Poll of the Day > A Geektivus For The Rest Of Us

(+) Yeah! (+)

ParanoidObsessive posted...

To be fair, there are quite a few games like that online. The problem is that most people still don't RP anyway.

I mean, a game with multiplayer where you're not intimately aware that it's a videogame is at least a step up.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

But realistically, games aren't art (fuck all y'all, Ebert was right). Games are entertainment. And a game you loathe every second of is basically anti-entertainment - it's failed so hard at being what it's supposed to be, it's come out the opposite side into negative values.

...art is entertainment. And Ebert was a stodgy product of his times who, if he was born in an earlier age, would have argued that movies aren't art. Granted, critics in general are cultural bulwarks opposing emerging media, etc.
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Video games are a medium that is capable of being art. PUBG isn't art but, rather, a case study of frat boys getting it on with one another. Mario Sunshine is fridge art that a loving "fan" might display for a day or three before it mysteriously ends up in the trash. "LoZ: Majora's Mask" or "NieR:Automata" are higher art for the medium.

Likewise, "The Room" might also be fridge art by some while we can all think of so many films that can never be considered as art on any day of the week, such as "Jurassic Park 3."

This same argument can, of course, be applied to other mediums, such as music.
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Entity13 posted...

Likewise, "The Room" might also be fridge art by some while we can all think of so many films that can never be considered as art on any day of the week, such as "Jurassic Park 3."

Eh, that's not really a matter of art vs not art so much as it is good art vs bad art (or bad art vs mediocre, commercial art). But yes, society tends to use "art" as an indication of quality and the dismissal of video games as a medium is kind of a backhanded way of dismissing games as having any merit.
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I_Abibde posted...

People really do have a love-or-hate relationship with Final Fantasy VIII, even almost twenty years later, it seems. I'm on the love side; it's still one of my favorite games in the series.

I loathe it like I loathe no other game in the history of video games.

The only other game to ever engender such a seething hatred within me was Morrowind, which was mostly prompted by its shittastic controller scheme - but which never really carved as deep a furrow into my soul because I sold it back to GameStop like less than a week after I bought it (for a single dollar, and I still felt like I got the better of the deal).

The only reason I kept and continued playing (and ultimately finished) FFVIII was more because I already had years/multiple games worth of nostalgia and good feelings built up from the earlier history of the franchise. Yet even then I sort of had to resist the urge to fling the disc full-force at the wall after I finished playing. And the act of forcing myself to play it in spite of hating pretty much every single thing about it just made my hate for it worse.

I'd be hard-pressed to name a single aspect of the game that I like at all.

(Actually, I DO sort of like Quistis, except her role in the story and her pining after Squall sort of ruins any potential she has, so she winds up being a zero-sum character as well.)

And my girlfriend used to self-identify herself as Selphie, but that's less because she likes the character (she's never played the game) as much as because she used to have a similar sort of hyperactive personality, and because she has a huge crush on Irvine as a concept (again, she's never played the game, so he's more "archetypal cowboy + anime" to her than he is an actual character). She basically super-obsessed over the very short period of time when I played a modern-day cowboy sort of character in a Werewolf: the Apocalypse game forever and a day ago (which I ironically also hated, because I kind of hate Werewolf).



shadowsword87 posted...

I mean, a game with multiplayer where you're not intimately aware that it's a videogame is at least a step up.

The problem is, no one in the history of the human race has yet invented a video game immersive enough to prevent me from being intimately aware that it's a video game. Even at my RPiest in browser games (or actual RP), there's always the disconnect between me as the player and the medium of play.

An ARG like Majestic probably comes close, but even that still has multiple layers of reality kicking you in the face while playing.

That being said, I've never considered total immersion a prerequisite for enjoyment in any game, even RPGs (arguably especially RPGs, since I rarely "play as myself" anyway).



Zeus posted...

...art is entertainment.

Art CAN be entertainment, and entertainment can be art, but the two are not mutually linked, nor do they share the same intent or obligations.



Zeus posted...

And Ebert was a stodgy product of his times

He was also completely correct at the point in time he made the statement.

He's arguably still correct now for the vast majority of games.


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

The only other game to ever engender such a seething hatred within me was Morrowind, which was mostly prompted by its shittastic controller scheme - but which never really carved as deep a furrow into my soul because I sold it back to GameStop like less than a week after I bought it (for a single dollar, and I still felt like I got the better of the deal).

Huh. I tried the PC version once, but couldn't get used to playing with a mouse & keyboard. Meant to try it with a controller.

Plus it looks like shit now.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I'd be hard-pressed to name a single aspect of the game that I like at all.

(Actually, I DO sort of like Quistis, except her role in the story and her pining after Squall sort of ruins any potential she has, so she winds up being a zero-sum character as well.)

I liked some of the character designs, but hated the characterizations. And in general I liked the game except for the characters and story.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Werewolf: the Apocalypse game forever and a day ago (which I ironically also hated, because I kind of hate Werewolf).

Which was a franchise I liked purely for the werewolves (and I picked up some of Rage -- the CCG -- as a result).

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Art CAN be entertainment, and entertainment can be art, but the two are not mutually linked, nor do they share the same intent or obligations.

No, all art is entertainment. Unless you're arguing for some non-aesthetic purely practical form of art, which doesn't exist last I checked. Granted, entertainment can be broken into multiple categories, as can art, but it doesn't stop it from being entertainment.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

He was also completely correct at the point in time he made the statement.

He's arguably still correct now for the vast majority of games.

He's wrong on every conceivable level, and hypocritically so given his attempts to validate film. Granted, much of his complaint *could* be based on an ulterior motive since diminishes other media elevates his chosen media
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If films are art, then so are video games. Full stop, this is an objective statement, it meets all the requirements, and checks all the boxes a movie does.

That said, I don't really care to guard the hill on that statement, because I'm not sure why anyone would be upset if someone considers games a form of art of not. Just like the same people who get bent out of shape over if e-sports should be compared to real sports or not.

Video games are pretty unique in terms of if they are an art/sport/whatever, we should just leave it at that. They don't really need the approval of any other medium.
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Speaking of things bothering me, I've always kinda had mixed feelings that Batman is merged or contrasted vs Wolverine whenever they do a Marvel and DC thing like Amalgem.

While both Batman and Wolverine are brooding characters and they have some basic costume similarities, it always seemed like Spider-Man was the more natural choice since both heroes use pest animals as their motif, both are orphans with an elderly caregiver, both chose to take up crime-fighting specifically in relation to a criminal killing a family member, both are geniuses, both refrain from killing, etc.

Plus, when it comes to the rogues gallery, Green Goblin has a greater affinity to the Joker than Sabretooth, considering that they have laughing gimmicks, they're known for gadget use, etc. Not to mention that both characters have a cat-motif ambiguous heroine/villain in their rogues gallery who has occasionally served as a love interest.

I'll admit that there are a few knocks against Spidey, though, including the fact he can hold down stable romantic entanglements and that he's portrayed younger. And he's not a grimdark character. However, Wolverine is practically a serial killer which kinda goes against Batman's sensibilities (well, at least later Batman, brutal vigilante Batman from the early comics could be Punisher-esque at times).
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A mention of Amalgam Comics? Bonus points for you, Zeus. (I have 'em all. Pretty cheap to get, actually.)

I suspect that they picked Batman and Wolverine for that particular merge because they were both pretty badly oversaturated in the comics at that point in time.
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Well, Spidey's never been a slouch there, either. iirc he's had 4 books going at once at times in addition to doing cameos. But sure, once upon a time Wolverine was on the cover of nearly *every* Marvel comic, including some that he didn't even appear in.

And, speaking of cheap comics, I never even bothered picking up the entire run of any of the 2099 titles >_< I had a lot of Spidey 2099 from clearance bins back in the 90s, as well as a little from the other titles. My comic collection has always been relatively puny. I think I own fewer than 250 issues in all (definitely less than 400).
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Zeus posted...

Which was a franchise I liked purely for the werewolves (and I picked up some of Rage -- the CCG -- as a result).

I mostly hated it (it was easily my least-favorite ST system at a time when I loved most of the other systems to some degree or another) because of its radical hippie tendencies, making every werewolf an eco-warrior for Mother Earth by default, and basing at least a few Tribes (and werewolf culture in general) on an incredibly shallow cultural appropriation from Native American and Celtic cultures.

About the only good thing that came out of Werewolf for me was the ad in the back of the main book for Mage (the next system they released), which led me to buy it, which is basically what kickstarted my love for White Wolf and the Storyteller system (and which ultimately led me backwards to Vampire). I hated Werewolf almost from the first time I ever played it (not helped by the 1st edition version of the rules/setting being the worst when it came to rampant counter-culturalism).

It was very telling that, when I DID get talked into playing it, I almost always played a Glass Walker (ie, the techno-fetishist werewolves who essentially sold out to the primordial avatar of Order and mostly severed themselves from nature in the process). I was basically trying to play the most non-hippie werewolf the system would allow you to play (without going full Black Spiral, which I actually did in one game).

Werewolf: the Forsaken (the nWoD version of the game) is literally the only nWoD game I consider to be an improvement on its original, but even then it just feels more bland and pointless rather than outright bad.



Zeus posted...

No, all art is entertainment.

Absolutely untrue. Some art is entertainment, and some entertainment is art, but while there's certainly an overlap, they aren't the same thing, they have different underlying core purpose principles, and can absolutely exist separate from each other.



Zeus posted...

He's wrong on every conceivable level, and hypocritically so given his attempts to validate film.

To be fair, as much as Ebert made an offhanded comment about video games in general (that sad neckbeards on the Internet then blew up into something far more major than it ever really was meant to be) without really having a full understanding of the medium as a fully-defined whole (and then doubled down on it afterward mostly to piss off those same complainers, at least partly because Ebert was always something of a troll), I would argue that even he would have openly admitted that not all film is art either.

People reducing the entire argument down to an all-or-nothing zero sum game are completely missing the point, and their stance will always be flawed.



CyborgSage00x0 posted...

If films are art, then so are video games. Full stop, this is an objective statement, it meets all the requirements, and checks all the boxes a movie does.

Except this arguably isn't true for a metric shit-ton of video games.

Again, this easily falls into the sphere of "some games are, some aren't".



CyborgSage00x0 posted...

Just like the same people who get bent out of shape over if e-sports should be compared to real sports or not.

But e-sports aren't real sports.


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Zeus posted...

While both Batman and Wolverine are brooding characters and they have some basic costume similarities, it always seemed like Spider-Man was the more natural choice since both heroes use pest animals as their motif, both are orphans with an elderly caregiver, both chose to take up crime-fighting specifically in relation to a criminal killing a family member, both are geniuses, both refrain from killing, etc.

I'll admit that there are a few knocks against Spidey, though, including the fact he can hold down stable romantic entanglements and that he's portrayed younger. And he's not a grimdark character.

I'd say the "grimdark" aspect is the main problem. Batman is very much the brooding, grim vigilante, while Peter is quite possibly one of the most upbeat and cheerful of Marvel's heroes (even in spite of all the shit that happens to him on a regular basis). Their worldviews are almost diametrically opposed.

This even shows in terms of how they handle their motivating backstory deaths. Batman is a character whose parents' deaths sort of broke him as a functional human being, and left him as an avenging angel who basically has to kick the shit out of crime to assuage his own despair, but Uncle Ben's death acted more as an inspirational moment for Peter, making his crimefighting less of a personal obsession and more a sense of duty (so much so that Peter himself has repeatedly acted as similar motivation to OTHER heroes in the Marvel universe - apparently, just TALKING about his uncle's death and quoting back "With great power etc etc" is one of the most motivational things any young hero can hear in Marvel's world).

In that sense, the ideal pairing for Batman would probably be the Punisher - but the only flaw there being Batman's unwillingness to kill conflicting with the Punisher's entire MO. But a Batman who is willing to kill or a Punisher who is smarter (basically Frank and Microchip combined into a single person) and willing to use theatricality to his advantage rather than just shooting every criminal he meets gives you the most logical hybrid.

(You could also theoretically fuse Batman with Moon Knight, but that would just leave you with Batman. *sick burn* And Moon Knight was never really that popular...)

Also worth noting - 90% of Peter's early problems and interactions stemmed almost entirely from just how poor he was, and how he needed to support Aunt May, while Batman can basically buy his way out of almost any problem if necessary (but has to juggle the conflicting problems of being a millionaire/billionaire playboy by day versus his nighttime shenanigans). Which means a hybrid of the two either gives you a Spider-Man without most of his classical interactions or dilemmas, or a Batman who has to work three day jobs to afford all of his gadgets.

Batman and Spider-Man contrast more than then compare, for the most part.

Which is part of why it made an interesting dynamic when the YouTube "Happy Hour" series basically cast Batman into a sort of cynical mentor role to the more optimistic and idealistic Spider-Man.


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Zeus posted...

However, Wolverine is practically a serial killer which kinda goes against Batman's sensibilities (well, at least later Batman, brutal vigilante Batman from the early comics could be Punisher-esque at times).

Wolverine tends to waver on that particular point, though. And at the time the Amalgam stuff was happening, Wolverine was still mostly in his 1980s Claremont/Miller-inspired ronin phase, which maps extremely well to Batman's similar samurai/ninja-esque aesthetic.

And while Wolverine never explicitly has a "no killing" rule (and openly resorts to killing or extreme maiming as a solution to most of his problems a lot of the time), during his time with the X-Men in the 1980s, he was probably at the height of his "I'm trying to be a better man" phase, and was actively trying to avoid killing people (especially since most of the other X-Men were VERY strong with the "X-Men don't kill people. Period.", right up until they apparently stopped caring all that much about it). So at the time Amalgam was coming into being as a concept, Wolverine was probably at his least-killingest (that's a word now, shut up).

Taken in tandem with his tendency to constantly have young girl "morality pets" (Kitty, Jubilee, Armor, etc) around to keep him from going too far and "giving in to his animal side" as part of his "I need to be a better man" ideals, and it's easy to see the parallels to Batman (what with his endless parade of Robin's, and the common interpretation that one of the reasons he allows anyone to be "Robin" at all is more to keep him from sliding too far into the darkness).

It wasn't until the full grimderp of the 90s was in full swing that later writers kind of started to ignore that side of Wolverine and just went full-bore stabby with him, and that sort of peaked with the X-Force comic of the 2000s (where Cyclops literally formed a first-strike assassination hit-squad and put Wolverine in charge) - though they (stupidly) dialed that back shortly afterward, when they (asininely and unrealistically) had him object to the more militant stance Cyclops was taking to become the more anti-violence side of the mutant coin (culminating in the phenomenally stupid premise of him reestablishing the school), mostly just because he was the more popular character (and people liked him in the movies!), so they decided maybe he shouldn't be the leader of a black-ops wetwork team and instead make him more the established "leader" of the mutant community, no matter how at odds with every facet of his previous characterization that was.

So yeah, it's not a huge leap to see Wolverine/Batman as the go-to hybrid, and just assume you have a Batman who is more willing to kill (especially if you cast it in a bushido-flavored ideology) or a Wolverine who is far more strict about using lethal force (which might be easy to justify if you subtract the years of torture and psychological damage from "Weapon X" out of his character).


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

I mostly hated it (it was easily my least-favorite ST system at a time when I loved most of the other systems to some degree or another) because of its radical hippie tendencies, making every werewolf an eco-warrior for Mother Earth by default, and basing at least a few Tribes (and werewolf culture in general) on an incredibly shallow cultural appropriation from Native American and Celtic cultures.

Kek. The virtue-signaling was pretty strong in it. And, from what I remember of the books (that'd be a novel -- yes, I was a masochist), some of the overtones and cultural usage (as always, I hesitate to use "appropriation" given the term's tainted association) was cringe-worthy.

That said, I didn't have an inherent problem with the general eco-warrior premise, although I can't remember if the origin of wolves was specifically tied into a nature standpoint which justified their attitudes. I just recall that their enemies had some entropic worldview and something to do with pollution. And, of course, I was a fuckload heavier on the eco-friendly hippie shit back then. What can I say, it was the 90s.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Absolutely untrue. Some art is entertainment, and some entertainment is art, but while there's certainly an overlap, they aren't the same thing, they have different underlying core purpose principles, and can absolutely exist separate from each other.

The fact that some entertainment isn't art doesn't mean that some art isn't entertainment. That's like saying because not all automobiles are trucks, not all trucks are automobiles.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Except this arguably isn't true for a metric shit-ton of video games.

Again, this easily falls into the sphere of "some games are, some aren't".

Then you're also excluding some films as art? And some paintings as art? And some songs as music? If so, you're using "art" as a descriptor of quality. If not, you may be a *mite* hypocritical or working from some weird starting point.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

But e-sports aren't real sports.

And yet pool is a sport >_>
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

I'd say the "grimdark" aspect is the main problem. Batman is very much the brooding, grim vigilante, while Peter is quite possibly one of the most upbeat and cheerful of Marvel's heroes (even in spite of all the shit that happens to him on a regular basis). Their worldviews are almost diametrically opposed.

He clearly uses humor to cope, whether he's nervous, afraid, etc. You make him sound a lot more happy-go-lucky than he actually is.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

This even shows in terms of how they handle their motivating backstory deaths. Batman is a character whose parents' deaths sort of broke him as a functional human being, and left him as an avenging angel who basically has to kick the shit out of crime to assuage his own despair, but Uncle Ben's death acted more as an inspirational moment for Peter, making his crimefighting less of a personal obsession and more a sense of duty (so much so that Peter himself has repeatedly acted as similar motivation to OTHER heroes in the Marvel universe - apparently, just TALKING about his uncle's death and quoting back "With great power etc etc" is one of the most motivational things any young hero can hear in Marvel's world).

Other than having a catchphrase, I'm not seeing a lot of disparity. They're both characters with intense survivors guilt over a traumatic family death which gave them a compulsion to fight crime. And both have a pretty intense complex where they *can't* abandon it because they view themselves as being indispensable to the cause. And, of course, Batman is known for giving pep talks as well. Just about the only people he tries to talk out of heroing (instead of keeping with it) are his would-be sidekicks.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

In that sense, the ideal pairing for Batman would probably be the Punisher - but the only flaw there being Batman's unwillingness to kill conflicting with the Punisher's entire MO. But a Batman who is willing to kill or a Punisher who is smarter (basically Frank and Microchip combined into a single person) and willing to use theatricality to his advantage rather than just shooting every criminal he meets gives you the most logical hybrid.

Not at all. Batman insisted on keeping a dual identity. The Punisher is just the Punisher. Plus DC *has* similar serial killing crime-fighters. Several versions of Vigilante were pretty liberal on capital punishment.

Plus Punisher lacks Batman's sense of the theatrical.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Taken in tandem with his tendency to constantly have young girl "morality pets" (Kitty, Jubilee, Armor, etc) around to keep him from going too far and "giving in to his animal side" as part of his "I need to be a better man" ideals, and it's easy to see the parallels to Batman (what with his endless parade of Robin's, and the common interpretation that one of the reasons he allows anyone to be "Robin" at all is more to keep him from sliding too far into the darkness).

So they might have been doing it more to combine the sidekicks than factoring solely on a Wolverine/Batman connection?
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Except this arguably isn't true for a metric shit-ton of video games.

A fair amount of films could be seen the same way, and can be wildly different than what the general agreements of what a "movie" is.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

But e-sports aren't real sports.

Oh, I agree. Admittedly that wasn't the best place for me to use that example, as I was rather trying to demonstrate that just some people will go to great lengths to classify video games as something that already exists.
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I freaking hate Ticket master.

I need handicap seat because I only have one leg, and I go to their website to buy Wrestlemania tickets, and they tell me I can't because I have to call directly for special tickets.

No problem, so I call, and they tell me I have to go to the website. Wait.... I can buy them online or over the phone? So, if I can't buy them online or over the phone is there a magic third option I don't know about?

I'm so triggered.
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*reads discussion of Batman, Spider-Man, Wolverine, etc.*

Lots of good stuff in there! One minor item: I still prefer Moon Knight to Batman. *shrugs* I acknowledge that he has never been one of the more popular '70s Marvel heroes, but I like his gimmick and history.

As far as Wolverine goes, it almost feels like the different versions of him should almost be separate characters, especially his '80s incarnation (i.e. the one that has character development, IMO). Then again, there are already a ton of Wolverine-y characters (e.g. X-23, Daken et al) in play. Unless Marvel killed them again. Or killed Wolverine again.
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Zeus posted...

Kek. The virtue-signaling was pretty strong in it. And, from what I remember of the books, some of the overtones and cultural usage was cringe-worthy.

The core rulebooks - especially the 1st edition books - were just dripping with it. Whether it was the blatant hippie pacifist Children of Gaia, the man-hating feminist Black Furies, the "Oh-So-Pure" Native Americans (and the explicit backstory where Europeans literally ruin everything), there was a lot of cringey bullshit. Then you factor in the cultural stereotypes of the Fianna, the Get, and the Stargazers, and more than half your Tribes are basically crap.

Nor might it have been entirely coincidental that the two Tribes most identified with European values and ideals were, respectively, a bunch of inbred lunatics and manipulative fucks that literally no one ever trusts. But hey, you can always be a Glass Walker and have the entire rest of the Garou Nation hate and shit on you (and you're objectively and explicitly a traitor to Gaia and being controlled by a malevolent force of Stasis in the official metaplot). Or you can be a homeless person and live in a cardboard box as a Bone Gnawer. Wee! Are we having fun yet, kids?

I'm not entirely sure whether I consider the Revised edition of the game (aka 3e) to be better or worse in that respect, because while they actually toned down a lot of the Native American/Celtic/hippie fellating in the newer content, they also sterilized a lot of other things (like anything Nazi-related in the Get of Fenris, anything IRA-related in the Fianna, kicking the Stargazers out of the Garou Nation entirely so people wouldn't complain about Shaolin Monk werewolves being Asian stereotypes, etc) for fear of offending delicate snowflakes.

Though at least part of their later paranoid stance about not offending people (they did it in the nWoD as well, which is part of why nWoD Mage sucks so very, very hard) likely stemmed from them being way too gunshy after the Gypsy clusterfuck, which was entirely their fault.


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Zeus posted...

That said, I didn't have an inherent problem with the general eco-warrior premise, although I can't remember if the origin of wolves was specifically tied into a nature standpoint which justified their attitudes. I just recall that their enemies had some entropic worldview and something to do with pollution.

The entire premise of the game is that you're literally the creation of Mother Earth sent forth to be her divine warriors in the world, but the world is absolute shit because your ancestors kind of fucked up their jobs. The Weaver (the force of Order) has gone insane, and bound the Wyrm (the force of Balance) in its web, so now the Wyrm is also crazy, and has become the avatar of destruction and corruption (the "pollution" part you mentioned being just one of the Wyrm's many, many consequences in the world). As Garou, you're expected to help protect the Wyld (the force of growth, change, nature, and everything else hippie), which usually boils down to blowing up corporations and fighting toxic-waste monsters and demon spirits. So much so that they basically took a term for highly destructive real world eco-terrorism (monkeywrenching) and made it a respected sub-faction within the Garou Nation. And, of course, humans are the root of everything bad, ever, and nature is noble and pure and special and fuck anyone who thinks otherwise.

Werewolf: the Apocalypse is basically what you get when a furry masturbates to an episode of Captain Planet and suddenly has a great idea for an RPG.

Again, this got toned down somewhat in the later editions, but it was still the core premise of the game, and how nearly everyone plays the game. Well, unless you played it online. In that case, nearly everyone played it like a soap opera with uncomfortable 50 Shades-flavored c-sexing with the Kinfolk.

Games like Vampire and Mage usually give the ST a lot of wiggle-room about how to run things, but the entire setting of Werewolf kind of forces you into a single sort of mindset, because doing almost anything other than fighting in a doomed war pretty much makes you a traitor to your people and a failure in your role.



Zeus posted...

And, of course, I was a fuckload heavier on the eco-friendly hippie shit back then. What can I say, it was the 90s.

That might be part of why I was so down on it at the time. I was already old enough to be pissed off about that sort of ideology, but still young enough to not be the burned out and broken curmudgeon I am today.

Back then my cynicism burned pretty hot. Now it's more of a cold smolder.

Then-Me hated the game with a passion. Now-Me would probably just look at it, shrug, go "Bleh, SJW the Game - no thanks", and then move on and never give it a second thought.

Though the other reason Then-Me might have been more turned off by it was also because I knew way too many people who wanted to play it, mainly because they liked the idea of being able to turn into 12-foot tall killing machines and punching all their problems to death. Games like Vampire and Mage actually required thinking, and were less "murder everything" in scope.



Zeus posted...

(that'd be a novel -- yes, I was a masochist)

I never read the Werewolf novels, though I did buy the original Vampire and Mage anthologies (The Beast Within and Truth Until Paradox, respectively), and then later I got all of the Vampire Clan Novels (I also managed to track down and buy some of the Vampire comics when they came out with those, though they were a bit hard to find at the time).

Some of their books (especially the later ones) were well written. Others, not so much.


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Zeus posted...

(as always, I hesitate to use "appropriation" given the term's tainted association)

Yeah, but that's a problem when certain groups are basically attaching their own meanings to all sorts of terminology, even words that existed long before they did. Especially when there aren't necessarily a lot of alternative words or phrases you can use as synonyms for the original meaning. At least not without having to construct needlessly long and awkward workarounds.

At a certain point, I just get to a "Fuck you, I'm taking it back" sort of mentality, and just use the word in its original context, because it's way too much work not to. And because it feels like letting the assholes win.

It always annoys me that "problematic" has become a SJW word, in spite of the fact that I used it for years long before shitheads ruined it. It means "something that can cause problems", not "this is vaguely racial/ethnic/cultural/sexual/gender identity/etc related and hurts my feelings, in spite of the fact that I'm probably not even part of the group being referenced anyway, and am just feeling offended by proxy because my parents never loved me."

But this is bordering a shade too much on the political, and I do like to keep that sort of thing out of the Geek topics, because these sorts of discussions tend to get in the way of complaining about movies made based on fictional characters in their underwear punching aliens.



Zeus posted...

The fact that some entertainment isn't art doesn't mean that some art isn't entertainment. That's like saying because not all automobiles are trucks, not all trucks are automobiles.

Well, no, since I'm basically describing the entire thing as a Venn Diagram with overlap rather than a set/subset scenario or complete exclusion.



Zeus posted...

Then you're also excluding some films as art? And some paintings as art? And some songs as music?

Yes, absolutely.

I'd also say that not all books are art. The fact that things like Twilight and Eragon exist prove that.



Zeus posted...

If so, you're using "art" as a descriptor of quality.

Not really. I'm using it more as a statement of intent and purpose.



Zeus posted...

If not, you may be a *mite* hypocritical or working from some weird starting point.

I don't see it as hypocritical to say that "art" and "entertainment" are functionally two separate things, and that they can exist in tandem in the same product, as well as exist separately without the other in some cases.

Hypocritical would be if I presented the argument that all movies were art, but that video games can't be, even video games which are essentially identical to movies. Because then I would be holding different media to different standards.

Which is generally the sort of accusation most people direct at Ebert, but one which I don't necessarily think applies. I think (though admittedly, I may be wrong) that he tended to see things more in the same vein I'm describing than an absolute all-or-nothing situation.


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Zeus posted...

He clearly uses humor to cope, whether he's nervous, afraid, etc. You make him sound a lot more happy-go-lucky than he actually is.

Peter really isn't that bad. Apart from his 1960s nebbish years, he's always been far more upbeat than Bruce is. Yes, the wisecracking as Spider-Man IS an act to some degree, but he's also far more capable of having genuine human interactions, friendships, and relationships than Bruce is. He's also far more likely to try and be comforting and inspiring to people who seem to be in a worse place than he is, whereas a lot of Bruce's "comforting" anyone who isn't part of the "Bat-family" tends to come across as either feeling awkward, or being entirely tactical (ie, not cheering someone up because you feel bad that they're sad, but doing it because you need them to be at 100% in the next fight).

Peter's darkest moments always stem more from the circumstances he's faced with. When he's not sure he can afford to keep his Aunt from getting evicted, or when she's got health issues, or when the Avengers go on cosmic universe-breaking adventures and he's like "Shit, guys, all I can really do is jump around and punch really hard." Deep down, he wants to be an optimist. He wants to trust people. He wants to be an idealist, and generally assume the future is going to be better. And he genuinely tends to LIKE people.

Bruce, on the other hand, is usually portrayed as being bleak as fuck. He's one of the most cynical, least-trusting, pessimistic heroes in the entire DC universe (and more so than most Marvel heroes as well, in spite of them coming from a much more cynical universe in general). Of the few people he's ever "let in" to form genuine emotional ties with, most are either tied directly to his own broken nature (Alfred) or are broken people themselves (Dick). It's part of why most of his romantic relationships either fail spectacularly, or are themselves pretty fucked up from word one (*cough*Catwoman*cough*).

(And yes, I'll give you the Catwoman/Black Cat similarities as another pro-Spider-Man argument for free. Though it's telling that Catwoman is often portrayed as the ONE TRUE PAIRING for Batman, while Black Cat is usually more of an off-handed also-ran for Spider-Man.)


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Zeus posted...

Other than having a catchphrase, I'm not seeing a lot of disparity. They're both characters with intense survivors guilt over a traumatic family death which gave them a compulsion to fight crime.

It's different, though, because the motivations behind it are totally different.

Bruce is basically a hurt child lashing out. Batman is a coping mechanism, and fighting crime borders on being a pathological necessity. He doesn't really do it out of a sense of duty, or because he feels like people "need" him (though he'll certainly justify it that way to seem less crazy). At the end of the day, Bruce is very much about "vengeance" - he's just generalized his need to punish a single criminal into a need to stop all criminals. Bruce basically IS Batman - if you took away everything that made Batman Batman, and left him unable to fight crime, he'd go absolutely bugfuck nuts. Bruce NEEDS to be Batman.

But Peter's not that bleak, even though he's also motivated by a dead parent figure (in a sense, Aunt May surviving is almost certainly responsible for this - in a world where both May and Ben die, I can easily see Spider-Man being more of a Dark Knight sort of avenging angel. Though it might also help that Peter was older when it happened, and more able to cope like a normal person would). Peter basically learned the lesson that people who CAN help SHOULD help, because otherwise, innocents can suffer. It isn't vengeance that motivates him as much as duty, and he's not fighting crime because all crime is just an echo of that night long ago, as much as he's fighting crime because he feels like he's obligated to help those who can't help themselves.

Spider-Man is just the mask Peter wears to protect the people he loves from retaliation - if you took away everything that makes Spider-Man Spider-Man, and left him unable to fight crime, it would be a blessing. Peter would absolutely try to live a normal life and be entirely happy about it - so much so that this has happened multiple times in various canon and what-if stories. Peter doesn't really want to BE Spider-Man.

Spider-Man is an obligation. Batman is a coping mechanism.

And honestly, Peter's "catchphrase" as you put it isn't really a catchphrase. It's the defining ideology of his life. It's why it gets repeated verbatim so often in so many interpretations of the character - because it basically IS Spider-Man.



Zeus posted...

Not at all. Batman insisted on keeping a dual identity. The Punisher is just the Punisher. Plus DC *has* similar serial killing crime-fighters. Several versions of Vigilante were pretty liberal on capital punishment.

Bruce kept the dual identity because he NEEDED to - no Bruce means no money means no wonderful toys. Frank didn't really have money, and thus, no need to maintain a separate life. Which is also why almost all of his financing is done by stealing cash off dead criminals that he's shot, or stealing money from drug deals he breaks up (and so on).

It's kind of implied a LOT in various Batman media that Bruce would give up being Bruce and go Batmanning 100% of the time if he could.


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Zeus posted...

Plus Punisher lacks Batman's sense of the theatrical.

Arguably he doesn't - he explicitly explains the skull on his chest with justification that is almost identical to ways Batman has explained his costume in the past (ie, to scare the shit out of criminals, and to encourage them to aim at the part of his body where the body armor is, and not his unprotected head).

Punisher LOVES the fact that he's basically become something of an urban legend in the criminal underworld, and has repeatedly exploited this fact, as well as gone out of his way to occasionally stoke it.

The real separator is that Frank doesn't really have limits, and there's less need to be blatantly theatrical when you're going to shoot every criminal in the face than there is when you're planning to get them arrested.



Zeus posted...

So they might have been doing it more to combine the sidekicks than factoring solely on a Wolverine/Batman connection?

Potentially. But probably less in a "Hey, let's make Batwolverine so we can combine Robin and Jubilee into his sidekick", and more "Hey, these two characters are similar enough in mentality to both have younger sidekicks that act as morality pets, lets explore that."

(Though Robin + Jubilee is a perfect match regardless, since Jubilee was a blatant Robin riff, right down to wearing the exact same color scheme. Which they openly mention during the Marvel vs DC fights that led to Amalgam in the first place.)

Obviously, the sidekick thing goes back to the old 1940s-era comic mentality where every hero had a young sidekick (which lasted even into early Marvel, with Rick Jones), but from an in-universe perspective the idea that this dark, brooding vigilante (or hairy berserker killing machine) is dragging a young teen sidekick into lethal situations is kind of fucked up, so it makes for interesting thinking to break down just what sort of motivation leads to that sort of thing. And the motivation for both Bruce and Logan is extremely similar in a lot of ways (and is very different from the reasons why Captain America had Bucky and/or Rick Jones, or why Reed let his girlfriend's kid brother into the rocket ship with them when they went to space).

Spider-Man, on the other hand, while being more than willing to team-up with pretty much every young hero (and most of the old ones) in the Marvel universe, never really had a sidekick, because his mentality didn't really led itself to one. Short of the brief period in Ultimate Marvel where Peter sort of became the Uncle Ben figure to Miles Morales, he never really had that type of interaction. Even characters like Spider-Girl were usually independent and just happened to use the name (the same way most of the Spider-Women were).


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I_Abibde posted...

Lots of good stuff in there! One minor item: I still prefer Moon Knight to Batman. *shrugs* I acknowledge that he has never been one of the more popular '70s Marvel heroes, but I like his gimmick and history.

I liked him when he was in the West Coast Avengers, though he's had some great and some terrible interpretations apart from that.

I do kind of like the idea that his multiple personality disorder is so severe that he's literally taken the whole idea of "Bruce" not being real and "Batman" being the actual persona, and just extended it to being that "Bruce" and "Batman" are both real, and border on being two different people who just happen to live in the same body. And then throw in Matches Malone and the "original" Marc Spector to bring the total up to four personalities. And then deliberately blur the line of whether or not the "Moon Knight" itself is the literal avatar of an actual Egyptian god with magic powers, or just another symptom of someone who is seriously mentally ill.


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Good breakdown, PO.
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I'm finally getting around to watching the half of Netflix MCU shows that I had missed until now. I'm kinda watching the series out of order, such as Defenders before Luke Cage; the latter of which I have two episodes left to watch.
---

A little upset about not going to Mania, but I'm young. It's just good motivation to do well in my rehab, get stronger, and then I can sit in any seat I desire.
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My party of players has, unfortunately, discovered that orcs have been buffed in 5th Edition. So have goblins, though not to the same degree. I have to take care not to get the PCs killed outright going forward.
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As players, or as monsters?
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shadowsword87 posted...

As players, or as monsters?

Monsters. As one of my players put it, back in 3.5E, if you put eight orcs up against a party of three or four players, the orcs went down with a minimum of fuss. Not so in 5th Edition.
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Well, in 5e everything's been de-powered from one degree to another from things like 3.5.
Like there's a very hard softcap at 20 AC with the tarrasque only getting 25 AC and everything else maxing at like 22 AC. It has other stuff to make it so rolling around so a bucket of level 1 nerds can't beat it with enough time, but it's still shows my point that the overall powerlevel is down.

Orcs and goblins haven't gotten as much of a buff as they have been left alone in comparison to everyone else. They have lower hitpoints, but that's about it. But the PCs have gotten nerfed to some degree or another, so it shows hard.

Like everything else though, it just depends on how people are rolling. 5e doesn't have a lot of ways to mitigate rolling d20s though, so it shows.

I like having them actually be somewhat scary though! It makes everything seem just that much worse.
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I'm once again caught up on the Netflix MCU shows. There's every bit a chance that I may get some flak for this opinion, but:

JJ season 1 = DD season 1 > DD season 2 > Defenders > IF = JJ season 2 > LC > Punisher

Those first two were solid, singular shows that grabbed you and paced themselves correctly for what they were going for.

DD's second season was good at many or most points, with Frank Castle stealing his scenes, but it felt like two shows sewn together like a quilt made by elementary school kids. At least we saw more Daredeviling in this show than Batmaning in "Dark Knight Rises," but that's not saying much. I liked Elektra in this, as well as Frank.

The Defenders did a good job setting up its conflict and bringing the main cast together. However, it curb-stomped that conflict in so short of an amount of time.

What was the complaint about the first few episodes of Iron Fist? I thought they were fine! The first episode wasted no time showing Danny's call to action. It gave us the man behind the curtain (though more on this later). It gave us the main bulk of our cast, even though what's considered by most to be the main conflict didn't show itself until the second that Madam Gao's cane hit the floor. If anything the last episode of the season felt tacked on like that game where you pin the tail on the donkey. On the other hand, that last episode rounded off the actual plot that was present since the beginning of Iron Fist.

Luke Cake, however, did not establish a call to action right away. It spent two and a half episodes world building when it was perfectly clear that "Cottonmouth" was going to be the first of two major antagonists. It showed us so much conflict, but gave Luke no reason to do anything about it until shit went down at the barber shop, as much as it re-established a reason to sorta like Luke. From there the show got better with MULTIPLE showdowns with Diamondback, which again made the last episode feel a little tacked on to pad out the running time to thirteen episodes (remember, Defenders went for eight episodes). I had a good chuckle, of course, at that seen where Carl said his reflection looked like a damn fool, and it was basically his comic costume.

Jessica's second season was alright overall, being the tragedy that it was. It also felt dragged on a little bit. The plot threads worked together, save for Wizzer's small part in the first couple episodes; I mean "Hey, let's throw in a nod to this comic character, complete with costume color, and then just kill him for reasons." Yes that served its limited purpose, but it didn't help with the many times where the show was like "Hey, we can wrap up here. You know what? Let's make a few things all go wrong BECAUSE RUNTIME!" Then, once the season finally did end--and "finally did end" feels like a sin to say in anything from MCU--it basically did so somewhere between bittersweet and tragedies of old.

Then this brings me to The Punisher. It was so damn predictable, and that's not just my abilities as a writer speaking out here. I think about 88% of twists could be seen coming a mile away, and the rest could be seen from a stone's throw. I had an unnerving chuckle, too, at something unintentionally funny during an obvious dream sequence, involving one of the faces that Frank makes, because it was so out of place. One plot thread felt so unnecessary until that kid bought pieces to a bomb, and I couldn't bring myself to care about him before then. Hell, a lot of the show felt too much like people sitting on their asses doing fuck-all, and not enough like Frank Punishing bad people.
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I should also say one more thing about Iron Fist, and that's my real, main complaint with it. Danny's personality is so inconsistent, it felt like to me. It was't plain growth or character arcing. Not like a mostly collected, stoic man with a ptsd trigger. Not so much like a trained monk with child-like impulses or naivety about the world, save for whenever it could be fit in during the first third of the series. The writers just seemed to redo his personality according to what the plot required in a given episode or scene, even including a brash borderline asshole at points. We simply weren't given a solid Danny Rand, instead of pieces of multiple Danny Rands.

And yet the other characters were all consistent, even Harold in his insanity. Ward might be the only other character you could argue had a similar problem, but at least you could see why we was the way he was, and you could see growth.

Just not Danny. Danny wasn't handled very well.
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shadowsword87 posted...

I like having them actually be somewhat scary though! It makes everything seem just that much worse.

I agree, but it is a little jarring after coming from Pathfinder and its crazily inflated stats.

Entity13 posted...

Luke Cake, however, did not establish a call to action right away.

Everybody wants a piece of that Cake. Yum, yum. (Sorry, had to comment.)
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Yes, the joys of typos, especially paired with needing to be in bed long before that post was even written. xD
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I_Abibde posted...

I agree, but it is a little jarring after coming from Pathfinder and its crazily inflated stats.

Right? Having hardcapped stats is something that really changes how you look at the game.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Yeah, but that's a problem when certain groups are basically attaching their own meanings to all sorts of terminology, even words that existed long before they did. Especially when there aren't necessarily a lot of alternative words or phrases you can use as synonyms for the original meaning. At least not without having to construct needlessly long and awkward workarounds.

At a certain point, I just get to a "Fuck you, I'm taking it back" sort of mentality, and just use the word in its original context, because it's way too much work not to. And because it feels like letting the assholes win.

Well, this is going to keep sidetracking things =p

As a concept, I'm not sure how much I believe in *any* variation of the term appropriation (well, in this context), given the unfortunate racist undertones associated with the idea as well as the general nature of creativity. The fact that the term has been "appropriated" by SJWs (although I'm not sure how prevalent the word was in relation to the concept before SJWs stepped in) just makes it worse. That said, I'm not if there's a particularly good word or term to convey a disrespectfully superficial usage so I'm kinda stuck using it because it's close enough to what I'm driving at. (And, I suppose, the notion that it seems more egregious than butchering a white history is probably rooted in racism so maybe my objection *is* akin to SJW and other variations.)

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I'd also say that not all books are art. The fact that things like Twilight and Eragon exist prove that.

The fact that art is bad doesn't stop it from being art. Paolini is an unabashed plagiarist, but part of that comes from a sincere admiration and attempt to mimic the work of more talented authors who he admired. The fact that he's a consummate hack comes from his lack of talent not impeding his success. As for Twilight, it's puerile stuff but, then again, so is a lot of male-themed fantasy. At any rate, neither example really even qualifies as a purely commercial venture. Hell, Meyer supposedly had no intention of publishing at first.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Not really. I'm using it more as a statement of intent and purpose.

Yet you went with novel examples which contradict that notion. =p

ParanoidObsessive posted...

(And yes, I'll give you the Catwoman/Black Cat similarities as another pro-Spider-Man argument for free. Though it's telling that Catwoman is often portrayed as the ONE TRUE PAIRING for Batman, while Black Cat is usually more of an off-handed also-ran for Spider-Man.)

Well, I suppose it's telling of lazy writing. When a character lacks a love interest, using an existing femme fatale is a convenient shortcut. And, of course, it's worth noting that Catwoman isn't even Batman's laziest love interest. Vicki Vale basically started as a red-headed Lois Lane clone.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

It's different, though, because the motivations behind it are totally different.

[...]

Spider-Man is an obligation. Batman is a coping mechanism.

Again, not seeing it especially because Spider-Man has an explicit compulsion to stop crime, one which was outright stated in the credo he inherited from Uncle Ben. Both have some pretty severe psychological trauma driving their actions. Even if it's not exactly the same thing, the two are far closer to each other than Batman is to Wolverine. And both are concerned with saving lives, whereas the Punisher is more about hurting criminals.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Bruce kept the dual identity because he NEEDED to - no Bruce means no money means no wonderful toys. Frank didn't really have money, and thus, no need to maintain a separate life. Which is also why almost all of his financing is done by stealing cash off dead criminals that he's shot, or stealing money from drug deals he breaks up (and so on).

It's kind of implied a LOT in various Batman media that Bruce would give up being Bruce and go Batmanning 100% of the time if he could.

I would imagine Bruce cares more about wearing the mask to protect loved ones and those within his sphere than any monetary concern -- which, when you consider one of those he tries to protect is an elderly guardian, has some pretty strong shades of Spider-Man.

And every iteration of Batman -- or, at least, every *major* iteration and most minor as well -- has him keeping the mask and costume. Batman never operates as Bruce Wayne, it's always Batman. Even if he was Batman 100% of the time, he'd still be Batman rather than Wayne.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

(Though Robin + Jubilee is a perfect match regardless, since Jubilee was a blatant Robin riff, right down to wearing the exact same color scheme. Which they openly mention during the Marvel vs DC fights that led to Amalgam in the first place.)

And orphans whose parents were killed by criminals... wait, Robin wore pink? Oo

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Obviously, the sidekick thing goes back to the old 1940s-era comic mentality where every hero had a young sidekick (which lasted even into early Marvel, with Rick Jones), but from an in-universe perspective the idea that this dark, brooding vigilante (or hairy berserker killing machine) is dragging a young teen sidekick into lethal situations is kind of fucked up, so it makes for interesting thinking to break down just what sort of motivation leads to that sort of thing.

Jubilee is less dragged along than she stows along. Right from her introduction, she's chosen to follow characters and just hide. In fact, wasn't pretty much every version of Robin pretty much the same? They discover Bruce is Batman then insist on being a sidekick. The only exception is the altverse stuff like All-Star Batman.

And Batman trains his sidekicks because he knows they're going to do it anyway and this gives them a better chance of staying alive. I can't recall how much training Wolverine ever gave Jubilee, other than something tied to the X-Men. That kinda sets the two apart, though, since Wolverine's sidekicks come from the X-Men and are kinda battle-tested already whereas every Batman sidekick (except Damian) receives heavy on-the-job training.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Spider-Man, on the other hand, while being more than willing to team-up with pretty much every young hero (and most of the old ones) in the Marvel universe, never really had a sidekick, because his mentality didn't really led itself to one. Short of the brief period in Ultimate Marvel where Peter sort of became the Uncle Ben figure to Miles Morales, he never really had that type of interaction. Even characters like Spider-Girl were usually independent and just happened to use the name (the same way most of the Spider-Women were).

Yeah, but keep in mind that Wolverine doesn't really keep sidekicks around nearly as long as Batman either. He tends to rotate between X-kids.
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Entity13 posted...

I'm finally getting around to watching the half of Netflix MCU shows that I had missed until now. I'm kinda watching the series out of order, such as Defenders before Luke Cage; the latter of which I have two episodes left to watch.

Watching them out of order would probably drive me a little crazy, but Luke Cage is pretty well-established in JJ1 so that one isn't quite as important.

Entity13 posted...

JJ season 1 = DD season 1 > DD season 2 > Defenders > IF = JJ season 2 > LC > Punisher

The one thing I don't get is ranking Defenders that high. Everything else is like, "Eh, I can see it" or "I agree." Defenders takes too long to get started, tries to juggle far too much, ties the shows together badly, and rushes the resolution

Entity13 posted...

Those first two were solid, singular shows that grabbed you and paced themselves correctly for what they were going for.

JJ1 kinda turned me off because its singular focus forced a repeated "We got him... no, we didn't get him" storyline. The show only had *one* real antagonist which meant repeated encounters which failed for one reason or another, dragging things out. Every other show had supporting antagonists to pad things out.

JJ2 kinda had the same issue, but the way it was broken up helped to carry the story a bit better. Doubly so since the antagonist was a far more sympathetic character.

Entity13 posted...

DD's second season was good at many or most points, with Frank Castle stealing his scenes, but it felt like two shows sewn together like a quilt made by elementary school kids.

Yeah, that was my problem as well. The two storylines diverged far too heavily and the semi-connection at the end Frank Castle showing up to neutralize some of the Hand was a bit forced.

Entity13 posted...

What was the complaint about the first few episodes of Iron Fist? I thought they were fine! The first episode wasted no time showing Danny's call to action. It gave us the man behind the curtain (though more on this later). It gave us the main bulk of our cast, even though what's considered by most to be the main conflict didn't show itself until the second that Madam Gao's cane hit the floor. If anything the last episode of the season felt tacked on like that game where you pin the tail on the donkey. On the other hand, that last episode rounded off the actual plot that was present since the beginning of Iron Fist.

DD1 and IF were the only two MCU shows which had me sold during the first episode. Granted, I can't recall complaints in this topic about the early episodes of IF (although even I was a little letdown by how long it took him to actually use his fist for the first time). However, I complained a *lot* about the early episodes of Defenders and LC.
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At any rate, what's new with Zeus, you ask?

1) I finally watched One Punch Man. Was intrigued by a clip showcasing Deep Sea King (who is absolutely awesome) and loved the dubbing, so (after a few more clips) I wound up watching it on NFI... subbed. (Damn it! Why couldn't they have the dub as well?)

OPM kinda has a lot of the same tropes as Tiger & Bunny, particularly in having a centralized hero's guild which awards ranks to heroes based on things like popularity while demonizing non-unionized heroes. In general, though, Japan's superhero fad is somewhat interesting on its own merits

The show is terrifically funny (unexpectedly so for something based around a pretty one-note joke), but far too damn short. Had I realized how short it was -- and only one season at that -- I might have been tempted to check it out sooner.... although I was a little inclined to snub it given the popularity and subject material. (And, to be honest, the actual fights featuring Saitama can be lackluster outside of the gimmick.)

2) Saw "Scoobynatural," an episode of Supernatural featuring a Scooby Doo cross-over. As with everything Supernatural, it sounds better than it is. However, it was still really cool and neat on the grounds that Scooby Doo has a long history of weird cross-overs with things it logically shouldn't have a cross-over with (and this is less awful than the WWE cross-over which was hard to watch)

3) Didn't watch WM34, probably won't bother, but read the results and... I was a little surprised. Asuka's winning streak ended before having a main roster championship belt, which seems a weird choice. Roman once again lost in a WM match against Brock Lesnar despite the fact it *seemed* like they were building to a win for over a year now. Oh, and did they really bring back Taker to squash Cena? >_>

Matt Hardy winning the Andre the Giant Battle Royal is a pretty bad omen.

4) Stopped in my local Hot Topic today and saw some weird Pop! Captain America or Iron Man or something (turns out to be Civil Warrior). It caught my interest so I turned around the box and saw some of the other offerings... which include a Howard the Duck in some kind of a mech suit (awesome) and, more excitingly, a Pop! Punisher 2099! Apparently he's a Walgreen's exclusive, which might explain why I've had an urge to stop in my local Walgreen's lately. And the Howard the Duck is a Wal-Mart exclusive. Not sure why the box art depicts other store exclusives

https://www.funko.com/blog/article/coming-soon-marvel-contest-of-champions-pop

Oh, and the series seems to come from some mobile game.

At any rate, I also learned that they did a Pop! Hobgoblin (some subscriber exclusive) which I also kinda wanted... well, up until I checked ebay and saw that they're listed for over $100. Just as well, I guess, since I probably have enough Pop!s and will likely grab the Punisher one if I see it (although, if I don't, I'll probably forget about it altogether in a week or two. I got over missing the Pop! Spidey 2099 fine enough, after all.)
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Zeus posted...

The one thing I don't get is ranking Defenders that high.

In large part it's because, for the flaws and short length, I found more enjoyment in Defenders than the shows I listed afterward.

Zeus posted...

JJ1 kinda turned me off because its singular focus forced a repeated "We got him... no, we didn't get him" storyline. The show only had *one* real antagonist which meant repeated encounters which failed for one reason or another, dragging things out. Every other show had supporting antagonists to pad things out.

Sure, I get that, and for that reason the show might not appeal to enough people. For me, the delivery of those parts sold the whole. It didn't feel quite so much as though people were bitch-slapped in the face for trying to improve matters, so much as characters on multiple sides trying to outsmart one another and then succeeding or failing at various degrees. It was imperfect, but it worked, at least for me.

Zeus posted...

Yeah, that was my problem as well. The two storylines diverged far too heavily and the semi-connection at the end Frank Castle showing up to neutralize some of the Hand was a bit forced.

Agreed. That was such a shoehorned appearance that tried to tie the two stories together, but might have highlighted the issue more by being there.

Zeus posted...

Watching them out of order would probably drive me a little crazy, but Luke Cage is pretty well-established in JJ1 so that one isn't quite as important.

I'm already crazy, so this actually brought me a small sense of sanity. o_O

And yes, Luke was introduced and established in JJ1. That, if anything, gave LC less of an excuse to be the way it was for the first few episodes. The first act of a story is supposed to be a call to action, and the first one to two episodes (tops) are supposed to hook the crowd into seeing what the character is about. Going by the first two HOUR-LONG episodes of LC, someone who didn't watch JJ1 for whatever reason would just see a big guy just trying to make due on rent with two underpaying jobs while shit went sideways around him and he constantly avoided it. People watching LC probably want a superhero (sort of) show. That all adds up to a failed opener.
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Zeus posted...

The show is terrifically funny (unexpectedly so for something based around a pretty one-note joke), but far too damn short.

They'll most likely do another season eventually. There's enough manga chapters for at least 2 more seasons easily. That being said, you should check out the manga anyway. It's one of the best-drawn manga out there. Very few artists can draw motion and impact as well as Murata.
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Metalsonic66 posted...

Zeus posted...

The show is terrifically funny (unexpectedly so for something based around a pretty one-note joke), but far too damn short.

They'll most likely do another season eventually. There's enough manga chapters for at least 2 more seasons easily. That being said, you should check out the manga anyway. It's one of the best-drawn manga out there. Very few artists can draw motion and impact as well as Murata.

Sure, I kinda expect that they might since it's a popular, ongoing series... but it means that I watched the show too early, since I really should have held off until it was longer =x Granted, unlike a lot of other shows, I didn't do any due research beforehand.

And, speaking of research beforehand, once again looking something up (or maybe even accidentally clicking the synopsis for the next episode?) has once again spoiled a major plot point for me. Accidentally saw an absurdly major Sherlock season 4 episode 1 spoiler, while trying to just confirm what was going on with Moriarity who, within that episode, is almost immediately strongly believed to be dead with everything else set up as an after-death contingency plan
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My Internet has been dead for a couple days, and I have very little time right now, so I can't reply to much. But I did want to post this quick:

Zeus posted...

And orphans whose parents were killed by criminals... wait, Robin wore pink? Oo

This is what Jubilee's original outfit around the time of Amalgam looked like:

http://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/6/6c/Jubilation_Lee_%28Earth-616%29_from_Marvel_Universe_Cards_Series_II_0001.jpg


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

My Internet has been dead for a couple days, and I have very little time right now, so I can't reply to much. But I did want to post this quick:

Zeus posted...

And orphans whose parents were killed by criminals... wait, Robin wore pink? Oo

This is what Jubilee's original outfit around the time of Amalgam looked like:

http://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/6/6c/Jubilation_Lee_%28Earth-616%29_from_Marvel_Universe_Cards_Series_II_0001.jpg

That's still a pink top. Otherwise the color of the shorts, shoes, and gloves were depicted pretty inconsistently. They'd sometimes all be blue (including on cards produced *after* 91 (whether it's using art taken from the comics or original art) and therefore closer to Amalgam's 1996 run), sometimes green, sometimes a mix, and sometimes with yellow gloves (including in the cartoon). But sure, there were some similarities to Robin's older designs (because it's also worth keeping in mind that Tim Drake took over as Robin in the 90s and the outfit actually got pants, among other things)






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Just so busy. Either therapy or dialysis.

I am ex tired for the new God of War however.
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Zeus posted...

That's still a pink top.

It's supposed to be red. The costume was literally created to be an homage to Robin. Jim Lee has openly admitted this in the past (it's also openly known that the main reason why they eventually faded the t-shirt to red and "faded" the green gloves to blue later on was to deliberately distance the design from Robin after the fact).

I'd argue that it still looks red in that picture (because it's supposed to be - that was from before the change to pink/blue), though I can acknowledge why looking at a scanned copy of a card that might itself be faded on a computer monitor could make it look pink, though.



Zeus posted...

Otherwise the color of the shorts, shoes, and gloves were depicted pretty inconsistently. They'd sometimes all be blue (including on cards produced *after* 91 (whether it's using art taken from the comics or original art) and therefore closer to Amalgam's 1996 run)

Oh, I agree. Her costume did change often (and still does), which I think was partly to emphasis that she's a teenage girl and can't necessarily decide for herself what she wants to look like long-term, and partly because the artists drawing her couldn't necessarily agree on what they wanted her to look like (ie, the same reasons why Kitty Pryde kept changing costumes and code names) a decade earlier.

But those were more changes over time. It wasn't really a case of, say, her gloves being green in one issue, blue the next, then green again (which would imply it was more of a colorist issue, which happened a lot in older comics), as much as it was incremental changes made as each new artist decided to interpret the character and her style differently (and with occasional breaks like when the X-Men all got matching uniforms for a while, or when there was an in-story reason why she would try to look different from her previous style). Her initial design was yellow/red/green, and was fairly consistent until they eventually made the shift to yellow/pink/blue deliberately.


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I always liked the look of WH40k's Space Marines -- mostly due to the huge shoulder armor -- but the design apparently looks goofy as a cosplay:
https://i.pinimg.com/564x/7f/4b/6e/7f4b6e94387c3e52046c6227ed761844.jpg

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I'd argue that it still looks red in that picture (because it's supposed to be - that was from before the change to pink/blue), though I can acknowledge why looking at a scanned copy of a card that might itself be faded on a computer monitor could make it look pink, though.

I don't remember it *ever* being red, though. Not sure if I got used to the later pink use (especially in the cartoon) and it overwrote my earlier memories, whether I got into the run too late, or if I'm having a Berenstain moment.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

But those were more changes over time. It wasn't really a case of, say, her gloves being green in one issue, blue the next, then green again (which would imply it was more of a colorist issue, which happened a lot in older comics), as much as it was incremental changes made as each new artist decided to interpret the character and her style differently (and with occasional breaks like when the X-Men all got matching uniforms for a while, or when there was an in-story reason why she would try to look different from her previous style). Her initial design was yellow/red/green, and was fairly consistent until they eventually made the shift to yellow/pink/blue deliberately.

idk, even if it wasn't necessarily a matter of inconsistency within the same issue, it certainly seemed to change one issue to the next at times *and* trading cards issued within the same year would use different colors iirc.
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I've watched a lot of cartoons over the years, but one of the worst things I've ever seen has to be Gravedale High (starring Rick Moranis). Stumbled on the name a few times while looking at other stuff on Wikipedia and, honestly, thought the premise would be interesting, but it was painfully boring.

It's pretty rare that I can't make it through an episode of a show and I've sat through a *lot* of crap to see if it would get better (Wakfu, which I'm currently watching, is a good example -- terrible first few episodes, but it hits a stride later on; it's basically a French, poor man's Avatar: TLA), but this time I just couldn't do it.
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