anyway, and he’ll tell them this, since we know they’re actually a bunch of wanna be chumps even though Andor hasn’t evaluated them yet, then my boyfriend will somehow get them to attack the weapons, become armed and be a REAL threat, so THEN we can go in and take over with a really good excuse.
Also, there’s a subplot where Andor’s younger friend is no longer pining for his farm planet girlfriend, but still is a really good mechanic, so he’s sent to Saw Guerra’s rebel group to help them set up some machine that only he is good enough to work. Saw is a rebel so bad the rest of the rebels thinks he goes to far, which we know mostly from other star wars shows and movies and stuff, but he’s played by a great actor, so we want him in Andor. He threatens this mechanic kid to helping him, even though he’s there to help him already, and teach his own mechanic to do the job. But, ha-ha, it’s all a ploy to expose Saw’s mechanic as an Imperial spy, so Saw shoots him dead and says “even though I knew he was a spy, cause reasons, I needed you to teach him mechanic stuff he didn’t learn well first, THEN I could shoot him. So thanks. Oh, and since you’re the only mechanic here now, and you actually can run that machine, you’re stuck here for a while cause I need to you be my rebel mechanic.” We have to wait until later episodes for that excitement though.
While Andor is away, his wife is living in a run down apartment safehouse and is still dealing poorly with her PTSD from being tortured and almost raped, so now she’s taking drugs. Yes, drugs…in Star Wars! Oh no! But they’re in eye drop form, so don’t worry, no snorting or shooting up with needles. Luthen visits her and finds out she’s not doing well, so isn’t going to use her on missions. Luthen also has his own subplot where some hidden listening device he didn’t even want to plant on some guy, possibly the criminal Mon Mothma is mixed up with and who’s daughter married, is now about to be found, since one of his antiques was a fake and he wants to check the rest out. So, even though Luthen never really wanted to spy on him (because, just trust us, Luthen actually doesn’t want to spy on EVERYONE, just everyone except this one shady guy), he now needs to get rid of the bug before it’s found. So he and his radio operator assistant get into the party, and have to get it out during a big party the night before it’s found. When there, we get to see she is way more capable than just being a radio specialist, since she pretends to seduce the Imperial IBS agent working for them, as cover to get to the right antique, and then she turns some knob on the bottom to get the bug out, but it’s STUCK. Then we have some gripping (see what I did there) moments where she turns the knob underneath REALLY REALLY hard, and it makes her hand bleed. When the host comes by, we don’t know if she got the bug out or not, but we do know she’s bad ass enough to twist a knob hard enough to make her hand bleed without shouting in pain. But, yay, the got the bug out. To wrap things up, Andor comes back and gets really mad Luthen talked to his wife, and learned she’s struggling. So he and Luthen have a big shouting fight, right there in the antique store. Then, facing the reality of her struggles, he decided to help her deal with it by killing the evil imperial doctor who tortured her last season, together, as a couple. Luckly for Andor, the doctor recently came to Coruscant, and Andor just knows where he is. We, the audience know cause we got a scene with him, but how Andor knows, completely never said, but we get a scene of him and his wife killing him to make her overcome her demons. Maybe he was listed in the yellow pages. End of episodes 4-6, phew. Who can handle all that excitement?
Finally, after what seems like an actual year, we get to episodes 7-9, and things are about to get real! Andor will have some real kick ass stuff to do this time around. Gorman is heating up, the rebels there show that they can do stuff after all, and steal guns, get one of their own helpers from Luthen’s spy group killed (who has a whole side story and romance with Mon Mothma’s cousin, but really this whole Gorman rebel stuff was too boring in the last 3 episodes for me to care much about this bit basically going as we were told it was going to.) But now that they have guns, which apparently is a rare thing in Star Wars, the Empire is going to get really mean and set up some blockages around their massacre memorial statue and not let them go to the central square! How dare they! That’s really going to tick the Gorman rebels off, now they’ll certainly do something so bad, the Empire can squash them and steal their Kalcite they don’t know about and make their planet go boom. Sad imperial boyfriend starts to see just how mean the Empire is when this happens and starts calling his girlfriend and says, how could you have used me like this to do your dirty work and turn some completely not likely to rebel for massacring them civilians into gun thieves so you then can blocade their town square where I buy spider figurines for my mom. I feel like an accomplice to something so bad it would make every Alderanian cry out in pain and fear and then abruptly stop or something. So she comes to Gorman to take control of the final steps of the plan. And then ANDOR (remember, it’s actually his show) finds out she’s there, and decides, hmm, now that I’m on Yavin again, and it’s now a working rebel base (presumably without any of the super lame rebels from the first few episodes who there rebelling against the empty jungle) and us rebels are doing stuff (but mostly on the completely different show the animated, and much more aptly named Rebels), I’m going to go run off to assassinate Dierdra, cause she’s clearly the biggest threat out there, forget Vader, or Tarkin, or anything. She’s so evil she just looks joyless. So he disobeys orders, heads to Gorman to sniper rifle her. The Gormans are really pissed, but before they actually do anything about this, the Imperials remove their barricades, and open up the town square. So naturally, the Gormans calmly walk to the square to have a peaceful standing around their memorial event, and that makes Andor not have a good shot at Diedra, so he goes into the square too to find a better angle. Finally, something happens, and the Empire has their hidden, completely not obviously surrounding the square soldiers open fire on the crowd for doing nothing. All chaos breaks out, and also, for extra weirdness, the soldiers are all not storm troopers, except for the ones who are, but bizarrely don’t wear helmets, just like all those other times we see storm troopers fighting without helmets. So, Gormans are getting shot like fish in a barrel for a really long time, and Imperial boyfriend decides that’s bad, even though he’s been bad and okay with it all along, these spider loving silk weavers have won him over somehow, so he runs out unarmed to the square to I guess try to save them? This whole thing also really messes up Andor’s aim, so he aborts the assassination attempt and tries to get the hell out of town, occasionally shooting an Imperial, but only if they’re in the way, not to really try to save anyone. Oh, and Andor’s young friend the mechanic is there with the Gorman rebels now for some reason, and has a new girlfriend, so you know he’s staying. Then, sad boyfriend sees Andor, and gets all mad since he HATES Andor (see season 1 if you forgot), and abandons his plans to try to stop the Gorman massacre v2.0, to tackle Andor and rage at him. They have a big old fist fight while things get blown up around them. Andor rightfully says the best line of the series “Who the hell are you?”, and then kills him, vaguely wondering why some guy he never met had more screen time in the series named after Andor himself. But now, because a bunch of soldiers shooting unarmed civilians isn’t enough, the Empire lets loose their super strong killer droids, who start throwing unarmed civilians around like it’s a super hero movie, and ignore being shot by those who do have guns. Clearly an inferior Imperial weapon that would make no sense to use throughout the rest of the Star Wars series of movies, so we’ll never see them in any of the Episodes IV - VI. Andor finally gets away, but one of those droids is coming at him, and shooting it won’t stop it, it’s going to squish him like a Terminator, right? But since Andor IS the titular hero, and we know has a moving coming up with rogue one, he gets saved through no action or effort of his own by his friend the ladies man driving a truck into the droid and smashing it. Rebel boyfriend then leaves to do more Gorman rebelling, and Andor gets going, but then says “wait, those super efficient killer droids were pretty bad ass, I’m going to lift it’s two ton body my myself, off camera of course, into the truck and drive it back to my ship, since I clearly have droid re-programming skills that have never been mentioned, and I’ll turn this into my sarcastic droid buddy in the upcoming movie. (where, by the way it will continue to be a nigh-invulnerable killing machine so amazingly effective, the empire will never ever ever EVER use them again).
In the aftermath, a lot of Gormans die in the massacre, and it’s makes the Imperial news, so now we’re finally setting up the entire reason Mon Mothma is in this show, to leave the senate after giving a fiery speech. So there’s a bit of political plotting to allow her to give the speech, since the senate is now functioning as just a group of Emperor sycophants, but Bail Organa (Leia’s dad and senator of Alderan, as well as much more active in the rebellion in both this show and Rebels than Mon Mothma ever was), digs up a point of order to give his time to Mon Mothma. Then, snap! We get a fiery political speech imploring people to stop the atrocities (even though they’ve been going around for years and years, including a prior one at Gorman), and names the person who’s really to blame….Donald Trump! (nope, it’s actually Emperor Palpatine, but the speech really feels like watching a Democrat on C-span nowadays, and it was about this time on Star Wars Day May 4th, that we got Trump wielding a red sith lightsaber, so it all tracks). But then Mon Mothma is on the run, but Andor is there to extract her, fresh from the Gorman massacre, and he actually does a bit of cool stuff, but it’s pretty abbreviated, and nowhere near as good as Chris Hemsworth in Extraction. So back to Yavin for both of them, where Andor gets yelled at and sent home because he disobeyed orders. Also, his wife leaves him, because he keeps saying lets just retire and not fight the empire together, and she knows he won’t keep being an effective superspy (but only off camera) with her around.
Which brings us to episodes 10-12, the finale. Naturally, being a show all about Andor, he’s not in episode 10 at all. Instead, Luthen gets some info from his contact in the ISB that all along, Emperor Palpatine was EVIL and not actually building an energy program, but it’s really a superweapon. Because clearly no one suspected he was evil yet. And by calling it a superweapon, Luthen knows just how bad it is, even though it’s not mentioned it can destroy planets like they’re pinatas. So naturally, he shoots his informant dead. But now the ISB is onto him so he and radio girl need to escape, but one of them has to destroy the evidence. So Luthen does, and radio girl escapes, and has a lot of flashbacks to how he found her as a kid, and trained her to be a spy, because Luthen, as a disgruntled soldier is a master spy. Luthen gets captured before he can leave from destroying the radio, and then stabs himself with a dagger in front of Diedra before he can be brought in. She manages to save him and get him to a hospital where maybe they’ll be able to revive him. Then Diedra gets arrested herself for botching things up and stealing the investigation on Luthen from some other ISB guy. Radio girl then decides that since her flashbacks are over, she better do a one person spy mission herself (cause remember, she’s badass enough to turn a knob so hard her hand bleeds!) and goes into the hospital to kill Luthen before he can be tortured for secrets. By the way, the hospital in the heart of the Empire uses a 1970s looking machine to keep Luthen alive, because Bacta tanks are for losers, and only people like Luke Skywalker or Boba Fett can use those to survive just about anything. So we do get a somewhat cool spy infiltration where radio girl kills her mentor and father figure, very sad, and then she escapes. She’s probably the most capable character in this show, a dark horse for sure, but hey, why not, the show’s only called Andor for some reason. Finally, off to the safehouse, to use an old radio to call for help.
Back on Yavin, Andor is back in his own show again, and gets the secret radio call for help, and assumes it’s Luthen needing him, so he blows out of there again, disobeying orders, but now with his fully reprogrammed killer attack droid and best bud. So they fly in, go to the safehouse, while there’s a giant hunt for radio girl going on, by another squad of storm troopers who don’t wear helmets for some reason, and they finally isolate her location because she and Andor use the radio some more. So he goes in to rescue her, and killer droid sees bad guys follow them in. Andor gets pinned down and is pretty useless, but that’s ok, it’s his show, so lets have him saved by indestructible (unless you have a truck) killer droid who effortlessly mops the floor with bad guys. Then they all escape, and go back to Yavin, even though radio girl Doesn’t Want to Go to Yavin, because for reasons never explained, the Yavin rebels don’t like Luthen, cause he started the rebellion and that’s a good reason. Also Mon Mothma is there now and she worked with him for years, so clearly, bad blood there. Anyway, Andor gets her back with the secret superweapon information, and it’s so big, they’re going to need a movie to deal with getting those plans, so don’t expect any of that in the show, it’s already been filmed years ago in Rogue One. So they get back, and Andor’s constant disobeying orders and saving important people gets him house arrest, and they also choose to ignore the threat of the secret superweapon info. Until they check in with Saw Guerra, who says, yeah, that’s legit, I just wasn’t going to tell you. Season and series end with them saying, “hey Andor, you know how we put you under house arrest? Well forget that, you’ve got to lead this mission now that we didn’t believe you when you told us about, but some other rebel leader said it’s true, so you’re our man. Now have a dramatic walk through the rebel base to your ship so you can take off and go on another one of your completely not on camera secret awesome missions to get the movie started, and we’ll start the movie with you ending the mission with the information, cause no cool solo Andor mission can ever be shown.”

The End (finally)

Despite all this, I really have no clue why so many people think Andor is so amazing. I don’t think it’s the worst Star Wars ever (that’s clearly the Acolyte, followed by Episode VIII, lets pretend spaceships are submarines and Luke Skywalker is completely different from everything we’ve ever seen of him).

Most likely the rumors are due to some reshoots that did happen, and isn't uncommon for many movies to have. Could be extremely minor as well for technical reasons.

UK has multiple major studios and lots of high budget movies and TV shows are filmed there. It's not that unusual at all.

Liked the new trailer, except for the main plot. It's a perfectly fine plot of turning people against Superman, especially the government when it realizes they can't control him. That being said, I don't like it as a plot for the first Superman movie in a relaunch. Can't we just have Superman being adored for fighting for Truth, Justice and a Better Tomorrow for a movie first, and then in a 2nd or later movie have someone weaponize sentiment against him? It would feel a lot more earned of a plot line at that point.

Aberzombie wrote:

JoelF847 wrote:

Well, the trailer towards the end has Peacemaker meet himself, so maybe he goes to a different Earth? That could explain how he (and possibly some of his friends) get to the Gunnverse. Or, it could be that the Argus adjacent characters are basically about the same in both universes.

Good point. Although I dread the thought of more multiverse stuff.

hmmm....if you went through a Multiverse Door and found a version of yourself that is doing much better than you. How would you handle that?

How would Peacemaker handle that?

Maybe he kills and takes the place of his Gunnverse double.

I'm 100% betting on that.

Well, the trailer towards the end has Peacemaker meet himself, so maybe he goes to a different Earth? That could explain how he (and possibly some of his friends) get to the Gunnverse. Or, it could be that the Argus adjacent characters are basically about the same in both universes.

I've seen 4 and a half of the episodes so far, and by short review is that it's slightly better than the first season:

Andor Season 2, now 20% less boring! (but still very boring)

Longer review when I have a chance.

If there's ever an opportunity to backwards convert a PF2 adventure path, this is the one I'd want, since it would put the entire Runelord storyline in a single edition.

I'm not expecting Moon Knight though, as last we saw him, he was in the UK. Not saying he can't travel, but with all of the NYC (and NJ) choices they have, think it would be an odd choice.

I believe I read an interview a while back, before Born Again was out, where Tatiana Maslany said she'd love to return the favor and cameo in Daredevil. So that could just be wishful thinking on her part and saying she'd be happy to, or it could be Marvel using their actors to purposefully planting seeds in the media about future events, which they've been known to do.

As for Jessica Jones, that's almost a sure thing, since Krystin Ritter was seen in NYC just as DD season 2 started filming.

And Finn Jones has had recent interviews and media coverage with him saying he'd love to come back as Iron Fist, and he's aware of the criticisms, but to give him another change. So could be another Marvel driven media story he's putting out there to prime the pump for his return, or it could again be him just having wishful thinking and/or lobbying for it to happen.

I'd love to see Echo and the Hawkeyes also be in it. If Ms Marvel is in, I think it's also a given the Kate Bishop will be in, since the last we saw them was the post credit scene of Ms Marvel starting recruitment for Young Avengers. And there's a lot of not yet officially announced, but announced, indications that Hawkeye season 2 is happening, so getting them in more recent memory can only help.

I'm guessing that not only will the Defenders show up, but with the set up in the bank episode, Ms Marvel. Also, we can maybe see some associated characters, like Misty Knight, Hellcat, and Colleen Wing. Theoretically, Spiderman could, but I'd doubt that he will. Could be another nice easter egg though - even along the lines of him doing things off screen; "Spiderman is keeping the rest of the NYPD busy chasing him so we can deal with the anti vigilante squad without interference".

It looks like DD season 2 will come out in March 2026, and Spiderman Brand New Day wiull come out July 31st only a few months after season 2 ends. So there could also be some nice easter eggs in Spidey referring to being on the run from Mayor Fisk recently, even if he's not in season 2.

Disguise was a regular bit, but I don't recall him ever being disguised to a supernatural level and having a completely different actor play him. In the original Naked Gun, opening scene he's disguised as a waiter, just by his clothes. He's not played by a 4'2" 12 year old girl.

Smaller companies do it with 3P warehouse and distribution. While that may not have made sense in the past for Paizo, with >100% tariffs, it is a no brainer.

First of all, I've never even heard of Stop the Bleed training, so I would think that training isn't as common as say, CPR. Also, when someone is shot, everyone runs for safety, there aren't a lot of people running to the victim to give first aid.

AJCarrington wrote:

I don't expect manufacturers/published to absorb these taxes...so, prices are going to go up (especially for those of us here in the US).

Actually even more for us abroad, since Paizo will need to raise their book prices for everybody and then our own customs will tax the more expensive books even more. On the more expensive months (i.e. the ones with two hardcovers), I usually already had to pay an extra 30 Euros in import taxes on the books, this will now go up even more, depending on how Paizo handles the whole thing.

Of course the situation is still in basically daily fluctuation, but at some point Paizo will need to ship their monthly stuff. I think they are holding off for the moment in hopes that the tariffs may be suspended for another few months, but we'll have to see.

Why would they need to raise the price for everyone? They can just ship from China to somewhere in EU for shipping and fulfilment. It's just the US which would suffer higher prices once they adjust their operations.

This is a movie I don't think anyone was looking for, and quite honestly, they have such a high bar to meet, it feels like a poor idea to try. Would have been better to make their own police parody movie and not try to make it "Naked Gun".

For me, the trailer shows they failed to meet the bar, the whole bit about him disguising himself as a little girl was silly rather than funny to me, and off brand. Again, had they just gone for their own thing, wouldn't have been nearly such a problem to me.

What's the actual impact of the nighttime ship action:

Sleep: Go to bed early and sleep through the night
(automatically recover from fatigue)

Even if you chose another, wouldn't you still get 8 hours of rest (assuming you don't take extra night time actions) and therefore recover from fatigue anyway?

I guess if you're exhausted it can account for the extra hour of rest you need...

She could still have worshipers like other demigods, empyreal lord, etc. She was a human who passed the test of the starstone and became a deity. Just happened to also be a herald.

All reports say there were no re-shoots. They simply filmed half the season, realized it was bad, and started from scratch. Nothing I've seen said they salvaged anything from the first go at it.

Get your copy of the GAP now, before tariffs drastically increase the price.

Double episode week! Both were great, and both featured involvement from a fun character from other parts of the MCU. Hopeful for where some of those crossovers could lead.

Amazing season finale and end to season 3. While it's sad it's over, sources say season 4 is going to happen in 2026, though no word yet officially until Amazon officially schedules it, but from a production point of view they'll be ready in ~12 months.

Took me 2 nights to watch the 2 episodes that dropped, but it definitely delivered on all fronts for what I was looking for. Can't wait for the rest of the ride. I do hope they'll have a little bit of the 6 year gap filled in by flashbacks though. Don't want a full flashback every episode, or a whole episode of it, but some bits filling in the gaps would be nice.

Finally caught up, and once again Invincible is excellent. I'm sure we'll see more of the dragon, with that end episode scene. I really enjoy how the show handles both the meta plot of the Viltramites as well as interweaves episode of the week stuff. Wish more shows could handle that balance.

Just finished my last campaign, and need several new players to start up a new one. We will be playing online using Foundry VTT, and the returning players are all in the Seattle area, but that's not a requirement to play. We historically have played Tuesday nights 7-10 PM PST, but could potentially change to another weeknight other than Friday. We will likely start the campaign 1 month after a group is assembled, to give me some prep time.

The campaign itself will be a pre-published adventure path or campaign, but not Rise of the Runelords, Shattered Star, Return of the Runelords or Kingmaker. Tentatively looking at Strange Aeons, but can be flexible. Also have a few non-Paizo AP options which could work. Once we have a full group, we can collectively decide.

The game is PF1, with several years of house rules. Most are small balance changes for specific spells, items, etc., though a few are more global (such as a reduced number of bonus types). Generally, I'm open to anything published by Paizo, and will consider 3P content after I review it.

Just finished running the campaign, and wanted to share how I adjusted the final encounter with Alaznist. I had her put a maximized sirroco spell in the entire runewell which of course didn't hurt her or her allies since they have fire immunity there. But as a maximized version, it did enough damage to beat resist energy if the players failed a saving throw, and that combined with the Fly checks (which I increased to be the same as the spell DC) it was a very unexpected challenge for the players.

Final two episodes last night were a lot of fun. Paid off on lots of things from earlier in the season, and did a lot of cool set up for next season as well. Strongly recommend.