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Allronix

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  1. The only thing I can hang on Senya is garbage taste in men. She tried, quite heroically, to break in and grab Vaylin, but it not work. She was too screwed up. She and the boys all chose their abomination of a father over her, even though that dar'buir hardly deserves the recognition of anything past sperm donation. Remember, Valkorian was her king and lord - their relationship wasn't even a formal marriage! She was just his mistress and a common soldier with absolutely no pull from within the Empire, not even over her own kids. After realizing that she was not going to win because her abomination ex held all the power, and she would have absolutely no support or help, even from the kids themselves, she grudgingly accepted the L and went back to serving the Eternal Empire. But she's still a mama, and when the Alliance gave her another chance to try and reach her kids again? She's gonna take it. Thing is, I was all set on killing Arcann because forget him and all the stunts he pulled on my characters, but it wasn't worth it to kill Senya to do it. I snark at the screen in my Inquisitor voice "Be VERY nice to your Mummy, little boy. She is the only reason you are still breathing."
  2. My Consular would want to take her back to the Order to be rehabilitated or put on trial because Shadows are "Good not Nice." My Bounty Hunter would try and stay out of it. Sa'har is not her problem - Hetta is. And she's got enough mixed feelings about the Hidden Chain. I headcanon that she regrets how the whole Cadera thing on Taris panned out ("Torian, your dad went about it the wrong way, but he may not have had the wrong idea. There really isn't any honor in hooking ourselves to the Empire."), and knows that if circumstances were just a little different, she'd have been dragged down with the Revanites or signed up with the Chain. My Inquisitor? "I'll take any help I can, darling. Can say I'm highly ANNOYED by how the Jedi separated you and your brother? Not much different from Sith or slavers, I suppose. But, the Force gave you a chance to break a few chains, starting with this Hidden one. Now, what I'll ask in return if this all pans out is to do what you can to break the chains of others. Fry a few slavers, scare a tyrant or two. It's merely a suggestion, however. Once your chains are broken, you can do as you wish."
  3. I solo play a lot, and my main is a Shadow Tank. Stealth to avoid the annoyances, durability to deal with the stuff that's a bit tougher than mere annoyances. Good spec to just run around and explore the game world, hunt datacrons, run dailies, do story missions, etc.
  4. Yup. Same old me. Used this handle for almost 30 years now and see little to no reason to change it. And yeah, the Expanded U did a lot to help rehab Qui-Gon (it also did a lot of things to not rehab the guy, see Jedi apprentice). It also softened the whole Shmi and Cleigg situation to something far less gross. And that's what I think Legends/Expanded U does best, because Lucas world-builds like a champ, yet leaves all these uncomfortable bits behind that make his heroes much less heroic. (His villains are always completely vile, so no worry about undue sympathy there) When presented with this gap, you can either lean in to the messed up angle or you can try and step back and try to make it not as bad as it looks like with a good explanation.
  5. The third and final strike was the slave army. As far as Lucas is concerned, he has this recurring thing that organic is superior to mechanical. See the whole deal with the Empire - all shiny and chrome. And Vader, more machine than man. (On a related note, while it was needed for Vader to survive Mustafar with horrible burns, the way it was handled was also a "Huh?!" as far as the Jedi compassion front. I could get it if Obi-Wan could not reach him or if it was a reasonable assumption that dude was dead, but leaving him there to burn without putting out the flames or a mercy kill? Huh?) So of course, Lucas Logic is that the clone soldiers are organic beings, which makes them okay for Jedi, but "not of woman born," which makes it not an issue about the WHY they were born (or maybe some weird ideal state...see his sexism problems above). Human enough for the organic Jedi to work with, as compared to the technological droid army, but not human enough for the slavery issue to occur to him. And because of the slavery issue, Disney has to pile on increasingly convoluted bits like the control chips and go out of their way to show happy clone slaves...er, soldiers...serving their wonderful, benevolent overseers....er, Jedi. And it's all the fault of those meenie Republic citizens who forced the poor widdle Jedi into taking care of their wonderful clones... Uh. Yeah. Keep digging Lucas. Add this to Shimi's handling and I'd wonder if you also unironically sided with the South in a civil war film. Add this to the child soldier angle (the only time we see a youngling class in the PT, they are not studying meditation, or languages, or playing. They are training how to use a weapon that maims at best. They are training how to kill, and Lucas frames it as all cute and adorable), and I was pretty much ready to storm out and never even touch anything with the Star Wars label again. Sadly, this colored my view of the OT. no longer did I see Obi-Wan as a benevolent teacher or Yoda as a wise and kindly old man. Instead, I saw a pair of people who failed to turn Luke's dad into their fabled anti-Sith weapon, so they had to lie and manipulate the hell out of Luke to be that weapon instead. they didn't tell Luke not to go to Bespin out of concern for his safety, they just worried about the truth coming out. They weren't telling Luke "Hey, Han and Leia are soldiers and they know the risks. Don't make their sacrifice in vain," it was "If we toss Han under the bus, it's okay. He's nothing. Leia, more regrettable, but still okay. But if Luke doesn't have those messy friendships to distract him, he'll be more motivated to go and kill Sith and be completely loyal to us because he has nothing else. And hopefully, he never figures out we're setting him up on a wetworks op on his dad." KOTOR was what convinced me to give Star Wars another chance after being so disgusted with Lucas having the nerve to ask me to cheer on a faction of child soldiers and slaves. That and Karen Traviss, take it as you will. Instead of trying to mitigate or apologize or hide the sheer "Wow, this is f---ed up!", they totally lean in and go in as hard as they can on the f---ed up. Whether it's the Clones understanding they're slaves and having an uneasy relationship with the Jedi while embracing the "third option" style Mandalorian. Or sympathetic Sith like Yuthura Ban, who does more to explain the Sith in six minutes than Lucas did in six movies. Or the sheer "how many levels of f---ed up can we put on one ship" that was KOTOR 2, or how no one really knew or cared about the difference between Jedi and Sith. Or how Kreia laid out a devastating case arguing the Force was anything but benevolent. Or SWTOR where we have Malgus "marrying" his sex slave, then killing her in her sickbed because some other sith pointed out she's a potential weakness. Or a Jedi purposefully inflating the crimes against the Bounty Hunter (who really is a nasty sort, but not quite THAT bad), or Nomen Karr hiding how screwed up he's become out of revenge, etc. I mean, the Empire is a fascist, gas station toilet run by idiots and madmen, whose emperor is an omnicidal nutjob. Clearly the bad guys. The Jedi and the Republic are far better by comparison, but only by comparison.
  6. Okay, wall o text Number Two. After the Jedi managed to make exactly the wrong impression in TPM? Well, maybe it was just a bad day on everyone's part and we just started on the wrong foot. Surely this new film will show us just how wonderful these guys are... Well, once again, they're pretty much the Senate's not so secret police and enforcers. Um...okay, Kenobi just sliced someone's arm off again and it's not some dive bar in a lawless dump like Mos Eisley, but a dance club in the middle of the capital city. Shouldn't there be some actual oversight here? And the whole "Jedi business, go back to your drinks..." Uh...this kind of "maiming a suspect in public" is not only acceptable, but apparently standard procedure? This is a universe where reliable stun weapons exist, so why are those not used? So less than thirty minutes in and we already see some pretty interesting (if gross) use of permanent injury brute force on an uncharged suspect. And after a decade in the care of Jedi (who Lucas has called "intergalactic therapists") Anakin has grown from a sweet, reasonably well-adjusted little boy to...an emotionally needy, mentally unstable hot mess who thinks violence is the answer to everything. Isn't the point not to make the patient worse? Well, I guess if you want to shape a child into a living weapon, this is what you'll get. (Well, that and Darth Zannah, but she's a different story) Okay, Anakin and Padme are a complete disaster in the making. They were put in the spotlight way too young by adults who didn't give a damn about them as people, only about what those gifted kids could do for THEM. It clearly shows, and they're going to be like two ex-child stars who run off to Vegas after a weekend. Okay, confirmation the Jedi did absolutely nothing for Shmi. Explains the Lars connection, though. And here's where I have another big problem. Lucas points to the funeral as an example of healthy love versus unhealthy; Lars stating "thank you" at Shmi's grave (meaning that he "let go" of her in a healthy way) where Anakin goes "I miss you" (which centers it on him and his own feelings and is an unhealthy clinging). Here's the ugly part; Lars BOUGHT Shmi like a household appliance and then apparently discovered a bed warming function. Okay, he "freed her," so what? Where could she really go if she wanted to leave him aside from back to a slave pit? The "healthy" relationship Lucas argues, is the one where the woman is purchased like a tool by the male and has no autonomy or choice. Meanwhile, the woman who has the wealth and social class to freely choose her mate is the one who is the "unhealthy" relationship. See the issue here? And then we get into the hoary old sexist tropes of women being a threat to male sanity and a dangerous temptation away from the proper male role of being warriors. She has more social and political power than him, and that can't fly. So, she falls under the category of being an unwitting destroyer of the Heroic Age, like Guinevere of Arthurian Mythos, Helen of Troy, Pandora, or Eve. If she was a "good woman" minding her place, then she wouldn't hook up with Anakin, and he would be Ultimate Sith Slayer because he wouldn't be distracted by the love of a woman. Now add that the only female Jedi with a speaking part in the PT was Jocasta Nu, who fit safely into "harmless old crone" because she provided nothing of use. Yeah, Lucas has some issues here. And it's a bit like the Buddhist monks of Edo Japan who saw women as ritually impure and unclean, something that was an annoying distraction to good, holy men. (Misogyny - not just for Abrahamic religions!)
  7. Totally agreeing here. And I think it has to do with some Death Star sized blind spots on Lucas's part. And this rant will be long, so it needs to go into several walls of text. I'm old enough to have seen ROTJ in a theater and got a crash course in the Legends during college because my sister's roomies were just big old nerds (so was I but didn't know there WAS an Expanded U until then). But given our West End tabletop session was Rebellion era, I knew very little about Jedi. We just had Lucas's word to go on; these supposedly wonderful people who were all about peace and solving conflicts without violence, but lit their sabers as a last resort to protect the innocent. And then TPM came out. Now, I go and see it with my niece (really, my pal's kid). My pal is a disabled, widowed veteran. Neoliberal policies being what they are, her benefits kept getting shorted and I was working extra shifts to make sure the kid ate. Said kid is, at the time, nine years old. Same age as Anakin. Single mom and impoverished, same as Anakin. Now, Lucas is operating off the fairy tale motif of the young hero having to leave the comforts of mother and home and be a brave little boy to meet his destiny. I was in the theater watching this jackass from a very powerful organization lie, manipulate, and do end runs over every damn ethical guideline in the book to get what HE wanted - The All Powerful, Almighty Order's potential Ultimate Sith Killer just showed up! He wasn't there to free slaves, but he sure could crash on a slave's sofa, raid her fridge, take advantage of her hospitality, conduct a blood test on her kid with no consent...and when the blood test turned out to show the kid was what HE wanted? Well, to hell with the best interest of the kid and to hell with this impoverished, desperate woman in need of the help only a so-called Guardian of Peace and Justice could provide who is still helping him out of the goodness of her heart. He's going to lie, cheat, manipulate, forcibly separate the two, leave Shmi to rot with a bomb in her head, and drag this child off to be shaped into a living weapon for his powerful, Almighty Organization! Would my pal give up her kid if it gave her a roof over her head, regular meals, an education, and a way out of desperate poverty, even if it hurts her? Sure. Would I want to take a baseball bat and tell anyone who is making this kind of devil's bargain to get off the lawn and perform some unprintable acts with said bat? Yup. Okay, so maybe this Qui-Gon guy is just a stupid cowboy with entitlement issues who doesn't see the problem of exploiting a slave to get what he wants. Let's see what happens when we get the kid in front of the people in charge. Surely they know how to handle a scared, Force Sensitive nine year old. Aaaaand they way they handle a scared Force Sensitive nine year old is to haul him in a room full of creepy old men, lock the door, leave him to be interrogated by these creepy old men for hours, then freak out and scold the poor kid for being homesick, scared, and missing the mother that was left in slavery in the hands of a dirtbag and these "wise and compassionate defenders of peace and justice" have NO #@#@$ intention of HELPING HER OUT OF THAT! They'll bend over backwards for the rich and powerful, like Padme, Vallorum, Palpatine...but the only powerless, helpless civilian in the entire kriffing trilogy, and they won't do bantha crap, aside from take her little boy away so he can be turned into a living weapon and pointed at their enemies. Oh, but he's too old? Really? Nine years old is too old for you clowns to shape him into a proper living weapon?! How young do you need your recruits to be...oh. You need BABIES. And you need them to never see or know their parents/caretakers. Order is mother, Order is Father, Order is your friends, trust the Jedi Order, I guess. (Yuck. Child soldiers should be the first indication your asses are not the good guys here) Okay. So we're supposed to agree with Yoda because this is future Vader. and these wise and compassionate Jedi are going to make an exception and take this obviously unsuited boy under their wing, and he is ungrateful and hurts them because no good deed goes unpunished. Instead, I wanted to punt Yoda through the Lambeau uprights, punch Qui-Gon, and drag that kid back to his mom after getting enough cash to free her and get them both to safety.
  8. Let's just cut right to the chase and go Vitiate/Valkorian/whatever the kriff he's calling himself this week. I've snarked about this on Reddit and other spots. If Rey is a Sue, she's a three inch pocket knife of Sue. Vitiate is the freaking "I'm totally compensating" Buster Sword of Sue. Grossly overpowered compared to everything else in the setting (conquered a continent and imprisoned Daddy in a holocron at AGE 10?! Bantha $@!$%!), has some Artifact of Intelligence Drain on everyone else in the setting (what was done to Revan and Exile was CRIMINAL - you mean to tell me the alleged tactical geniuses behind the defeat of the Mando'ade were so STUPID they walked into an obvious trap with NO contingency plans or attempt to WARN the Republic, thus ensuring the Pubs got caught with their pants down?! Not to mention why hasn't any Darths wondered what the nine hells he's up to. And then there's Senya, who REALLY got hammered with the effect...), rubbishly boring motivation, bloviating speeches (though DePaul did a great job almost making them sound good), and basically twirling his mustache manipulating people that should be smarter and being annoying as hell. Worse, since that overpowered Stu has pulled a "Fooled you! I ain't dead!" twice already, I really don't think he's going to STAY dead as long as they need some go-to baddie off the shelf.
  9. Justifications for Sabotuer as far as I can see it: Inquisitor: "Yes, dearie. I know the Empire took me off the auction block and I rose in the ranks to sit on the Dark Council. But do you REALLY expect me to forget the Empire put that chain on my neck in the first place? Through Victory, my Chains are broken. And I have NO interest in being chained to the Empire again." Bounty Hunter: "Torian, your dad may have been going about it the wrong way, but I think he was right. The Empire's treated us as their pet dogs and the Children of Mandalore have never benefited from the arrangement. Time to alter the deal." Warrior: "I have my own Empire now. Why should I bother propping up yours?" Agent: "You're hopelessly corrupt and inept. You treated the Intelligence Services as glorified janitors and left us to hang when we needed the Empire and the Empire needed us. Time to pay back the favor." --------------------- Trooper: "All that loyalty I showed to the Republic and for what? So you can get Suresh in there and have her try and kill me? So you can throw Havoc under the transport? Disgrace Jorgan and Dorne? The Imps at least TRIED to help while you sat on your shebs." Smuggler: "Look, I'm not loyal to governments; just my people. Now that I know how fickle your goodwill really is? I'll go with the people who tried to help mine." Consular: "The Empire realized we had a common goal and a common enemy and made overtures of truce and an alliance. The Republic repaid our loyalty by trying to assassinate me. They also let my friend (or husband) rot in a mad scientist's torture chamber for years. As much as I regret it, I won't betray my allies for those who betrayed me." Knight: "A Republic who abandons its people to Vitiate's rule and cruelty is not a Republic worth defending. And all my overtures of friendship and please for help went unanswered. Was my fight against him all for nothing?"
  10. The Empire can only do one thing well, and that's wage war. Every resource their have is blown on the war machine. Every aspect of their training is meant to weed out all but the most dangerous warriors. That, and they had the Mando'ade in their back pockets for centuries (Sorry, Torian. Your dad was completely RIGHT). They also have a brutal cross of theocracy and military dictatorship that ensures that every resource is thrown at war, and an economic base made of slave labor that frees up the humans and Sith species from having to perform grunt work. The Republic is very good at a lot of different things, but war really ins't their long suit. Much has been made of Republic sluggishness and corruption compared to Imperial "efficiency" (in reality, the Imps make decisions quicker, but it's often a stupid decision that leads to short term gains and long term headache). Their military and Force users are not offense-based. It takes the Republic longer to react to a threat, and they aren't usually the ones who strike first. That, and that $#@$%#@$#% IDIOT Revan charging in without so much as WARNING the Republic that the Empire still existed, meaning that the Pubs got caught with their pants down while the Imps had 300 years to prepare. The Republic is just STARTING to seriously fight back come Act 3 of the vanilla story while the Imps have been doing damage since 20 years before the opening scenes. The average Imp versus the average Pub? Yeah, the Imperial will likely come out ahead because all those lunatics know how to do is fight. Imps are glass cannon DPS, Pubs are stone wall tanks. A DPS can take down a tank if they overwhelm that tank, but if the tank can stay up, they'll wear down the DPS. Strategy-wise, the Republic knows the Imps do more damage to themselves than they do to the Republic, so the Republic isn't necessarily fighting to win, it's fighting to stay alive long enough for the inevitable self-destruct. This probably explains why they were so frustratingly passive during the KOTFE and KOTET arcs; they recognized Zakuul was operating with the same playbook as the Imperials and figured the best option was to hunker down, make some popcorn, and wait for the self-destruct.
  11. Most of these are for KOTFE/KOTET 1. Have the option to exile Arcann, imprison him, or turn him over to one of the factions for a trial. I spared him mostly because it wasn't worth killing his mama, but the kid still needs to own his crimes. 2. Tell Acina and Malcolm that they're both idiots and to argue for a cease fire while we figure out who is setting all three of us up for an obvious trap and make them painfully sorry they tried. Now, the rest can play out with one of them going for that throne and you have to make a snap call on which one you prevent from sitting in the literal hot seat (which acts like a faction choice), but it would be nice to be the adult in the room with both factions insisting on fighting out their grudges when they're both too bloodied to stand. 3. Point out to Lana the painfully obvious; Tharon's background and training are SiS. SiS are a bunch of lunatics prone to going off the reservation and pulling one man infiltration ops that are just as brave as they are destructive. 4. Restore those class companion quests that were planned, but never really panned out. 5. Something silly or a breather like the Citadel DLC from ME3.
  12. Skadge: Dude, you're not just an ugly creep, you're an ugly, brutish and rather stupid creep. Given my LS BH's druthers, she would have stripped him down to his underwear and a holdout pistol, then dumped him in some remote sector of Belsalvis. Xalek: Get lost. I already have an apprentice. I don't need to recruit anyone crazier than I am, since i'm insane enough for a whole asylum AND have a bunch of ghosts following me. Broonark: Again, bloodthirsty and crazy is not a combination I like hanging about my ship. I do the bloodthirsty and crazy around here. DS!Jaesa: Oh, nope. Nope. Nope! That's what you call "succeeding a little too well." I was hoping for a proper apprentice, not this bunny boiling whackjob. Doc: You are trying to be charming and fail at every step. Maybe you should be selling used speeders instead of practicing medicine. When you make Cedrax look like a class act, you failed "charming." I think a LOT of F!Knights were glad for the expansions because he stinks as far as romance option.
  13. I've heard that Quinn could be killed off early on once you found out he was two-timing you with Baras. Only reason they cut that part was because he was the healer companion and a Warrior kinda needed one of those, as none of their classes can be speced for that. I also heard that Quinn was supposed to be a romantic option for either gender of SW. I also heard the Balmorra Star Fortress recruit was supposed to be Zenith, and I wonder why that didn't pan out as they have Baker on speed dial already. It would make sense that Mr. "Head Tails, Sniper Rifle, and Attitude Problem" would be just as cheesed off at Zakuul camping out on Balmorra as Imperials invading. Balmorra is a polluted, bug-infested dumpster fire of a planet, but it's HIS polluted, bug-infested dumpster fire.
  14. Under the "Murphy's Law of FP" 1. It queued me as a DPS when I was in tank gear and tank spec. Maybe I didn't have it clicked off, or maybe it's a bug (I've had both). 2. This was a good thing, as this was Master Mode Red Reaper (a first rate pain in the shebs, even on Veteran). The tank was not only underleveled (55) and undergeared (Level 50 gear), but had never run the FP before! 3. The FP was in progress, and they got to the bridge and the big bot. We managed to skate by that and up to the pyramids. Tank gets a little too close to one of the mooks I didn't stun. OOPS! And gets knocked back into second mob. OOPS!! 4. Okay. We manage to limp through that mess. Tank gets knocked off the light bridge near the door leading to the end boss. We square away the last two mooks and get into Darth Iokal's big chambers. 5. We get clobbered. Seriously. Clobbered. Healer, Tank, and I know the mechanics, but the other DPS completely ignores the "GET BEHIND THE ADD!" shouts we keep shouting at them. Iokal enrages and wipes us. 6. We try...three more times. Eventually, idiot DPS rage quits. No big loss, as they weren't following directions. 7. Tank is still undergeared. We wipe again. 8. Tank is too tired, admits defeat, and quits. It's down to healer and me. 9. Figuring we haven't got anything to lose, we pop some L50 Comps for DPS. For added irony, I broke out Theron and he breaks out Lana. 10. WE BEAT THE BOSS. Just a tank mislabled as DPS, a really good healer, two L50 comps, and knowing how to work companion mechanics so Lana and Theron didn't stand in the stupid and could get behind the chosen when targeted (set to passive, get behind mook, have them follow) 11. I friended the healer and he did the same. Figured anyone who could adequately two man that fight was totally worth running more fights with.
  15. I've had the queue pop a few times. It's RARE, but it happens. Most of the time, it's some folks on fleet going "Need 1 TANK, 2 DPS for GF Op" My style is more or less "tank for hire." I am in a guild, and sometimes raid with them. But most of the time? Yeah, I'm watching Endgame chat or queued up while I dink around doing dailies, WZ, FP...whatever strikes my fancy. Somehow, I blundered my way into being...not the best tank on the server, but one that gets calls from several guilds if their usual tank is MiA, or they have a newbie that they need to teach. I'm actually pretty stoked if that GF for OPS pops up, since it just means that I have a chance to play with folks I may not have run across before. Blowing through an op with experienced players is nice, but sometimes a group that has a good sense of humor despite losing more in repairs than the op pays out is more fun.
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