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It's possible to do both...

Joe is the best heel right now. The way he fucking told Renee that Ambrose should be glad that he spends his holidays with the ones he loves while giving Renee the shittiest grin ever. Holy shit. Look at this shit. That is some good subtle evil shit right there. Assholes aspire to be like Samoa Joe. I salute Joe. And Kudos for Renee for providing the acting.

So my wife surprised me with Wrestlemania tickets, and a hotel for the whole weekend. It just dawned on me that virtually every indy fed will have a show in the area that weekend. So, um, who's having a show where? I figure there's a Ring of Honor show. Any chance any of the New Japan bigwigs show up (Okada, Kenny Omega, Naito, etc.?) Will Pete Dunne be on the NXT show, or a Progress show? It's my first Wrestlemania in over 30 years of fandom. I'm so excited to go with my son. Can't believe it.

I think a lot of the criticism falls into two camps, with some overlap as well. There are the people who dislike how Johnson blew off the two big mysteries (Snoke's origin, Rey's parents) left from TFA, and those who dislike Luke's characterization. Me, I find mysteries, especially of the JJ Abrams "anything you can think of will be better than the eventual payoff" to be tiresome gimmicks. Give me a good story and I'll like that better than any contrived "big reveal." I really enjoyed Rey's parents being nobodies and I definitely liked not knowing Snoke's backstory. Mistakenly thinking we need badass characters explained away is how we ended up with episodes 1-3. I really don't need to see young Snoke's dislike for sand, thanks. Luke not being heroic is fine. He's a Jedi, but he's human. He thought he could train Jedi and he failed spectacularly. That's awesome. The same people who bitch about Rey being a "Mary Sue" (go fuck yourselves) are bitching because Luke isn't a Larry Sue. I like TFA and this movie, for different reasons. TFA played it safe and, after the prequels, we needed that. This film subverted tropes and set up something new. We needed that, too

I think the original sin of the Snoke thing lies with JJ Abrams. He got wrong just about as many things as he got right about Star Wars, and his insistence on mystery is one of them. Star Wars was never about mysteries. Cliffhangers, yes. Mysteries, no. (Lest we forget, one of the things that made the ESB reveal so shocking is because most people didn't know that Vader's identity or what really happened to Luke's father were questions they should even be asking themselves until it happened.) I forget who to credit this to, but one critic rather saliently pointed out that Abrams, long-time purveyor of genre TV, basically wrote TFA like the pilot for a genre TV show, leaving a number of dangling threads to tantalize the viewer and entice them to come back for the next episode. The problem is, as Reddit has proven over and over again, once you introduce a few mysteries (Who are Rey's parents? What's Luke's deal? Why did Ben turn?), people start looking for mysteries EVERYWHERE, even where there aren't supposed to be any. And so you end up with the Snoke fiasco, where a character who is handled in these movies almost identically to the Emperor in ESB and ROTJ suddenly becomes this grave injustice because he didn't live up to 2 years of fan theorizing based on a thread that wasn't even there. Of course, in typical JJ fashion, he made sure he was long clear of the blast zone when the fan fury came hurtling down from on high.

Honestly, the notion that TLJ dropped TFA’s mysteries is weird to me. 1) “Who is Snoke?!?!?” is almost entirely fan driven, insofar as TFA just presents him as this ready made archetype everyone in the film accepts as part of the status quo—so they don’t really discuss or wonder about him. There needs to be a “congratulations, you baited yourself” meme for fandom reactions like this. And I get it! I love lore dives, watched tons of garbage YouTube theory videos, etc. But I think it’s unfair to pretend TFA really asked anyone to respond that way. 2) Rey’s parents got a reveal. If it’s not the one you wanted, fine, but pretending it’s not a valid narrative choice is disingenuous. The lightsaber called out because she’s special on her own, not because of who her parents are. Blood isn’t destiny. That’s basically the entire point.

Everyone who defended that shitty debut Asuka had with Emma and said we needed to be conditioned to see Asuka as a vulnerable winner rather than an invincible unstoppable badass killing machine apologize now.

They’ll be really mad when it’s Thanos.

And Lana doesn't always look like she'd rather be doing literally anything else.

Did I miss this being posted?

The joy your toddler feels when he opens a gift that is of practical use rather than more toys

From a Doylist reading: Since the original trilogy was tactically kinda sorta Space WWII—fighting Space Nazis, battleships and aircraft carriers, the downfall of increasingly giant cannon as dominant—I imagine there wouldn’t have been an appetite for the good guys going kamikaze. Watsonian: The Rebels—and this is true of the Resistance now too—have far fewer ships, so sacrificing one on purpose makes little sense. Finally, it only worked in this instance because Hux—who is very bad at this—foolishly didn’t spare a round to blow the thing up before Holdo could turn. And in general, it’s best not to spend too much time at the intersection of tech and tactics, otherwise we have to question why nobody has hyperspace capable missiles, or even droid piloted hyperspace kamikaze ships. The answer, I think, is because that would make combat super boring. Beam weapons allow for shields which allows for range to matter which gives us claustrophobic Space Navy fights, that don’t really hold up to scrutiny, but are cool as hell. And it’s always best to err on the side of cool as hell.

My son got his Switch and Super Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild. Plus he got an extra controller so that means I technically got Super Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild. I am kinda excited to see what all the fuss is about

The whole "Snoke is Darth Plageius" thing was just ridiculous. Having Snoke turn out to be the same Sith Lord that Palpatine mentioned in an anecdote 50 years earlier is as dumb as everything seemingly happening on Tattooine. It's a very big galaxy and it's ridiculous to have every damn thing be related. "Oh, we should have heard of Snoke if he was so powerful, like maybe he should have been one of Palpatine's helpers or something. Where was he during the original trilogy???" FFS, maybe the guy lived on the other end of the galaxy. Other things are happening in other places. Maybe him and Palpatine shared a Scotch at the annual Sith ball at Mar A Lago and that was it. "Hi Palpatine, my name is Snoke." "Pleased to meet you, man. I hear you're doing bigly things out there on the outer rim." "oh yeah, same here." "Okay, well, good to meet you."

Steven Moffat's swan-song was as meta as you can get on so many levels. And I don't think anyone is ever going to out speech Capaldi's Doctor (I mean he could make bank doing the motivation speaker circuit). Capaldi's Doctor also had the most character growth of any of the Doctors. His first season and last season is almost night and day, his last speech was basically conveying his hard earned wisdom to the next doctor. That last line, what a motto to live by. I seriously thought nobody would beat Tom Baker as my fav but Peter Capaldi is Tom Baker's ideal. Very much like Baker, even when it's bad, Capaldi stood out and acted the bejesus out of it. But, whereas Baker was like a minigun of overkill (jebus I love his theatrics), Capaldi was a sniper rifle of awe inspiring precision. Man, I'm going to miss him.

More Dirty Player:

Also, Asuka rules. She should stay undefeated for a 1000 years.

Just a heads up that if you have a Path of Exile account before today, you can claim a free "Fire and Ice Mystery Box" as a Christmas present. I have literally no clue what they can contain, but hey. Free. https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2057801

It always worked for Lux Interior... Just sayin'...

My six year old's powers of secrecy are legendary. Here's the hint she gave me for my Christmas gift (which I actually knew about, because I had to place the Amazon order). "It's from Chicago, it has to do with Football, and it's a chair!"

Hey guys, in the chance I'm busy with fam tomorrow, I hope y'all have a very pleasant Christmas, etc.

I have mixed feelings on the film overall, but not enough love is being shown for Luke dead eyed staring down Rey as he wipes from his beard the remnants of alien milk drank fresh from the tiddy.

Elias getting Chicago to cheer John Cena is a fucking Herculean task. Give him the Universal Title now.

The Rock getting carried away and Foley agreeing to the headshots at all (then stupidly letting his kids watch it in the crowd) are one thing. Vince telling Foley, "Never do anything like that again," after Hell in a Cell and then letting that match happen is among the shittiest and most irresponsible things Vince has ever done.

Yeah, I mean, its pretty clearly an issue of resources. The Rebellion and the Resistance are relatively rag-tag compared to the Empire and the First Order. They don't have the resources to burn through ships on kamikaze missions. I mean, great, you took out a Star Destroyer; the Empire will just build 5 more. Same thing with the Death Star: they will literally just build another one. (We've seen them do it! They are always building Death Stars!) Meanwhile, you're down ships that you can't easily replace. That's losing math. And while it would make more sense for the Empire/First Order to throw away their seemingly endless resources on clone/droid/hell, anyone-piloted kamikaze bombers, that's not typically the kind of strategy a dominant force employs. (Kamikaze bombing didn't even become an actual military strategy in Japan until they were badly losing the war in the Pacific, and even *they* knew they were just prolonging the inevitable at that point.). And because of the way these SW stories get told, the bad guys are ALWAYS winning dominantly until the very moment somebody fires a proton torpedo up their unsuspecting asshole. We've never seen these guys on their heels. So, yeah, it's sub-optimal that Johnson introduced this tactic that has to be hashed out on the Internet as opposed to being easily reconciled on screen, but I don't necessarily think it's the universe-breaking maneuver that some have made it out to be.

Thanks for the collection of Links for the Wrestlemania weekend. I got tix for my 40th Birthday and I am trying to set up some plans and such.

I’m going to be busy for the rest of the week, so I’m gonna knock this out now and see if someone else submits something between now and December 31st. Regardless, this could be the last album of this whole experiment, and I’m pretty damn satisfied with how it’s turned out. 1. "The Order Of Time" by Valerie June 2. “in*ter a*li*a” by At The Drive-In 3. "Screen Memories" by John Maus 4. “Heartless” by Pallbearer 5. "No Dope On Sundays" by CyHi The Prynce 6. "Dark Matter" by Les Friction 7. “A Deeper Understanding” by The War On Drugs 8. "The Dusk In Us" by Converge 9. "Out in the Storm" by Waxahatchee 10. “So You Wannabe An Outlaw” by Steve Earle 11. “Life Is Good” by Flogging Molly 12. “Made Of Breath Only” by sleepmakeswaves 13. "Silenciado" by Diagnosis? Bastard! I remember hearing about Pallbearer in 2012, when I was making a run at being a music critic. I don't remember anything about the record, and it’s not in my personal library, so at the time I guess it didn’t stick with me? Either way, I’m always down for some doom-y stuff, so let’s go. Also- and I know how this is gonna sound but- The Quietus said this was their favorite metal record of the year, and the list of music sources I trust worth anything definitely includes them. Support The Quietus, They Run On Donations, They Are Great.

I enjoyed it. Will deeply miss Capaldi.

You got it

And they probably didn't want to take a massive ratings hit, especially if that late game had no playoff implications.

Happy Xmas, people!

I'd be really disappointed if Liger was a cat person.

One, it's Reby. Two, calm down, Shibata Cibernetico. EDIT: Damn it, cwoy2j!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I am not a big fan of the whole "back in the day" notions about wrestling, but this is a time I wouldn't mind seeing security just leave the clown who threw the bottle in a back room with some of the boys for a little "talk".

I am shocked -- SHOCKED -- that nobody's brought up Ken the Box or any of Survival Tobita's other opponents yet

You could be the head of the Diner Mafia, Pa Stitsio. My ring name, Gyro Giannakakis

One thing I really liked about the Force ghost/projection stuff in this one is that the physical manifestations of Yoda, and later Luke, have everything to do with who they're appearing before. Yoda looks precisely as he did in Empire because that's the version of him that Luke is most emotionally connected to. Later during the final confrontation, Luke appears to Kylo as his younger self from their time together in training at the temple. It's either because that's how Kylo remembers him best, or it was a ploy by Luke to unnerve him. I'd never really thought about it, but presumably Force ghosts can manipulate their form to whatever they feel like, or psychically suggest the most appropriate version of their former physical form based on who they're reaching out to.

I presume he means the Staples Center in LA, not Staples the office supply store.

Cool moment: Dr. Satler rams into that 1st Order ship with a ship named after the guy who rammed his ship into an Imperial ship in Rogue One. The Raddus.

Fat Fuck Barrel Boy for sure. I always got a laugh out of Hugh G. Rection too, just because of Demott's promo where he said he was going to start going by his real name.

"Just too Sweetser!" the crowd yelled at the auditorium for the ceremony.

If you cook them well enough brussel sprouts end up tasting pretty good. Need to be baked with the right seasoning and what not. My friend made a wicked plate of them once. I'm sure they're horrid otherwise. What I am saying is we need to cook and eat Triple H if we're ever going to stop bickering about him on the Internet. I'll leave it up to Sweetser.