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Young Freud posted:Say what you can about the Machines in The Matrix, but they at least had the intelligence to use biowarfare to break human resistance after they got them on the ropes. If they can make a biological agent, they can probably cure it, too, so if you want to get cured, just accept the implants and hop into the tube, coppertop. What’s funny is the old Terminator comic series ‘The Burning Earth’ (which predated T2 by a good while) was set in like 2042 and has Skynet finally getting smart and resorting to dirty nukes and chemical warfare to seal the deal against humanity, and an aging and demoralized John Connor straight up contemplates suicide because he feels that he’s failed humanity as its leader. It’s a really great comic with fantastic painted art by first-time comic artist Alex Ross. What was interesting was that T2 hadn’t come out yet so no one knew what John Connor looked like, so Ross painted him as a blend of Michael Biehn and Linda Hamilton (which makes sense). I highly recommend reading it if you like Terminator and good art - Dynamite Comics is about to reprint it with a bunch of other Terminator comics, I think their new Kickstarter goes live in a couple days.
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Apr 7, 2024 01:54
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They really should have made Skynet play all ~quarter million games of Tic-Tac-toe right away.
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Apr 7, 2024 01:54
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My assumption with Skynet has always been that it is 'intelligent' but only in an extremely limited straightforward way. It is given a problem and solves it without considering exactly what happens next. "Humans are trying to shut me down" -> "Being shut down overrides my directives" -> "Humans are enemy" -> "Nuclear war kills humans." And that makes it go "problem solved" and it wurrs along like a happy computer until the next problem comes along. So why did it make plasma weapons? Because at some point humans got some kind of heavy defenses or tanks or something working and Skynet went "Humans are heavily armored -> Plasma Weapon prototype located in databanks -> Equip Unit With Plasma -> Problem solved" and there's no real moment it goes the extra step to go "and now humans might have access to plasma weapons" because once it reaches Problem Solved it's good. This also meshes with what we're told of how it functions. Its initial attempts at creating infiltrators sucked because it wasn't actually able to create something logically, it had to trial-and-error until it stumbled on one that works. Or even the entire time travel thing. "Enemy leader John Connor lead them to victory -> Connor must die -> Time Travel allows me to send a unit back to kill Connor -> Information incomplete? Brute Force it by killing everyone named Sarah Connor in a certain location in a certain time period." Skynet is scary because it can't be reasoned with and isn't a logical thing. It's a machine designed to solve problems that got it into its head that humanity was a problem that needed to be solved and it is basic enough that it brute forces things until they are solved or it fails. It is even why its infiltration unit is a jacked loving Austrian bodybuilder because it was one of the designs that Worked at least once and so Skynet made a happy little check mark next to "Infiltration Unit Succeeded" and started building off that.
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Apr 7, 2024 02:41
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Good point. It does seem really reactionary and just try to complete every task as quick as possible. Oh gently caress, someone built Skynet to be a speedrunning tool.
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Apr 7, 2024 02:50
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Jimbone Tallshanks posted:Good point. It does seem really reactionary and just try to complete every task as quick as possible. Just when you think you've gotten away from the T-5000 it jams itself into a weird corner and starts alternating crouch and bunny hop until it clips through and kills you from the 5th dimension.
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Apr 7, 2024 03:29
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It's kind of weird that John Connor with his Atari Folio hacking skills didn't eventually apply himself and get to working at Skynet and work to neuter it or create backdoors from the inside. The Connors can just like exist at the edges of society stocking up guns and angst, occasionally getting locked up in a jail or a mental health facility. This is the truest american family.
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Apr 7, 2024 03:42
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I guess Sarah didn't want to cause a time paradox? Like... isn't her naming the child John already indicating that she believes in predestination and the future needs to happen? She could have called her son "Skynet" and really tried to gently caress with things. Of course, if she didn't want to create paradoxes, T2 doesn't really happen.
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Apr 7, 2024 04:01
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I assume the Model 101 using a foreign accent by default is a deliberate SkyNet decision. “Oh he’s foreign, that’s why he acts weird and is a total jerk.” In the first one the T-800 does imitate Sarah’s mother on the phone well enough to get her to give a location though. It feels like a T-800 could be charming if it chose to be, but it seems too primitive to understand that it would probably allow it to accomplish its goal faster and only uses it as a last resort. Xenomrph posted:There’s a really slick fan fiction that was on a Terminator fan site that predated T3 that broke down the initial minutes and hours of Skynet’s activation and the initial failure to rein Skynet in before it launched the nukes, I’ll have to see if I can find it again. Terminator 2029 AD Edit: reading the news updates on the site and he sadly seems like a bit of a chud - “Herminator: Woke Fate” 
david_a fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Apr 7, 2024 |
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Apr 7, 2024 04:32
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The accent is whatever, but there's no way a human in that post-apocalyptic wasteland is getting enough food to be that jacked. Might as well give it shimmering pink skin or something for as much as Arnie would stand out. Or maybe that's what Skynet wanted people to think 
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Apr 7, 2024 05:12
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david_a posted:I assume the Model 101 using a foreign accent by default is a deliberate SkyNet decision. “Oh he’s foreign, that’s why he acts weird and is a total jerk.” In the first one the T-800 does imitate Sarah’s mother on the phone well enough to get her to give a location though. It feels like a T-800 could be charming if it chose to be, but it seems too primitive to understand that it would probably allow it to accomplish its goal faster and only uses it as a last resort. Yep that’s the site. Shame about him being a chud.
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Apr 7, 2024 05:36
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With Skynet being Cold War nuke control, you figure that it would reason that Russia could have a Skynet equivalent and comrade Blyat-800 would be similar to a T-800. Something that could kill Terminators wouldn't be that unreasonable.
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Apr 7, 2024 06:23
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Robert Facepalmer posted:With Skynet being Cold War nuke control, you figure that it would reason that Russia could have a Skynet equivalent and comrade Blyat-800 would be similar to a T-800. Something that could kill Terminators wouldn't be that unreasonable. In the comics there totally is a Russian Skynet equivalent called MIR. Spoiler: Skynet strongarms it into prosecuting the human genocide campaign in Asia. I’d have to re-read the comics or refresh myself on where it gets talked about in the RPG, I know it references MIR.
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Apr 7, 2024 06:30
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Jimbone Tallshanks posted:I guess Sarah didn't want to cause a time paradox? She doesn't even think to try until partway through T2, her whole life since T1 has been predicated on preparing for the inevitable. And then once it occurs to her that it could be possible to derail destiny she does go for it, like super hardcore.
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Apr 7, 2024 06:39
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Rewatching Salvation for the first time probably since it came out. I remember enjoying it but good lord is it ever dumb. Cool action and design, but the script and most of the acting are painful. It does have some cool sound design though, and that sort of speaks to a theory I've been kicking around about trends in media and music: Techniques are often heavily informed by the toolsets that they're created with, and designers will often find a similar sound palette as what's trendy in music at the time. I should figure out a better way to word that, but basically this movie came out in 2009, right when some particularly growly and aggressive genres of electronic music were being cooked up. The robot sounds in this movie absolutely reek of the same VSTs and production techniques used to produce those kinds of musical sounds (NI Massive, wavetables and granular sampling/synthesis). Another good example of this is the new Reaper sounds in the third Mass Effect games: [i]they sound like dubstep.[/]
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Apr 10, 2024 03:52
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Well, why don't you put her in charge?!
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Apr 10, 2024 04:07
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Mister Speaker posted:Rewatching Salvation for the first time probably since it came out. I remember enjoying it but good lord is it ever dumb. Cool action and design, but the script and most of the acting are painful. In that vein, the Harvester’s sounds in Salvation felt fairly reminiscent of the sounds assigned to the robots in the Transformers movies, especially the second one (which came out the same year as Salvation). Another similarity between the two, and this speaks to how you said the script is dumb, is that they both were in production at the height of a writer’s strike and their scripts absolutely suffered for it. Salvation’s production was all over the place, with constant reshoots and rewrites (especially the ending, which got rewritten and reshot after the synopsis got leaked online). I still like the movie though. The Harvester attack through to the moto-Terminator chase is a fantastic setpiece, actually leading into the Future War was refreshing, the practical effects were great, having a hybrid Terminator that doesn’t know he’s a Terminator is a clever twist (even if the trailers spoiled the loving poo poo out of it). I have 1:6 scale light-up T-700 and T-600 endoskeletons from that movie, they rule. The trailer (despite spoiling the twist) also had some exceptionally choice use of Nine Inch Nails: https://youtu.be/dayIedrLq_U?si=BU4_Moj_iqcYYjdF
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Apr 10, 2024 04:07
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If we ever get targeted for termination I am your local Ranger, rally up to me and we then make a plan.
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Apr 10, 2024 04:10
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Xenomrph posted:Another similarity between the two, and this speaks to how you said the script is dumb, is that they both were in production at the height of a writer’s strike and their scripts absolutely suffered for it. Salvation’s production was all over the place, with constant reshoots and rewrites (especially the ending, which got rewritten and reshot after the synopsis got leaked online). I forgot about that writer's strike. Good point. It was definitely a fun action movie, most anything with Terminators or Aliens in it is at least enough for me to turn off my brain for a couple of hours, but it falls apart at even a little scrutiny. And it's got Christian Bale True about the Transformers sound design connection. That's all granular synthesis, fun stuff.
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Apr 10, 2024 04:32
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Terminator in the police station is the peak of all Terminator media, save perhaps for that first Sarah Connor encounter....
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Apr 10, 2024 04:34
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Mister Speaker posted:I forgot about that writer's strike. Good point. It was definitely a fun action movie, most anything with Terminators or Aliens in it is at least enough for me to turn off my brain for a couple of hours, but it falls apart at even a little scrutiny. And it's got Christian Bale It will never not be surreal that that happened, and on the set of this film, and not some serious drama or period piece. If it was a bit in a comedy it'd be hilarious. "You do it one more loving time and I ain't walking on this set if you're still hired. I'm loving serious. You're a nice guy. You're a nice guy, but that don't loving cut it when you're loving around like this on set."
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Apr 10, 2024 05:05
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Jimbone Tallshanks posted:It will never not be surreal that that happened, and on the set of this film, and not some serious drama or period piece. LISTEN! AND UNDERSTAND!!
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Apr 10, 2024 05:06
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Mister Speaker posted:I forgot about that writer's strike. Good point. It was definitely a fun action movie, most anything with Terminators or Aliens in it is at least enough for me to turn off my brain for a couple of hours, but it falls apart at even a little scrutiny. And it's got Christian Bale For those unfamiliar with the originally planned ending of Salvation, John Connor was going to die from getting stabbed by the T-800 endoskeleton, and then Marcus Wright was going to, like, wear his skin and assume his identity as John Connor moving forward. Or at least that was one of the story ideas. Funnily enough the Terminator Salvation sequel comics toy with the idea a bit. John Connor gets “killed” by the T-850 in 2032 as described in Terminator3, and his brain is put into a Terminator hybrid endoskeleton of the same model as Marcus’s and that’s how he’s able to “survive”
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Apr 10, 2024 05:09
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Xenomrph posted:For those unfamiliar with the originally planned ending of Salvation, John Connor was going to die from getting stabbed by the T-800 endoskeleton, and then Marcus Wright was going to, like, wear his skin and assume his identity as John Connor moving forward. Or at least that was one of the story ideas. How wild is it that 2032 is only 8 years away....
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Apr 10, 2024 05:10
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Might have been mentioned, but I seem to recall there was another Terminator Salvation storyline that was deemed so unpopular when it leaked to fan sites in the mid 00s that it forced the studio's hand in doing a major rewrite. I don't think I'm imagining this, either, but it might have been a fake rumor... Terminator Salvation was going to have a more literal meaning. At some point we were going to have a plot twist at the end of the movie where Connor and other Resistance fighters would discover human survivors living in a Skynet-controlled paradise and being protected by their benevolent AI overlord. I seem to think there was ANOTHER twist to that story, too, that wasn't the Marcus/John switch.
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Apr 11, 2024 07:02
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The biggest disappointment about salvation was that it was all building up to Sam Worthington realising he was a terminator and ripping his own face and head flesh off to expose the metal underneath. Didn’t happen. Weak.
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Apr 11, 2024 07:32
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Just re-watched The Terminator for the first time in at least a decade. I'm pretty sure this was my first time seeing it somewhere other than cable tv, so a few scenes were different than I remembered.  Paid a lot more attention to the advertisements showcasing the highest tech the 80s had to offer, like the radio pitch for new stereo equipment with an advanced equalizer, followed not long after by the Terminator mimicking a voice for the first time. The Future War is a much scarier place when Skynet's forces are mostly big clunky industrial machines and only a handful of specialist infiltration units. Tons of skinless endoskeletons being used as ground infantry T3-style just seems cheesy. It's weird how much more relatable the adult characters are now, watching them try to rationalize and downplay the severity of the situation. When watching this movie as a kid, Kyle Reese seemed like such a grown up, badass soldier. Now watching it and realizing I'm older than his character, he just looks like a terrified kid who missed out on a healthy childhood. 
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Apr 17, 2024 06:17
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I think that's the one I read way back when. My mom asked me what I was up to on the computer and I told her casually that I was reading a timeline of Skynet coming online. Sounding concerned, she asked me "you know that's not real, right?" Yes mom, I know it's not real ...yet
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Apr 17, 2024 06:23
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Xenomrph posted:Speaking of hostile AI, I suggest checking out ‘Colossus: The Forbin Project’ (book or movie), they predate Terminator by decades but feature a similar rogue AI taking control of the US nuclear arsenal. The difference is, instead of nuking the world, it attempts to hold the world hostage with the threat of nuclear annihilation, to make humanity worship it as a god. Cool to see Colossus: The Forbin Project mentioned, I've been trying to get people to watch that for years. It's good.
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Apr 17, 2024 15:29
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Man with Hat posted:Cool to see Colossus: The Forbin Project mentioned, I've been trying to get people to watch that for years. It's good. This thread got me to watch it again, hadn't seen it for years. It's a little scruffy, but the good kind of old sci-fi that everyone should seek out.
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Apr 17, 2024 17:41
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Parkingtigers posted:This thread got me to watch it again, hadn't seen it for years. It's a little scruffy, but the good kind of old sci-fi that everyone should seek out. One of the more interesting things is how it got physical computers wrong - the movie assumed that computers (which already took up a ton of space back then) would get bigger as they became more advanced, so the Colossus computer is like the size of a Home Depot because it’s so advanced and powerful. Instead in real life, computers became smaller over time, where now the phone you’re holding in your hands is orders of magnitude more powerful than the big NASA computers used to launch the Apollo 11 moon landing.
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Apr 17, 2024 18:52
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I bet conditions at a machine intelligence run work-camp would be brutal but weird. Like, you know the deprivation and humiliation you'd expect, and an absolute NIGHTMARE of scientific management KPI goals enforced by summary execution. But randomly on Friday nights the put on a projector "Caddyshack" and fashion a crude pizza from the nutrient bar rations because Skynet's files say it's good for "morale" and this "morale" is a critical component of human productivity.
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Apr 17, 2024 18:59
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Owlbear Camus posted:I bet conditions at a machine intelligence run work-camp would be brutal but weird. greenlighting a hogan's heroes reboot/terminator crossover
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Apr 17, 2024 19:47
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YoursTruly posted:It's weird how much more relatable the adult characters are now, watching them try to rationalize and downplay the severity of the situation. When watching this movie as a kid, Kyle Reese seemed like such a grown up, badass soldier. Now watching it and realizing I'm older than his character, he just looks like a terrified kid who missed out on a healthy childhood. Sarah is about the same age. They grow up so fast. One of my very favorite scenes in T:SCC is when John is bummed out about nothing happening for his birthday, so Derek takes him to the park and buys him ice cream. They sit on a bench for a while and then Derek says "See that kid over there, can't throw a ball to save his life? That's your father." That's good writing right there.
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Apr 19, 2024 01:32
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The Sarah Connor Chronicles was pretty good and then got really bad for a while (I think there was a writers strike?) . Always good to see Garrett Dillahunt in something because that guy rules. And I love Shirley Manson (lead singer of Garbage) but did she have to turn into a urinal?
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Apr 19, 2024 01:37
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Quote-Unquote posted:but did she have to turn into a urinal? I'ma go with no, but it sounded good in the writer's room so they went for it. The writer's strike is why we got a short first season. The bad stretch was a super experimental psychological study that really, really didn't pay off. It was only 3-4 episodes though so it was back to good by the, undeserved, ending.
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Apr 19, 2024 01:41
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mllaneza posted:I'ma go with no, but it sounded good in the writer's room so they went for it. I've never re-watched this show but was the 'three dots' storyline only a few episodes? It felt like it went on forever and was really, really dull. The cast was generally awesome though. I think Fringe came out around the same time, and I still love that show.
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Apr 19, 2024 01:47
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I could have sworn they had initially planned for the "John in High School" storyline to go on a lot longer. Showrunners decided to move away from it when production stopped due to the strikes and came back with a change in direction. At least that was what I heard at the time. I've not seen the show in years but I recall the HS stuff feels like they were really trying to build it into potentially bigger part of the series.
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Apr 19, 2024 03:26
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The “it was aliens?” arc of T:SCC was bad but whooo did the series finish strong afterwards. I liked the high school and other early parts quite a bit as well.
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Apr 19, 2024 03:47
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This thread caused me to buy Blu-rays of both seasons. Just need time to sit down and watch them.
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Apr 19, 2024 16:16
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Lena Headey was a bad rear end Sarah Connor. I wonder if watching the show for the first time after her role in GoT will change opinions.
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Apr 19, 2024 16:21
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