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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 6h

I should add: I’m not saying stories need to be BIG to be good. But the reason smaller stories are often effective is because their stakes are typically liberated from the restrictions of the big-picture stuff. I’m saying there’s value in big stories being afforded the same liberty.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 9h

The key to this would really be Disney formally declaring that a certain lore period is now “finished” in terms of the primary text/s depicting it, leaving the floor to secondary media to expand - which is exactly how Star Wars worked pre-Disney. But that won’t happen because it’s limiting.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 9h

As for bad additions to canon, a few things can happen: the hardcore fans can spend decades reframing things to make them less bad (see the prequels), expanded media can make the bad stuff more interesting (see prequel-era expanded media - the clone wars are liked now!), or Disney can retcon/ignore.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 9h

Let’s say we get a new trilogy about new characters in a new period. Then you can do the equivalent of The Force Unleashed for the sequel trilogy, because that cannot is no longer being touched in a major way. You’re free to drop major lore bombs.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 10h

I haven’t expressed myself perfectly here as I’m talking about multiple things, but principally the takeaways are: - Endless new major film entries means expanded materials will be less daring. - The hardcore fanbase hasn’t adapted to the reality that major canon will be broken and fixed endlessly.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 10h

Fundamentally, the idea of a “pure, perfect canon” supplemented by expanded works is no longer the dynamic. Now everything changes the lore, expands the lore, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Star Wars canon is now an open, ever-changing document. The bible will be rewritten endlessly.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 10h

It’s genuinely like a religious schism in the form of a pop culture property. The fanbase is going to need to adapt to the mindset that sometimes a major entry will “ruin” the canon, and then be swept under the rug and ignored, or will be retconned by subsequent entries.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 10h

This is how franchises typically work, of course. Throw everything at the wall, resulting in some good entries and some bad entries. But bad entries are considered profane by the fanbase, as they stain the canon, an effect made worse by the replacement of the old expanded canon with the new.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 10h

The fanbase hasn’t adjusted to the idea that the canon will now endlessly expand, sometimes with good stuff and sometimes with bad stuff, because the Lucas trilogies were previously fixed holy texts. Now the bible is a live-service one, ever-expanding.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 10h

Because there’s now an endless torrent of “content”, any major thing they do needs to be accounted for by the rest of the upcoming stuff. We would never get “Vader’s secret apprentice” in this world. That’s way too major a revelation, and so expanded media needs to stick to the sidelines.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 10h

One of the biggest reasons Star Wars needs to move on from the Skywalkers is that expanded media can’t do major stuff now that there’s the assumption the movies will continue endlessly. We got The Force Unleashed in a world where it was assumed the main movies were DONE. That’d never happen now.

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Reposted by Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

QB Interactive | Shelf Stacker: Toy Store launching October 15th @qbinteractive.bsky.social · 10h

10 DAYS TO LAUNCH! Wishlists appreciated! 🤞

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 20h

Netflix’s Witcher is quite a mixed bag, overall. It’s like Game of Thrones had a baby with Bridgerton.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 20h

Casting Graham McTavish as Djikstra was a stroke of genius, by the way. Perfect choice, and very different from the videogame actor’s performance, yet true to the character all the same. I find the casting really quite mixed in this show, but when they get it right, they really get it right.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 20h

The conclave episode was absolute chef’s kiss. Season 1 level stuff. And a perfect example of what I’m saying - it’s not a 1:1 recreation of that moment in the books, but it feels like it is. They nailed the essence of it by telling Sapkowski’s story in their own way.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 20h

Halfway through season 3 now and it’s a big improvement. They’re generally doing what they should be doing, which is loosely adapting the story, and this show is at its best when it’s doing some version of that story. It’s had a couple of poor moments of its own creation, though. They can’t resist!

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 21h

America, based on the impression I’ve been given through media, is either City or Roadside Diner.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 22h

Early impressions of Silent Hill Townfall: it’s fucking surreal playing a photorealistic videogame that looks like where I grew up. Americans get to experience this all the time!!! Crazy.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I had some jank too. Characters in the cockpit would often be t-posing for several seconds before settling into their animations, and I had a black screen freeze at one point that required closing to resolve. That’s pretty poor for a AAA game this long after launch.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

It’s a good game, but one thoroughly comprised by frustrations.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I also feel it’s far longer than it should be, and I’m just mainlining the critical path. And so much of the story has bored me. A lot of the cutscenes are just characters standing around talking about MacGuffins.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I’ve gotta be honest, I’ve found Jedi Survivor a pretty frustrating experience, and I’m not talking about the combat. I’ve found the game’s telegraphing of where to go next to be really poor. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve struggled with reading the environment.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I remember trying to explain it to a SW novice once, and I was all “it’s like a force in all living beings, and it lets some people push and pull things with their mind, and do other things like that” and it’s like…no. It’s just what Star Wars calls magic.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

It took me way too long in life to realize that “the force” is just a magic system. It’s just magic. That’s what the force is. That’s what it means. It does everything that magic does in other fantasy stories. It’s just magic under a different name.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Fuckin’ nuts that there aren’t new Resistance or MotorStorm games to play. Even more nuts that they can’t be played on modern hardware! Sony is literally just sitting on a mountain of beloved franchises and doing fuck all with them.

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Reposted by Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Giovanni Colantonio @marioprime.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

One thing I love about Galactic Racer is that so many racing games are all about giving you control of a luxurious, sleek vehicle, and in this game, all the cars are absolute pieces of shit that are seconds away from exploding at all times. Unstable, hack scrap jobs.

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Reposted by Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

shy's video folder @shyvideos.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Based on what I’ve read, the damage done by S2’s deviations is really what continues to plague the series in S3/4 because they need to keep spending time fixing the things they broke in order to adapt things as required. Damn, what a shame.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

It feels like the source material is the B plot, and the new stuff is the A plot, when it should be the other way around. The new stuff should be the glue that connects the various beats of the A plot. Why is the climactic antagonist of S2 a complete fabrication rather than Rience, for example?

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Okay, yeah. This has gone off the rails. There’s loose adaptation and then there’s just…telling your own stories with the established characters, and occasionally steering them towards the source plot like it’s a mandated requirement, before returning to your own stories.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

That’s really the thing nailed down: it looks like you’re watching actors on a set.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I know everything can’t be HBO, but like, HBO shows look phenomenal. Everything looks like it’s been coloured in, there’s atmosphere over everything. Netflix shows look like true-to-life videos, as if the sets were shot on a phone with no further editing.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Something else really bothering me this time is how fucking cheap Netflix shows look. I’ve always put it down to the cameras they use, and what feels like a lack of post-processing over the final image. It’s like watching a theatre production, clothing looks clean and new, and sets look barren.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I don’t mind that they’re telling the story a bit more loosely and adding their own stuff in here and there, as it serves a purpose. An adaptation should be a slightly alternative take on the source material; the original story already exists. Their original stuff isn’t as good, but it’s functional.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The one thing I really, really didn’t like was the self-indulgence exhibited when Jaskier lashes out at the dockworker for his criticisms of his song, which is very clearly the writers responding to criticisms about the first season. Don’t make the story about you! Serve the audience!

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

My take on season 2 so far (I’m on the last 2 episodes) is that it’s a fine continuation, even if it doesn’t hit the same heights, owing largely to the fact it doesn’t have the storybook structure of the first season, and is left with a basic single story instead.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I’ve heard this show goes off the rails in a big way owing to veering away from the books, but honestly, this time around I saw just how loose they were even from season 1.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Watching Netflix’s Witcher adaptation past season 1 for the first time, fresh off a reread of the main saga. Freya Allan is phenomenal in the role of Ciri, eh? What a great piece of casting.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

It is interesting to think of nerds as some kind of innate human social archetype that has always existed, even long before “nerd media” existed.

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Reposted by Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Jón Kristinsson @jonkk.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Zaslav saying “Warner Bros is not for sale” four years ago.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Why is IGN pumping out so many list videos, like every other YouTube channel does?

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Gary is not for sale either, btw. I mean, there were months of talks preceding this announcement that very well could have ended in a sale. A sale which some people very much wanted to happen. But Gary is not for sale, now that the matter has been resolved. So there’s your convenient soundbite.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Only a few chapters in and already delighted to be back in this world. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you enjoyed Between Two Fires, try Christopher Buehlman’s other work. This series has great characters, an interesting world, and very vivid prose.

Front cover of The Daughter’s War, second entry in Christopher Buehlman’s Blacktongue series. It depicts a warrior on a ruined battlefield beneath a crimson sky.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I wonder if the games industry will continue to face investment issues even after the AI bubble pops because clueless investors will look at games and think they’re still somewhat AI-related or adjacent?

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

It’s all very bare minimum AAA trend mechanics. It’s most novel ideas is the lockpicking system, which I must say I enjoyed.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I’m glad you enjoyed it! I’d definitely take a sequel, regardless of my issues with the game. There’s a lot of potential to mine within that core concept. I’d kill for a Mandalorian or just general bounty hunter game, too.

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Reposted by Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Thoth @thoth.ptnote.dev · 20/09/2026

meta Muse perfec t size for put private d\ata in! inside very Secure and Private data very safe put data in Muse. No problems ever in Muse because very trustworthy and Mark super protective. AMeta muse yes a place for data put data in muse trust meta for givening good safety to data. Friend meta.

An image of a pelican with its gigantic mouth open, commonly associated with the "put baby in pelican mouth" post.

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Gary Alexander Stott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @garyastott.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

It’s a very mediocre game and should’ve been much better than it was, but it’s worth playing now through subscription services, perhaps even on sale. It’s hard to outright recommend it to anybody but SW fans. I would like another rogue stealth game, though. I want the game this should have been.

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