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Author Topic: Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi  (Read 248105 times)
Khaldun
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Reply #35 on: January 25, 2017, 12:24:33 PM

Not a single one of the Jedi grasps the least bit of what's going on in the politics of the Republic from the first second of the prequels until Anakin is stabbing younglings. They're only mildly puzzled and surprisingly sanguine about hearing that one of their own apparently ordered an army of clones made, and they hop into battle alongside the clones with very few questions about what's going on. But they're not guys sitting way off to the side of things, they're occupying prime real estate in the heart of the capital of a huge galactic state, they have a prominent place in military and security policy-making. They have worldly power without much in the way of worldly smarts about anything. The prequels suck as far as giving a textured sense of Anakin's doubts, but the in-canon Clone Wars series makes clear that Anakin has some legitimate reasons to doubt the Order's overall direction, and that he's not the only Jedi who is worried or frustrated. Qui-Gon was on the outs with the Order for unspecified reasons; Count Dooku left the order before becoming a Sith, or so it appears. Etc.
Trippy
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Reply #36 on: January 25, 2017, 12:34:51 PM

Yoda makes the offhand comment in one of the prequels that the Dark Side is clouding their ability to "see" what's really going on.
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Reply #37 on: January 25, 2017, 01:09:54 PM

There was also a comment about "our ability to use the Force is diminished" and that being a secret amongst the Jedi.  They were losing their mojo and they didn't know why but they weren't going to tell anyone else about it because it'd weaken their political position.

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eldaec
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Reply #38 on: January 26, 2017, 03:03:47 AM

in an interview Lucas
Lucas is a bloviated bullshitter and can't be trusted with his revisionist history of Star Wars canon.

No matter what happens, we're in a much better place with him marginalized. One thing the EU did many times over is explain the Force in a better way than that moron. SWTOR alone is a bajillion light years better at explaining the light and dark sides of the Force than anything Lucas 'masterminded'.

I've been reading a bunch of historical stuff (both some online articles friends link and the new McQuarrie book) and it really highlights just how completely full of shit Lucas was (and is to a much larger degree now).

When you get right down to it the scenes with Yoda in Empire are the only necessary source material for what the force is.

Neither ANH, RotJ waste any time on it, nor does Rogue or tFA. Lucas was completely mad by Phantom Menace.

This film is clearly going to lean on the mysticism a bit more and will have to talk about the force, but my hope is Johnson takes the same approach he did with time travel in Looper - have a Basil Exposition moment that says clearly 'these are the rules relevant to the situation - don' t waste your fucking time - move on'.

The force needs no more explanation than Yoda has already provided. 

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Ironwood
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Reply #39 on: January 26, 2017, 03:24:37 AM

That line in Looper was the most elegant handwave in the history of ever.


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Sir T
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Reply #40 on: January 26, 2017, 05:14:26 AM

I don't think Lucas meant to do this, but the prequels really don't portray the Jedi in the most positive light, actually. They're inflexible, arrogant, kind of stupid. They stick to an anti-emotion creed to the point that they can't sense some of the most basic feelings motivating galactic society.

That's just becasue EVERYONE in the prequels could not display emotion and was kind of stupid, not to mention creepy.  Ohhhhh, I see.

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Riggswolfe
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Reply #41 on: January 26, 2017, 06:40:28 AM

in an interview Lucas
Lucas is a bloviated bullshitter and can't be trusted with his revisionist history of Star Wars canon.

No matter what happens, we're in a much better place with him marginalized. One thing the EU did many times over is explain the Force in a better way than that moron. SWTOR alone is a bajillion light years better at explaining the light and dark sides of the Force than anything Lucas 'masterminded'.

I've been reading a bunch of historical stuff (both some online articles friends link and the new McQuarrie book) and it really highlights just how completely full of shit Lucas was (and is to a much larger degree now).

Lucas was definitely full of shit about a lot of things. "I have 9 stories all written out." But this interview was given while the Prequels were in production. It was his intentions at the time. I think "bringing Balance to the Force" was a confusing turn of phrase but it does make sense if you remember that the Force has more in common with Eastern Philosphies than Western. The Dark side is a very negative force and was tipping the scales, particularly with Palpatine's machinations.

We'll have to disagree on the EU though. The books went from good (Thrawn trilogy, the X-wing novels) to bad (most everything else) to awful (Keven J. Anderson, the Vong and everything afterwards.). The authors got caught up in grey jedi bullshit towards the end and the best thing Disney did was immediately clearing the slate on that stuff and relegating it to "Legends".

"We live in a country, where John Lennon takes six bullets in the chest, Yoko Ono was standing right next to him and not one fucking bullet! Explain that to me! Explain that to me, God! Explain it to me, God!" - Denis Leary summing up my feelings about the nature of the universe.
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Reply #42 on: January 26, 2017, 06:45:31 AM

100%  The Grey Force was largely bullshit by adults who feel morality is grey and so all stories must be. Ignoring that "Bad Guys" and "Good Guys" and "Good Guys who have to act bad" are tropes from a pulpy action science-fiction history for teens with no need to be enmeshed with more adult, modern themes.

Sometimes you just outgrow a thing and should move on rather than trying to change it to suit who you are now.

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Khaldun
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Reply #43 on: January 26, 2017, 12:19:10 PM

Even moralistic pulp stories benefit from ambiguous figures who might or might not be on the side of the angels. That's even true in kid stuff. It's even true in Star Wars: one of the heroes is a smuggler who stone-cold murdered a bounty hunter who was after him.
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Reply #44 on: January 26, 2017, 12:28:21 PM

GREEBO SHOT FIRST!!! [/lucas]

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Reply #45 on: January 26, 2017, 12:49:01 PM

Even moralistic pulp stories benefit from ambiguous figures who might or might not be on the side of the angels. That's even true in kid stuff. It's even true in Star Wars: one of the heroes is a smuggler who stone-cold murdered a bounty hunter who was after him.


In Star Wars those ambiguous figures remained on the edge and weren't the central story or the moral focus. Also, they "have a heart of gold" and "do the right thing" in the end. Han's return when a truly ambiguous self-serving 'grey' figure would have said, "Fuck those guys I've got to save my own goddamn neck."

It was also set-up such that the ambiguity wasn't wholly there because there was no real "Grey" in Star Wars from the start. Just good guys in bad spots or bad guys making things worse.

Greedo was clearly (even before the SE) a 'bad guy.' We weren't set up as if he was just there to talk to or intimidate Han. It was clearly established "bad guy who's gonna straight-up murder this dude right here." Han was just a good guy in a bad spot, we just didn't know it until later.

Lando? Nope, good guy in a bad spot. Does the right thing in the end, was only in a tight spot because it was sell-out one guy or have all the people he's responsible for murdered.

We don't even get a marginally ambiguous character in Jedi.

It's always been a universe with a much more simple morality than people wanted it to be.

The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
Khaldun
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Reply #46 on: January 26, 2017, 06:17:11 PM

Sigh.

Sure. I am not saying Star Wars (even Rogue One, in very interesting ways!) is meant to make you doubt who to root for, in the way of some morally ambiguous stories. But it is a universe big enough for people who are "good" in a non-rigid way. Fuck, the Kurosawa stuff that had Lucas creaming his shorts had characters like that. It's very common even in basically black-hat white-hat stories to have characters who are:

a) scoundrels and criminals of a minor sort, but basically good
b) tricksters who are basically good but who can do some mischief
c) people who are profoundly sensual (drunks, sexpots, addicts) who are basically good
d) people who are undisciplined or undermotivated who are basically good
e) people who are burned out or cynical who are basically good
f) people who have done something very bad in the past but for good or misguided reasons as they saw it who are basically good

This is a fucking staple of much good-bad melodrama to have such characters. Their presence is not the same as having characters who are like real-life grownups who are not really good or evil or anything so simple.

The Jedi/Force story is clearly big enough to contain the presence of such characters. Samurai dramas and Westerns have them in huge numbers--people looking to earn redemption, people who have a heart of gold underneath the cynicism, people who are stone-cold killers but who follow a hidden moral code, people who are inexplicably strong fighters even though they drink and whore a lot--these are archetypes of heroic fictions built around good and evil. There is nothing in Star Wars that says, "Oh my no, please not here" for that kind of thing.

eldaec
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Reply #47 on: January 26, 2017, 06:43:10 PM

100%  The Grey Force was largely bullshit by adults who feel morality is grey and so all stories must be. Ignoring that "Bad Guys" and "Good Guys" and "Good Guys who have to act bad" are tropes from a pulpy action science-fiction history for teens with no need to be enmeshed with more adult, modern themes.

Sometimes you just outgrow a thing and should move on rather than trying to change it to suit who you are now.

I never felt there was anything wrong with having grey/ambiguous force users like those in kotor2, after all, many truths we hold dear depend very much on our point of view. The problem was all the damn explaning that went on. Hours and hours of worthless dialog.

There's the force.
Some guy found a connection that is not of the light or the dark.
Fine.
NOW STOP TALKING ABOUT THE SUPERNATURAL PLUMBING.
« Last Edit: January 26, 2017, 06:45:55 PM by eldaec »

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Surlyboi
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Reply #48 on: January 26, 2017, 08:02:55 PM

Maybe warrior monks are better off when they have lots of different philosophies and orders rather than two manichean megachurches. I really hope that's where the overall story of the Force in the saga is going

The Donnie Yen character in Rogue One, as a Force-wielding mystic who is not in any way connected to the Jedi Order, lends some support to that. 

Chirrut Îmwe was not a force use, per-se. Just a blind guy with abilities enhanced due to his blindness and a tool of the Force.

Tuned in, immediately get to watch cringey Ubisoft talking head offering her deepest sympathies to the families impacted by the Orlando shooting while flanked by a man in a giraffe suit and some sort of "horrifically garish neon costumes through the ages" exhibit or something.  We need to stop this fucking planet right now and sort some shit out. -Kail
Lakov_Sanite
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Reply #49 on: January 26, 2017, 08:50:41 PM

Maybe warrior monks are better off when they have lots of different philosophies and orders rather than two manichean megachurches. I really hope that's where the overall story of the Force in the saga is going

The Donnie Yen character in Rogue One, as a Force-wielding mystic who is not in any way connected to the Jedi Order, lends some support to that. 

Chirrut Îmwe was not a force use, per-se. Just a blind guy with abilities enhanced due to his blindness and a tool of the Force.

Well that's bullshit.  Nowhere is it said you need to be a jedi to "use the force" or even be a force user.  Jedi were just found and trained but a galaxy is a big fucking place and for every forse user found and trained as a jedi there had to have been dozens that just never got trained.

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eldaec
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Reply #50 on: January 27, 2017, 12:38:03 AM

He's a good example of how you do it right.

 - Here's a guy.  He's awesome.
 - Is it the force? Probably, sounds believable in world.
 - How does that work? Use your fucking imagination we're telling this story not pausing for a lecture on biodynamics.

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Reply #51 on: January 27, 2017, 07:29:48 AM

Trying to explain the Force is just one of the fuckups the prequels brought us.

Khaldun
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Reply #52 on: January 27, 2017, 10:01:55 AM

Yeah. "Surrounds us, penetrates us, binds the galaxy together" is plenty good enough. Yoda is right on the line of too much in ESB, it's fine, but no more than that. To me, if we'd gotten to the prequels and found that the Jedi Knights were a loose band of people who mostly hung out in places far away from the center of power, and went around like vagabonds doing good stuff as they individually saw fit, that would have been really appealing--and it would still have been easy to explain how they got wiped out--because they weren't really paying attention to the rise of a politician who was secretly a Sith who started spreading propaganda against them and then started having them hunted down. Instead they were like a group of super-elite special forces soldiers who were deeply intertwined with the government, which makes their cluelessness about events look really bad.
Mandella
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Reply #53 on: January 27, 2017, 01:18:41 PM

Super-elite special forces soldiers who also casually used their mind control super powers on civilians in the course of a routine days work.

Honestly, I thought in the prequels they came off rather KGBish...
Riggswolfe
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Reply #54 on: January 27, 2017, 10:52:56 PM

Sigh.

Sure. I am not saying Star Wars (even Rogue One, in very interesting ways!) is meant to make you doubt who to root for, in the way of some morally ambiguous stories. But it is a universe big enough for people who are "good" in a non-rigid way. Fuck, the Kurosawa stuff that had Lucas creaming his shorts had characters like that. It's very common even in basically black-hat white-hat stories to have characters who are:

a) scoundrels and criminals of a minor sort, but basically good
b) tricksters who are basically good but who can do some mischief
c) people who are profoundly sensual (drunks, sexpots, addicts) who are basically good
d) people who are undisciplined or undermotivated who are basically good
e) people who are burned out or cynical who are basically good
f) people who have done something very bad in the past but for good or misguided reasons as they saw it who are basically good

This is a fucking staple of much good-bad melodrama to have such characters. Their presence is not the same as having characters who are like real-life grownups who are not really good or evil or anything so simple.

The Jedi/Force story is clearly big enough to contain the presence of such characters. Samurai dramas and Westerns have them in huge numbers--people looking to earn redemption, people who have a heart of gold underneath the cynicism, people who are stone-cold killers but who follow a hidden moral code, people who are inexplicably strong fighters even though they drink and whore a lot--these are archetypes of heroic fictions built around good and evil. There is nothing in Star Wars that says, "Oh my no, please not here" for that kind of thing.



All of those archetypes are fine for Star Wars. Just not as Jedi. Yoda pretty clearly lays out the "rules" for the Force in ESB and they don't leave room for walking a grey path. If we assume Yoda probably knows what he is talking about, a grey jedi (or force user) is really just a Force user that hasn't fallen to Darkness. Yet.

Grey Jedi came about because somebody, somewhere, wanted to be a "good guy" but use Force lightning too.

"We live in a country, where John Lennon takes six bullets in the chest, Yoko Ono was standing right next to him and not one fucking bullet! Explain that to me! Explain that to me, God! Explain it to me, God!" - Denis Leary summing up my feelings about the nature of the universe.
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Reply #55 on: January 28, 2017, 01:44:57 AM

Dunno, I really liked Jolee.

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Cyrrex
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Reply #56 on: January 28, 2017, 04:07:56 AM

Theory:  Yoda was, and has always been, wrong about one key thing and that is what broke all the shit.  Namely, the whole "thou shalt not get attached, bro".  It was the downfall of the Jedi in the first place (via Anakin, but really in all things), and pissing all over it was what made Luke triumph in the end.  That - and the fact that it is some mystical power that needs no explaining - is all we need to know about the Force.

"...maybe if you cleaned the piss out of the sunny d bottles under your desks and returned em, you could upgrade you vid cards, fucken lusers.." - Grunk
Khaldun
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Reply #57 on: January 28, 2017, 02:01:20 PM

Exactly. It was Luke's attachment to saving his father's soul that won, Luke's attachment to his friends that won. Yoda and Obi-Wan are flat-out wrong. Plus of course Yoda's the one who stupidly acquiesed to the Clone Wars in the first place, and rented out the Jedi as shock troopers, and stopped investigating the Sith mystery the moment the war started.
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Reply #58 on: January 28, 2017, 02:42:06 PM

Too bad Lucas isn't running things, or we might get Episode 0: The Jedi Master. It would showcase Yoda's progression from wizened green guy into the more wizened green Jedi Master he became. We'd get to see the riveting tale of how he used to be a famed gundark wrestler until he fell in love with a rival who broke his heart while costing him the championship title. Dejected, Yoda joined the Jedi order and later became a Jedi Master where he started the "no attachments" rule, along with "Adventure. Excitement. A Jedi craves not these things".
Soulflame
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Reply #59 on: January 28, 2017, 07:38:36 PM

All of those archetypes are fine for Star Wars. Just not as Jedi. Yoda pretty clearly lays out the "rules" for the Force in ESB and they don't leave room for walking a grey path. If we assume Yoda probably knows what he is talking about, a grey jedi (or force user) is really just a Force user that hasn't fallen to Darkness. Yet.

Grey Jedi came about because somebody, somewhere, wanted to be a "good guy" but use Force lightning too.

Yoda uses Force lightning in the prequels.
Cyrrex
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Reply #60 on: January 28, 2017, 10:09:36 PM

If by "uses" you mean totally got hit with that shit one time, and then another time kinda just absorbed it, then yes, yes he did use Force Lightning.

"...maybe if you cleaned the piss out of the sunny d bottles under your desks and returned em, you could upgrade you vid cards, fucken lusers.." - Grunk
Soulflame
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Reply #61 on: January 29, 2017, 12:01:01 AM

Cyrrex
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Reply #62 on: January 29, 2017, 12:29:12 AM

 Head scratch

That isn't exactly Yoda throwing out lightning.  He is absorbing it and safely sending it off elsewhere.

"...maybe if you cleaned the piss out of the sunny d bottles under your desks and returned em, you could upgrade you vid cards, fucken lusers.." - Grunk
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Reply #63 on: January 29, 2017, 08:27:14 AM

Interesting.  Since Dooku's lightning was a more dark blue, and Yoda's was a lighter blue, I had always assumed Dooku had used dark side lightning, and Yoda returned with light side lightning.

I realize that KotOR is no longer canon, but light side Jedis could use force lightning in that.  For droids!  Of course for droids.
Kail
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Reply #64 on: January 29, 2017, 09:24:59 AM

Theory:  Yoda was, and has always been, wrong about one key thing and that is what broke all the shit.  Namely, the whole "thou shalt not get attached, bro".  It was the downfall of the Jedi in the first place (via Anakin, but really in all things), and pissing all over it was what made Luke triumph in the end.  That - and the fact that it is some mystical power that needs no explaining - is all we need to know about the Force.

Except that it was only the downfall of the Jedi because Anakin DIDN'T follow it.  And even he said it's not that Jedi are forbidden from being compassionate or empathetic, it's the possessive stuff that they're forbidden, the stuff that has really powerful emotions attached to it that fuck with your judgement.  And Yoda was right about that, that's why he didn't originally want to train Anakin in the first place.
Riggswolfe
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Reply #65 on: January 29, 2017, 10:30:57 AM

All of those archetypes are fine for Star Wars. Just not as Jedi. Yoda pretty clearly lays out the "rules" for the Force in ESB and they don't leave room for walking a grey path. If we assume Yoda probably knows what he is talking about, a grey jedi (or force user) is really just a Force user that hasn't fallen to Darkness. Yet.

Grey Jedi came about because somebody, somewhere, wanted to be a "good guy" but use Force lightning too.

Yoda uses Force lightning in the prequels.

No. He reflects it away and I think absorbed some of its energy but that's about it.

Theory:  Yoda was, and has always been, wrong about one key thing and that is what broke all the shit.  Namely, the whole "thou shalt not get attached, bro".  It was the downfall of the Jedi in the first place (via Anakin, but really in all things), and pissing all over it was what made Luke triumph in the end.  That - and the fact that it is some mystical power that needs no explaining - is all we need to know about the Force.

Except that it was only the downfall of the Jedi because Anakin DIDN'T follow it.  And even he said it's not that Jedi are forbidden from being compassionate or empathetic, it's the possessive stuff that they're forbidden, the stuff that has really powerful emotions attached to it that fuck with your judgement.  And Yoda was right about that, that's why he didn't originally want to train Anakin in the first place.

That wasn't a Yoda or Obi-Wan thing. It was a Jedi Order thing. And arguments exist both ways.

 Anakin fell in large part due to his attachment to Padme. (and his first big step towards the dark side happened because of his mother.)
Luke triumphed because of his attachment to his father. But his attachment to his sister resulted in him having a very clear Dark Side moment when Vader uses her to taunt him. "Perhaps if you will not turn, SHE will!"

"We live in a country, where John Lennon takes six bullets in the chest, Yoko Ono was standing right next to him and not one fucking bullet! Explain that to me! Explain that to me, God! Explain it to me, God!" - Denis Leary summing up my feelings about the nature of the universe.
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Reply #66 on: January 29, 2017, 12:34:31 PM


-= Ho Eyo He Hum =-
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Reply #67 on: January 29, 2017, 01:02:48 PM

lamaros
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Reply #68 on: January 29, 2017, 02:16:19 PM

If they aren't meant to have attachment, who cares what happens to other people or the republic?

It's only point is a 'loyalty to Jedi above others' thing, or simply meaningless nonsense.
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Reply #69 on: January 29, 2017, 10:06:26 PM

The problem with Anakin wasn't his attachment, it was that he was constantly being forced to bury it and let go of it.  Had they order embraced attachment (or at least, accepted and understood it), things might have turned out quite differently.  Even Obi-Wan's attachment to Anakin is an issue...not because he has it, but because he has no idea how to deal with and express it.  He knew all along about Anakin and Padme, for example, but chose to ignore it.

"...maybe if you cleaned the piss out of the sunny d bottles under your desks and returned em, you could upgrade you vid cards, fucken lusers.." - Grunk
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