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    1. Thoughts on rewatching the Star Wars Prequels: Why Anakin's story didn't work.

      So, i just rewatched the prequel trilogy and had soem thoughts, far removed from my first watching, and also after the new films, The Clone Wars, Rebels etc. It comes down to this. If you don't...

      So, i just rewatched the prequel trilogy and had soem thoughts, far removed from my first watching, and also after the new films, The Clone Wars, Rebels etc.

      It comes down to this. If you don't buy the Anakin arc, it doesn't matter how good or bad the rest is, it all fails. And for many of us, we don't buy it, for several reasons.

      • There is really NO foreshadowing in The Phantom Menace (TPM) that Anakin will turn bad. He's the blonde, ever helpful, committed to others all American good kid. Missing out on putting something in here was insane. Also, relying on the acting talents of a kid this young is rarely going to work out. I think the only thing they tried to do was show he had 'attachments' to peopel which was incompatible with Jedi-ism, but this wasn't greatly effective. It always seemed to clash with the emphasis on connections between peopel Obi-wan talks about in ANH.

      • I don't find the relationship between Padme and Anakin believable. I mean, I don't think anyone does. Remember this is basically THE lever for his shift to the dark side. An awful script and terrible acting aside, I don't see how it was ever going to be believable. He had a boyish crush, she is interested in youngsters? There is no development fo their relationship to speak of, he's sold from minute 1 and she doesn't seem to have any journey to falling for him. Maybe he radiates a midichlorian pheromone? I don't see what we are supposed to think drove the relationship, even had the script, acting and direction been on point. And there were so many better ways to do it. Make them the same (ish) age when they met? Then you'd have a teenage crush as an ember they both carried that reignites later. There are many other ways, but it almost seems like they didn't try any of them.

      • Anakin's dark side is tied to teenage against not to character traits. He's as emo as Kylo Ren would be later. The greatest danger to the galaxy is teenage hormones and the rage that comes from intractable acne. Again its exacerbated by the acting/dialogue/direction but still. His darkness is all driven by protecting people, but very selectively some people over others. And the other part is his entitlement, that he deserves more, which is really not compatible with the character in TPM. Also, he is selective what barriers he maintains. He never goes back for his mum but he is happy to get jiggy with Padme. If protection of those he loves is his main driver, why didn't this happen in any way between TPM and AotC.

      • Anakin's seduction by Palpatine is silly. Its related to the point above. I guess if you don't buy the internal driver for his change, the external one makes little sense either. He preys on the weaknesses he exhibits, but the shift to him believing patent untruths is too abrupt. We aren't shown enough for it to be believable. Had we seen Palpatine messing with the minds fo others more directly, that might have helped, but we didn't get that. Again there were so many other ways to do this. If he'd fooled Anakin into inadvertently doing soemthign really bad, he coudl have then revealed himself and basically said that if Anakin fessed up then it would also hurt those he loved. But no its 'i have a vague idea of maybe stopping an unknown future threat to your weirdly inappropriate wife, pls go kill soem kids, m'kay?'. All we get is some iffy bad dreams, but again with no previous intriduction of Anakin as prophetic, thats not very convincing. Had that, say, been established earlier, it might have worked better. .

      • Anakin's change to Darth Vader (suit and all) is too quick. I think they wanted to show the entombing of Anakin, and i get that, but they jumped right to the last stage. Had they shown essentially the v0.5 beta of the suit it might have been much better. Think the hilarious home made spiderman costume in the Toby Mcguire versions, ot the MNk1 iron man suit. It would have given us Vader but left for a sense of time between RotS and ANH.

      • [ Added, forgot this before] - Anakin seems nothing like OT Darth Vader. The mannerisms, tone, style and feeling fo the two are hugely different. If you watch the end of RotS then the start of ANH, you get this right away. Again had you had the feeling the metamorphosis took longer it might have worked, but with the presto chango Vader makeover, its more jarring

      So there are a gazillion other issues with the films. Some narrative, some continuity, many script, some racial, mostly all summed up as 'George Lucas made ANH accidentally, and peaked at that'. I will list a few in a comment below that occurred to me on this rewatch, but the core is this. The Original Trilogy is the Story of Luke. The prequels are the Story of Anakin. Had this worked better, i think we'd have been able to overlook the rest muuuuch more easily. There were missed opportunities all over the place. Maybe when they reboot the prequels :-D soem of this can be fixed up.

      7 votes
    2. Are tags case sensitive?

      This occurred to me, for later when things are tagged by different people, will capitalisation matter? I'd suggest better it doesn't, makes it easier to see things that were intended to be tagged...

      This occurred to me, for later when things are tagged by different people, will capitalisation matter? I'd suggest better it doesn't, makes it easier to see things that were intended to be tagged the same way.

      You could even consider allowing spaces in tags but ignoring them when identifying which tags are equivalent.

      5 votes
    3. If this website wants to be popular and wants to reach critical mass, why is it Invite-only? (This applies in general too)

      I don't really understand this model unless server costs are a concern. Google+ did that years ago and it honestly was a failure. It's just one more step for registering as they are not like...

      I don't really understand this model unless server costs are a concern. Google+ did that years ago and it honestly was a failure.

      It's just one more step for registering as they are not like restricting the number of invites. Was just wondering that.

      12 votes
    4. My personal top twenty albums

      1. brand new - the devil and god are raging inside me post-hardcore, emo 2. nine inch nails - the downward spiral industrial rock 3. ratboys - gn indie rock, post-country 4. la dispute - somewhere...

      1. brand new - the devil and god are raging inside me

      post-hardcore, emo

      2. nine inch nails - the downward spiral

      industrial rock

      3. ratboys - gn

      indie rock, post-country

      4. la dispute - somewhere at the bottom of the river between vega and altair

      post-hardcore, screamo, spoken word

      5. brand new - déjà entendu

      emo, pop-punk

      6. kraftwerk - radio-aktivität

      prog-synth

      7. this town needs guns - animals

      midwest emo, math-rock

      8. toe - for long tomorrow

      post-rock, math-rock

      9. brand new - science fiction

      post-grunge, art rock

      10. kraftwerk - trans europa express

      prog-synth

      11. american football - american football

      midwest emo, math-rock

      12. kent - isola

      post-rock, shoegaze

      13. godspeed you black emperor - f#a#infinity

      post-rock, ambient

      14. kraftwerk - autobahn

      prog-synth, krautrock

      15. godspeed you black emperor - lift your skinny fists like antennas to heaven

      post-rock, drone, ambient

      16. chvrches - the bones of what you believe

      synthwave

      17. camp cope - camp cope

      indie folk

      18. steve reich - music for 18 musicians

      minimalism

      19. weezer - pinkerton

      indie rock, emo

      20. now now - threads

      indie rock, shoegaze


      i have a rym page as well, but i rate albums on broader criteria there, so the list is a bit different

      feel free to recommend stuff ^-^

      9 votes
    5. Best linux distro and/or tiling window manager for a small touch screen?

      There seems to be a solid community of Linux people growing here, so thought I might try asking... I'm building a head unit for my car, using a Raspberry Pi to a 7" (and eventually 10-14") touch...

      There seems to be a solid community of Linux people growing here, so thought I might try asking...

      I'm building a head unit for my car, using a Raspberry Pi to a 7" (and eventually 10-14") touch screen.

      I'd like to have a fast-booting Linux distro with tiling windows that lets me set up a config file to launch a bunch of programs that are tiled perfectly edge to edge, with minimal border (a 1px line us OK), minimal header (just the name of the program? or none at all maybe), and have them all locked in place so I can't accidentally drag one or resize one when touching audio controls, for example.

      The idea is to have a few windows, such as an audio player, a GPS map, 2 dash cam feeds, and an OBDII style sensor readouts, all on screen at the same time, each sized differently.

      I've got each individual program working fine on Raspbian right now, but no idea how to go about the tiling-on-boot, locking them in place, etc.

      Can I do it with Raspbian with some specific window manager? or do I need a different distro?

      Thanks in advance.

      8 votes
    6. Raspberry Pi or Arduino projects

      So I've nearly finished my exams and am going to have a bunch of free time soon. I want to try and learn to do some electronics stuff. I already have an Arduino and Pi and have done the basic...

      So I've nearly finished my exams and am going to have a bunch of free time soon. I want to try and learn to do some electronics stuff. I already have an Arduino and Pi and have done the basic flashing lights projects, but want to try something a bit more interesting (but not too expensive either)

      14 votes
    7. Universal Settings

      I think having the theme settings be universal as long as you are logged into your account would be nice. For example, if I log in on my browser I have Dark Theme set. However, if I log in on my...

      I think having the theme settings be universal as long as you are logged into your account would be nice. For example, if I log in on my browser I have Dark Theme set. However, if I log in on my phone it defaults to light theme.

      I assume as more settings are added (e.g - turn off custom group stylesheets if those are added) it woud be nice to not have to go reconfigure settings on various devices.

      6 votes
    8. MTG Pro Tour Dominaria starts today, anyone else watching?

      I've been out of the MTG scene for a while but I'm going to try to follow today in the background while I work. I'm really interested in how things go with the PT pushed back a few weeks from...

      I've been out of the MTG scene for a while but I'm going to try to follow today in the background while I work. I'm really interested in how things go with the PT pushed back a few weeks from release, it doesn't sound like we're expecting any breakout decks to pop up. It should be starting right about now, the stream is available on Twitch.

      9 votes
    9. Summer Potluck Favorites

      I'm in the U.S. and Summer potluck season is upon us. What are your favorite crowd-pleasers? I recently made this Mexcian Street Corn Salad for a work event and it went over really well. That was...

      I'm in the U.S. and Summer potluck season is upon us. What are your favorite crowd-pleasers? I recently made this Mexcian Street Corn Salad for a work event and it went over really well. That was branching out for me. I feel like I always make the same two tired potluck dishes and would love to hear yours.

      6 votes
    10. Nouveau (open source Nvidia graphics drivers)

      So I tried to install sway on my desktop today. This required a lot of fiddling, as I had to pull in bleeding-edge dependencies for the Wayland libraries, and had to build the compositor framework...

      So I tried to install sway on my desktop today. This required a lot of fiddling, as I had to pull in bleeding-edge dependencies for the Wayland libraries, and had to build the compositor framework wlroots. Finally however, I had everything compiled and ready to go and....

      Proprietary Nvidia drivers are not supported. Use Nouveau.

      I had completely forgotten that sway requires open-source Nvidia drivers. So - has anyone had experience using Nouveau? How usable is it from day-to-day? How noticeable is the performance hit when switching from proprietary drivers?

      8 votes
    11. Anyone like Pokemon Go?

      I had this game on my phone for awhile but only just started last night. So far I think it's neat what kinds of landmarks can be pokestops, like a little fountain by a restaurant or a very old...

      I had this game on my phone for awhile but only just started last night. So far I think it's neat what kinds of landmarks can be pokestops, like a little fountain by a restaurant or a very old building. It also reminds me of those pokewalker things from long ago, the ones that counted your steps. It also kills me when a church is a gym.

      Now I'm not walking everywhere or buying plane tickets trying to do this but it's pretty pleasant so far. What are your thoughts, Tildes?

      Edit: I took my first gym at a quaint little church and the Nidorino I left there came back about 6 hours later. There's more people playing this than I realized, also more churches lol.

      13 votes
    12. Adding a collapse button at the bottom

      I've been using ~ on mobile to try it out, and although it's great, there's one major inconvenience. If I'm reading through a long comment, I want to instintively collapse it so it won't distract...

      I've been using ~ on mobile to try it out, and although it's great, there's one major inconvenience.

      If I'm reading through a long comment, I want to instintively collapse it so it won't distract me. But on mobile, I have to scroll a long way up to do that. It's even worse with comment chains.

      Can we have a collapse button at the bottom as well? Or a swipe, like on the Reddit app? Or do we have to wait for the development of the app before mobile users get good UI?

      11 votes
    13. Musicians ~ What do you play and what do you do?

      Strings and frets here. I’ve been playing guitar for the last 23 years and will play mandolin, banjo, or uke if there are enough guitar players in the room. Just bought my first bass a few months...

      Strings and frets here. I’ve been playing guitar for the last 23 years and will play mandolin, banjo, or uke if there are enough guitar players in the room. Just bought my first bass a few months ago and it has been lots of fun and of course an easy transition from guitar. I’ve been in a handful of bands playing rock/hard rock, bluegrass, Celtic music, and even a jam band in my younger years.

      I’ve been recording myself and others since ‘99 (Cool Edit Pro v1.5) and I enjoy the creative processes of composing, recording, mixing, etc. I’ve placed music in short films and in commercial applications, and have been working on orchestration with dreams of doing larger scale film scores.

      I started playing because I wanted to learn “Needle and the Damage Done,” and a number of other Neil Young songs. He’s to blame for all this.

      What do you play and do with your musician’s karate chops?

      9 votes
    14. How does Tildes feel about restricting usernames?

      Usernames can be inflammatory or just distract from discussion in general, and especially considering that humor is not a focal point of Tildes, should they be restricted to something...

      Usernames can be inflammatory or just distract from discussion in general, and especially considering that humor is not a focal point of Tildes, should they be restricted to something reasonable/appropriate?

      15 votes
    15. Show who you've invited on your profile

      We already show who invited us on our profile page, so could we show who we've invited on our invite page? There is no need to hide this information. This way we could easily get in touch with...

      We already show who invited us on our profile page, so could we show who we've invited on our invite page? There is no need to hide this information.

      This way we could easily get in touch with people we've invited.

      13 votes