Lurker > ParanoidObsessive

WhiskeyDisk posted...

You could have just pointed out that technically potatoes are part of the Nightshade family.

I could have!

But I prefer pointing out how pretty much everything we do as humans incrementally inches us closer and closer to death. It helps support my philosophy of "Life is hazardous to your health."
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

WhiskeyDisk posted...

There's nothing wrong with a baked potato.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylamide#Occurrence_in_food_and_associated_health_risks
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

WhiskeyDisk posted...

So, "The Geek Topic has closed it's Ports" is a non-starter?

I do like that one.

But again... are we going to regret being too morbid? Defiant mockery can become a bit tasteless and tactless at a certain point.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

shadowsword87 posted...

Maybe something about being stuck inside, so why not watch some movies?

My first thought was a snide comment about how being stuck inside and avoiding social interaction isn't actually a behavior change for geeks, but it's hard to convey that sort of thing in a short title.

"Coronavirus" and "Covid" don't really work well either. Not like H1Geek1 would.

I'd be tempted to think of any geeky virus/outbreak/viral apocalypse references and then play off that (like Y: The Last Man or The Omega Man or The Last Ship), but most of them don't really have titles that work with the substitution. And most comic/video game/etc virus stories are all zombie-related these days. So I'm tempted to just suggest something more generic, like Geekpocalypse Now

The real downside with a flu-related topic title is, if this things takes a REAL turn for the worse, and get way more tragic than swine flu/bird flu/SARS/etc did, and a lot of people die, then the new topic is going to start feeling pretty morbid, and sort of a case of "Man, I really wish we hadn't named it that."

Maybe we should just go with something happy, sunshiny, and distracting from all the mess. Like "My Little Geek: Friendship is Nerdy".
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

The Wave Master posted...

I also assumle P.O. is safe from the Kung Flu because he hates people, and gets his minions or robots or robotic minions to do his work for t him. Meaning he will never come directly in contact with any human with the virus. (As 2 people in New Jersey tested positive for covid 19.)

My immune system is bulletproof. Even if I contract it I have little fear it would progress to anything all that problematic.

My only real worry is that I basically have to shop for my mother and take her to doctor's appointments and would generally be an infection risk for her if I caught it, and she's in her 70s and not in the best health, so it would likely be much worse for her.

I'll be laying particularly low for the next week or two anyway, though... because I just had minor surgery I'm recouping from (part of why I haven't been around for a bit - I was trying to get stuff done before I went in). I barely feel like doing anything other than sitting around watching YouTube and sleeping right now.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Revelation34 posted...

On that note. How come witchers don't have two silver blades since silver blades would kill humans too?

I feel like they did actually explain this, but I forget exactly what the excuse was. It might have been that the silver blade isn't strong/sharp enough to use against anything that isn't supernatural, so you always want to use your steel blade unless you're fighting something that's mostly immune to it.



Zeus posted...

So basically your argument is because a fictional book chose to ignore lore that the film later actually used, the lore is somehow invalidated? You can't turn around and claim that Dracula is the inspiration for all vampires when the book was inspired by folklore.

No, my argument is that books like Dracula, Carmilla, and Varney the Vampire were all generally based on the original folklore to at least some degree, and accurately reflect assumptions common to folklore for the most part. All of them added their own elements (like pointed teeth coming from Varney), but none of them were making every element of vampire lore up out of whole cloth. Especially in cases where you're talking about things that were present in folklore before those stories.

They're arguably also the three stories that have mainly shaped most of the modern image of what vampires are/are supposed to be.



Zeus posted...

He says overlooking that a lot of traditional vampire lore *doesn't* have them passing as normal people

And some lore does. The point is that wouldn't even really be a possibility if you're talking about vampires who immediately burst into flame in sunlight, not that every single vampire myth involves vampires passing for human.

But you're also ignoring the other half of that argument, which is that there really isn't much (if any) folklore talking about vampires being insta-killed by sunlight prior to the 20th century. Whereas post-Nosferatu it becomes the almost ur-principle of how a vampire is defined (except when someone defies it by saying they sparkle in sunlight instead).



Zeus posted...

Except for the lore that explicitly references them doing it for that effect.

Offhand, I've never heard a single story along those lines that wasn't a more modern interpretation.

Though admittedly, the problem is that it's hard to pin down older versions of folklorish tales because it's mostly oral tradition that changes over time.



Zeus posted...

Are you talking out of your ass at this point? Because earlier you were claiming, "Well, werewolves were just witches!", and now you're claiming that witches can't be hurt by silver *despite* one of the earliest examples of a silver bullet being used against the supernatural was to kill a witch.

Silver was mostly a weapon that could be used against unholy/demonic thing

silver was rarely used as an anti-magic substance

Context is key.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Zeus posted...

Sunlight didn't hurt vampires?

No. Dracula (the book) explicitly mentions Dracula (the character) outside during the day. So does Carmilla. It was never really a major thing before Nosferatu introduced the idea. At most, in some interpretations sunlight would weaken their unholy powers a bit, but they'd still be more or less fine. And in others they were almost entirely unaffected by sunlight other than just being tired because they were awake all night.

The general implication is that vampires CAN go out in the day, just as nocturnal animals can go out in the day. They just prefer to hunt at night because it's easier to stalk your prey when your prey is sleeping (and were people aren't going to see who you are). So they spend most of the day sleeping, because they spend most of the night active. But they can go out in the day if they need to.

Keep in mind, it would have been almost entirely impossible for anyone to pass as a normal human if they couldn't interact during the day for most of human history. Prior to the advent of electricity/electric lighting, almost every service and social activity only took place during the day. Someone who only went out at night would be an almost immediate suspect for pretty much everything (which would suck for anyone who had a legitimate sunlight sensitivity).



Zeus posted...

wtf, the superstition involving vampires counting -- which you yourself acknowledge -- directly contradicts this claim. When somebody left mustard seeds out (I *think* it was mustard seeds), it was to keep the vampire counting until the morning sun could get them.

That wasn't why. The point was to keep the vampire counting so you could run the fuck away. The idea was, by the time the vampire finished counting, you'd be gone and it wouldn't be able to follow you. It goes hand-in-hand with the running water thing - it wasn't a method for killing the vampire, it was a method for running away from the vampire (ie, find a river, creek, stream, etc and cross it as quickly as possible).

It's part of why the standard "let's kill vampires" method was to stake them, cut their head off, and stick garlic in their mouth (and possibly throwing in holy water or holy ground for good measure). Otherwise, all you'd really need to do is break a hole in their house or drag them out into the sun and they'd burst into flames.



Zeus posted...

And while the Wolfman may have popularized silver as a werewolf weapon, it *already* existed in folklore to some extent and it was broadly a solution for supernatural beings so it was almost certainly seen as a historic solution as well.

Yes - silver was a weapon you could use against vampires. And demons. NOT werewolves.

Silver was mostly a weapon that could be used against unholy/demonic things - and werewolves were never actually considered to be supernatural in that sense. Like I mentioned, they were usually considered to be humans using black magic, or under the influence of magic, and silver was rarely used as an anti-magic substance (if anything, silver was often pro-magic for a lot of ritualists). They have more in common with witches than they do vampires - and silver doesn't hurt witches, either.

It wasn't really until The Wolf Man radically changed the concept of what a werewolf WAS that silver would have made sense as a weakness anyway. And it was the first source to explicitly establish that it was. Which basically influenced nearly every other story that followed (again, in the same way that nearly every single zombie story any of us have ever heard can trace its roots directly back to Night of the Living Dead).

Believe me, I spent waaay too long playing White Wolf games. I've done a fuckton of research on this sort of stuff.



wolfy42 posted...

Silver poisoning was a weapon against werewolves almost from the start.

Nope.

It was never a thing in actual mythology. It wasn't even a thing in fiction until about 100 years ago, give or take. It's a very new addition to the concept.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

I've always enjoyed the "can't cross running water" and "have to be invited in" ones. Or that they need to travel with their coffins/native soil.

I honestly loved how Vampire: the Masquerade handled things - there are different clans/bloodlines of vampires, and each one has different weaknesses. So it kind of explains why there are so many contradictory myths and legends about vampires - they're true for some clans, not for others.

So the Tzimisce (Dracula's clan) have the two handfuls of grave dirt thing, but it's the Lasombra who don't reflect in mirrors. One bloodline is especially weak to light, another is weaker to religious symbols, and so on.

The problem was that they ran out of cool weaknesses quickly, and didn't feel like "counts stuff" or "has to be invited in" or "running water" made for good weaknesses, so they didn't give them to any specific clan (though players could take them as personal Disadvantages if they wanted to).

I also liked how they sort of took all the various stereotypes and turned them into separate clans to justify how they could all exist at once. So The Lost Boys were basically Brujah, Anne Rice vampires were almost certainly Toreador, turning into a wolf/bat was a Gangrel thing, the Tzimisce were the creepy Eastern European lords, the Nosferatu were literally the vampire from Nosferatu, etc.



WhiskeyDisk posted...

I've always found the "can't cross running water" fascinating on some level. Depending on the geography of where a vampire was sired, that could be incredibly confining, or a huge swath of night in which to roam.

It was originally another purity thing - running water is "pure" (ie, less likely to be contaminated with bacteria, and thus drinkable), so its purity repelled vampires. Plus, water is literally symbolic of life itself in most cultures, so again, is anathema to the walking dead. And for most of human history, rivers tended to be natural borders, so there's the symbolism of crossing out of your native land (vampires had to remain tied to their native soil, hence the dirt thing).

Yes, that seems like you're kind of screwed if you're a vampire and you die on an island, but there's usually loopholes around it (ie, they can use boats, walk across bridges, etc - they just can't ford a river or fly across one using their own power).



WhiskeyDisk posted...

And if we're counting plumbing and sewers as "running water" then unless the vampire rose somewhere where they still shit in a hole in the ground, they're practically imprisoned tighter than a fairy in a bottle already.

It's worth remembering that plumbing and sewers really weren't much of a thing back when most vampire myths were coming into being. At best, you might have aquaducts, rainwater runoff troughs, and the occasional cistern. But again, purity comes into it - sewers are likely too "polluted" (in the metaphysical sense) to repel vampires at all, and even regular water pipes likely wouldn't affect them because the water is completely contained within a pipe, minimizing its ability to influence the vampire.



Zeus posted...

Sounds like you're cribbing the Wolfman >_> The satanism connection has been closely aligned with Hollywood, starting with the Wolfman's pentagram

Yeah, that's about the only thing in that movie that's actually accurate. For most of history, lycanthropy/shapeshifting in general was a black magic thing, where someone would deliberately transform into an animal of their own will, then change back (part of why black cats are associated with witches).

The idea of the half wolf/man form, the idea that the change is involuntary, that the person loses control when they become an animal, or that there's any tie to the moon, all come almost entirely from that movie or the sequels that followed.



Zeus posted...

It's worth noting that the running water restriction is prevalent throughout a lot of supernatural lore, including as a precaution against werewolves and ghosts (coincidentally, it's why the Headless Horseman was said to be unable to cross the bridge in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow)

Rivers are great for saving you from the supernatural. You just hope there isn't a rusalka in it.

Though it's also worth noting that the reverse is true to some degree - the unnatural can taint pure water. The Romani used to have the belief that a menstruating woman shouldn't cross running water, because if she did she would taint it, and it would become unsafe to drink. And then you'd have to ritualistically purify the water before it would be usable again.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Zeus posted...

In the case of zombies, our conception is almost entirely a Hollywood invention bearing little resemblance to the original concept. It makes the liberties taken with werewolves and vampires seem small by comparison.

Almost everything we think we know about zombies comes from George Romero or Dan O'Bannon. Unless you're classy, in which case most of what you know about zombies comes from Serpent and the Rainbow instead.

It's not much better for the other two, though. Most vampire "lore" comes straight from Dracula or its direct successors, and I already mentioned how most werewolf lore stems almost entirely from The Wolf Man (prior to that, werewolves were mostly just considered witches who could shapeshift into animals via demon magic).

Vampires are probably the ones who still have at least some of their original trappings as part of the general stereotype, and there are always the horror hipsters who will dig deep back in the well and pull out folklore to season their fiction with (like going with the "can't cross running water" or "has to stop and count things" weaknesses - which, as I often like to point out, means The Count from Sesame Street is actually one of the most accurate depictions of vampires in modern media). But even there, there've been so damned many variations, and they tend to differ so much across various mythologies, that it's hard to point to a single archetype and say "THIS is the real vampire".

Except the sparkling. That's definitely not a thing vampires do, ever.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Lokarin posted...

If they are like The Walking Dead zombies then a vampire biting them would accomplish nothing - the stagnant blood wouldn't convert the zombie

Which asks another question - can vampires feed on corpses?

Anne Rice vampires seem to be poisoned by dead blood, whereas in White Wolf it's just seen as being kind of disgusting, and other vampires might have no problem with it at all (other than the most obvious - that after a while blood will coagulate and you're basically just sucking on dust or a scab).

As a corollary of that, what happens if vampires feed on vampires? Is vampire blood essentially worthless? Do vampires even HAVE blood of their own, other than what they've stolen from others by feeding? Is it basically the same thing as human blood? Or is it even more potent? What happens if one vampire drinks another "dry"?
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

WhiskeyDisk posted...

I've always had a major logical problem with vampire and werewolf mythos, and it's this.

Why does silver have such power to hurt them?

In the case of werewolves, it's entirely because a movie came out in the 1940s and the entire world was brainwashed into accepting it as fact. Silver was never a thing in werewolf myth before. Most people would be absolutely astonished to realize just how much of what they think they know about werewolves comes from The Wolf Man (their bite was literally never contagious before then, either, for example). It's the same way sunlight wasn't actually lethal to vampires until Nosferatu came out. Hollywood has seriously distorted our understanding of supernatural folklore.

Though in the modern context, silver hurts werewolves almost entirely because werewolves are now tied so strongly to the moon. Silver is the moon's metal, werewolves are clearly moon-touched, so it's mostly a case of "fighting fire with fire" or turning their own nature against them.

For vampires (the ones who actually had a weakness to silver in traditional folklore)? It's because a lot of folklore involved silver being a particularly "pure" metal (and there are theories that this is because silver actually has demonstrably anti-microbial properties that even pre-scientific cultures would be able to notice). This might also be part of what led to the use of "quicksilver" (aka mercury) in alchemical potions meant to prolong life (ironically doing the opposite).

So the assumption was that something so pure would be anathema to a creature that is by definition unnatural and unholy. Incidentally, the silver thing is also the reason why vampires don't reflect in mirrors - mirrors were originally backed with silver as the reflecting agent, and the pure silver obviously wouldn't reflect the corrupt evil of such a creature. This is also why in some modern interpretations you couldn't photograph vampires either - early photography used plates with silver in them. Which actually means that, logically, modern mirrors shouldn't have a problem reflecting vampires anymore, and film shouldn't have a problem taking their picture - so if you're an aspiring vampire hunter, you'd have to go out of your way to special order custom mirrors or track down antique mirrors if you wanted to use them as a vampire detector.

As for why gold doesn't work (via its connection to the sun), well, there's two reasons against it. First, as I mentioned earlier, the sun was never actually anathema to vampires prior to Nosferatu (Dracula didn't like the sun, and vampires were always nocturnal in general, but the sun wouldn't kill them any more than it would if you took a skunk or bat or owl out in the daytime), so there was never really time for that to work it's way into the mythos (though a modern writer could certainly work that idea into a story if they wanted). But secondly, gold wasn't even the universal metal of the sun anyway - in a number of cultures, silver is more associated with the sun than gold is (Apollo, for example, had a silver bow and silver arrows). Modern pop culture tends to equate gold with the sun (which might stem from Christianity, or might actually be even later via Mayan/Aztec/Incan influence), but people living in the forests of Eastern Europe wouldn't necessarily have immediately made the leap that gold = sun.

Plus, let's be honest, silver is more common/cheaper than gold. If you're looking for anti-monster weapons, you're probably not going to be melting down gold to make bullets or stakes or daggers or whatever unless you're a king. And pure gold is soft - weapons made out of gold would be much more likely to bend or deform than silver ones.

Though there's other alternatives to consider. Vampire myths/fiction that take China/Asia into account tend to allow jade to be an option, as jade is supposed to have the power to purify and prevent rot. And modern versions can incorporate other things that pre-industrial cultures would never have been able to conceive (like the anti-coagulant in Blade) - any rare non-naturally occurring material could potentially be a problem for vampires, and no one ever realized it before because no vampire had ever been exposed to it.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Zeus posted...

Do you hate fun?

Yes.



Zeus posted...

The vampire would likely just get really sick. In Being Human, werewolf blood made vampires violently ill

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

Aka, in some lores/mythos, vampires are basically immune to diseases, especially blood ones.

This is the real problem with that discussion. Because we're talking about fictional concepts that are basically public domain, there's no single vision or objectively correct interpretation of how they work. So it's hard to say how multiple quantumly uncertain mechanics would interact.

Is zombieism a virus? A curse? The result of black magic? Voodoo drugs? The fact that there's no more room in hell, forcing souls back into their bodies? The beginning of the Day of Judgement? Something else?

Is vampirism a virus? A curse? Black magic? Something that makes you glitter in the sunlight? The next stage of human evolution? A literal punishment by God? A form of demonic possession?

Is lycanthropy a virus? A curse? Black magic? A deal witches make with Satan to change? A distinct race of their own? The chosen champions of a literal world-spirit? The result of ancient furries fucking their way across the world? The descendants of trickster gods?

The different variations all have their own complications as well. Do zombies lack any form of healing (settings where they rot), or are they actually more regenerative than humans (Resident Evil)? Do vampires pass on vampirism to literally everyone they bite, or does it require three bites? Or actively having to share their blood with the victim? Can a vampire feed without killing, or do they have to kill every meal? Can werewolves pass on their curse at all, or is it an innate part of their nature they can only pass on to their children (or not at all)? Are vampires immune to all disease (explaining why they're not walking sacks of blood-transmitted STD), or are they more vulnerable because of the fluid transfer? Does zombie infection require a blatant bite, any degree of fluid transfer (meaning even getting zombie blood in your eye dooms you), or is it a virus that infects everyone, but only manifests when you "die" (like Walking Dead)? If you become a vampire, does supernatural evil warp every aspect of your personality and turn you into a monster no matter who you were before, or are you still basically the same person, only now you have to drink blood to survive?

Does mixing vampire and werewolf blood result in a weird super-power hybrid like in Underworld or White Wolf, or does it just kill one or both of the two? If you're something already magical (like a witch, or a magic-powered werewolf), does being turned into a vampire make you a magical vampire, or does it destroy the spark of magic in you and just leave you a normal vampire (or just kills you entirely)?

Unless we break things down into very specific examples (like, say, an RE zombie and a Buffy/Angel vampire biting each other), it kind of becomes impossible to even theorycraft out what might happen.

But I've always kind of been a fan of weird hybrids, so I'll usually err on the side that the two both sort of become something new. Which might be why I liked the ninja pirate zombie robot in Kingdom of Loathing.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Lokarin posted...

If a vampire bites a zombie... does it become a vampire?

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/v2o49/theoretically_what_would_happen_if_a_zombie_bit_a

Personally, I'm a fan of the idea that the vampire becomes a zombie and the zombie becomes a vampire, so you get two weird zombie/vampire hybrid weirdos.

Related:

http://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/vampire-werewolf
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

WhiskeyDisk posted...

I read that as "Jughead" and had flashbacks to Punisher meets Archie...

So did I - and I didn't even notice that it didn't say that until your post.

I just assumed it was another attempt on their part to stay hip and relevant, like the time they did Afterlife with Archie. With Jughead as a zombie. Or a vampire.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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WhiskeyDisk posted...

Juggalos? In my sci-fi? Pfft. No thanks.

He's not actually a clown, you know. At best you could probably say he was sort of a jester, but even that isn't entirely true.

http://i.pinimg.com/originals/30/fc/68/30fc6820c3f4b7df80da73f84fff5fa9.jpg



WhiskeyDisk posted...

Next you're going to tell me Snu-Snu improved Ringworld tremendously.

Snu-Snu improves pretty much everything.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

WhiskeyDisk posted...

I got into Foundation right up until the clown book, then I just said...fuck this shit tbh.

Pssht, philistine. The Mule is one of the best things in that series.

It doesn't get stupid until Gaia shows up.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

WhiskeyDisk posted...

Has anyone been watching Star Trek: Picard? The first 3 episodes, I was all in, but this last one...I dunno guys.

I've just been watching the RedLetterMedia guys complain about it, because I've never really been much of a Star Trek fan, and I'm not even remotely enough of a Star Trek fan to ever get CBS All Access to watch it.

I can relate to fans who view that show with dread and some degree of disgust, though, because I feel very uncomfortable about the fact that this is a thing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_(TV_series)

...though I won't be watching that one either, because Apple TV+ can really go fuck itself.

I feel like I saw a trailer for a sci-fi movie or tv show recently that actually kind of looked like it could be interesting, but I've forgotten what it was because I'm old now.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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If you liked that, though, you should also check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BZk9MQa0YA

I feel like I've posted that before, but sometimes I remember that we've been doing these topics for like 12 years, and not everyone here has seen everything ever posted, so maybe the occasional repost isn't a terrible crime.

Actually, while we're on the topic, here's a slight shift of gears:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNdpvNH1yi8

And then this was also a thing, for those who like/liked Doctor Who:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp_Fw5oDMao
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Metalsonic66 posted...

Never seen this before but it is so good

I first saw that WAAAY back in the early 80s. No memory of what channel it was on. But I loved it.

Then in the late 90s, when the Star Wars Special Editions came out in theaters, they released a "Special Edition" version of it with deliberately shitty CGI graphics. I still have the VHS copy somewhere (I have like every VHS tape I ever owned in a couple of boxes in one of my rooms that I use for general storage - I've always wanted to go through them and transfer anything special or important over to DVD via a VHS/DVD transfer unit I bought like 20 years ago, but I've just never gotten around to it).

If anything, the most amazing part of it was that they actually got Paul Frees to do the voice-over narration for it. Everything else about it is so low rent, but he was actually famous at the time.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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I_Abibde posted...

It was Oscar Night.

Which meant I watched XFL football instead.

I just played God of War.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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I know I've posted stuff like this before, but honestly, I really kind of like this concept/genre of music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rve03u7oEvI



The Wave Master posted...

but a lot of the internet seems excited

Nearly everything I see on the Internet talking about Doctor Who these days is complaining about how terrible the writing is. Except for the sort of people who seem to fellate it solely because it's SJW pandering.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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The Wave Master posted...

The Rumble last night held zero surprises, except MVP returning. MVP coming back was very nice.

I actually knew he was going to be there, because about 6 hours in advance someone posted a picture to Twitter of them testing out the Titantron entrance videos, and showing his entrance with MVP in big letters.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

The Royal Rumble as a whole was pretty good tonight.

The weekly shows... are often much less so.

If you feel like getting back into wrestling again, start with NXT or AEW.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmHkx9P19hg

Still better than the sequels.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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pionear posted...

I'm pretty sure there will be cameras everywhere

This is not a positive in favor of your argument.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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I feel like I enjoyed this more than I should have:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nocsoez3RW4
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

I_Abibde posted...

Magneto and Xavier have one conversation (via telepathy) in the '60s run of Uncanny X-Men that states that the two of them could be allies, if only just -- yeah, you know the deal.

Had to wait for Claremont to pick that ball up, I guess.

And even he didn't do it right away. He didn't really start playing with the idea until X-Men #150 (though once he started, he pulled that particular thread real hard).

Three years earlier, he was writing the story where Magneto got pissed off and captured the X-Men and strapped them down so they could be helpless like babies and had his nanny robot treat them like infants.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Yeah, but then it's pointless and overcomplicated, and detracts from the movie as needless fanservice more than it adds to it by being faithful to the original version.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Metalsonic66 posted...

I dunno. I feel like his shift from only wanting revenge on Spider-Man to becoming his own hero is a big part of his character.

Yeah, but the problem with that is, you need like 3-4 movies to actually tell that story. And you can't even really start those stories until you have an established Spider-Man (which means at least a few more movies beforehand).

First, you need the story where an experienced Spider-Man gets the symbiote, loves the effect it has on him, then realizes it's using him, then he has to resist it, and ultimately get rid of it. Then you need the part (either in that same movie, or a completely separate movie) where Eddie Brock is "ruined" by Spider-Man and develops his hatred. Then you have the movie where Eddie gets Venom, they bond over their shared hatred of Peter/Spider-Man, he fights Spider-Man, and generally does the villain thing. THEN you can finally have a movie where Eddie repents and becomes a good guy.

(And that's not even getting into the fact that the LOOK of the costume doesn't even really make much sense if you don't have Spider-Woman in the universe for Peter to steal the look from, or the fact that he got it during Secret Wars, which you're likely never going to see on-screen).

That's pretty much impossible to do (well) in any realistic film series. And when you try to condense the entirety of that story into a single film, you get Spider-Man 3.

It's easier to do with serial TV (like the 90s Spider-Man animated series). But there's nowhere near as much money in that as there is in movies, and I'm not even sure Sony HAS TV rights at the moment, so that's never happening.

Conversely, his origin story in the Ultimates universe (which is the version of a LOT of the characters that the MCU has been using, or at least a sort of hybrid of 616 and Ultimate - which is why you got both Loki AND the Chitauri as the threat that forms the Avengers, as a blend of both origin stories) is much, much different. The symbiote was made in a lab, by both Peter and Eddie's parents, who were coworker scientists, and Peter and Eddie were childhood friends. Then Eddie becomes Venom, and never actually reforms, remaining a villain right up to the end of the line. If they'd gone out of their way to make sure Venom showed up in a Spider-Man film, THIS is the version you'd probably be getting. Because it's WAAAY easier to write a story about (in fact, this was basically Harry Osborn's storyline in Amazing Spider-Man 2).

Though I'd argue that "guy who hates Spider-Man, but who later decides to be a good guy" isn't even THAT key to his character. He really only spent a short time in the comics as a dedicated villain, and then mostly became a more complex character who probably spent more time away from Peter than interacting with him. It just feels like it's important because it's the origin we already KNOW for him... but "science made a weird symbiote/found aliens in space, guy gets infected, goes a bit crazy, but then tries to be a good guy" is actually a pretty solid basis for a movie.



Metalsonic66 posted...

They could have still done something similar without Spider-Man, if they had started him as more of a sleazeball instead of being "The guy who wanted to do the right thing but poked the wrong hornets nest"

I think that's sort of what they were trying to do. But film execs are VERY hesitant to have main characters who start out completely evil or amoral, so it got sterilized into "Well, you know, he's not such a bad guy, really." The most you get is "Hey, he's rebellious! And he read people's e-mail without permission! And he got fired for accusing people of stuff he couldn't prove! Sure, I mean, yeah, they DID those things, but still! And hey, at least we included the parts where he was a reporter who got fired and was all bitter about it afterward! That's like A++ accuracy to the comics right there! WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?!"

It's the same reason why you got Scott Lang Ant-Man having to explain that, sure, yes, he's a thief who hacked into corporate servers and rerouted millions of dollars, but hey, it was totally a Robin Hood situation because the company was corrupt and he was just trying to do the right thing. Hey everybody, we can root for him as a hero now! Meanwhile, comic book Scott was just a petty burglar using his tech knowledge to break and enter and steal (and keep all the money). And then literally stole the Ant-Man suit (without Hank Pym's knowledge) so he could be a better thief. It's also why you get stuff like 20th Century Fox Magneto trying to do things like turn all humans into mutants, rather than, you know, kill off most humans and enslave the others so mutants can rule. Film Magneto starts out complex. Comic Magneto was cartoonish evil for 15 years before there was even a HINT that he was maybe more complex.

It's part of why I never expect complete accuracy to the comics for most characters, especially the less moral or more violent/lethal ones, when they get films. The most I usually hope for is that the new interpretation mostly keeps the spirit of the original character while telling a well-constructed story of its own.
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Metalsonic66 posted...

It wasn't bad but it wasn't great either. It was a big misstep to exclude Spider-Man from his origin.

Ehh. If you want to do Venom as an anti-hero out of the gate, it's almost better to drop Spider-Man. That way you don't have the whole hang-up with how much Eddie and the symbiote hate Peter/Spider-Man, and the co-comittant terrorism and assaults that make it kind of harder to root for a character.

It's not like Spider-Man is necessary to explain Venom either, honestly. The whole premise behind the character is symbiotic shape-changing alien of dubious morality that gives you super-powers. The fact that Spider-Man got it in the comic was almost incidental (and was mostly just done to justify giving him a costume change). They could easily have done the same storyline with anyone and hit most of the same story beats.
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WhiskeyDisk posted...

I've got to be honest. I've...never understood the entire TCG thing. I can deal with luck based factors, I have no issues with dice or gambling. I also have no problem with known boards with known pieces and known rules.

All that being said, TCGs always seemed to me like playing chess, except pulling the pieces out of a bag like Scrabble, but everyone gets to bring their own bag, which itself is a PTW/gacha in building the bag you bring.

Since we were talking about this recently, I figured I should post this now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBIsZlV1jHk
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Sooo... this is a thing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLMBLuGJTsA
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The one story of his I really liked was his short story based on Zelazny's Night in the Lonesome October, where he's sort of crossing film noir with Lovecraft with a werewolf main character. But that might just be because I absolutely love A Night in the Lonesome October.

Then again, I've always been a sucker for film noir Lovecraft:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jK3q1fNLeA
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Zeus posted...

Also I saw a copy of Neil Gaimon's Neverywhere miniseries the other day, which reminded me that the tv miniseries was a thing. Slightly kicking myself for not just buying it on the spot, although I'm not sure if I'd enjoy it any more than the comic.

If I recall correctly, that started out as the TV show, then was popular enough for Gaiman to expand on it a bit by adapting it as a full novel, then that got re-adapted into the comic.

So if you read the comic and didn't like it, it's possible that it lost something in translation. Then again, if it's more the setting itself or the premise you don't like, that might be something that's going to be consistent regardless.

I can't really give a recommendation, because honestly, I've never been a huge fan of Gaiman, and I've always felt like a lot of his stuff was a bit overrated. But that might just be because I knew too many Mall Goth types who couldn't stop fellating him over Sandman.
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streamofthesky posted...

Zeus posted...

"In America, you reward knowledge. Here in Japan, we punish ignorance."

If only.

The real dichotomy is more like "The squeaky wheel gets the grease" versus "The nail that stands out must be hammered down."

The West fetishizes individuality, the East demonizes it. And that's a difference of perspective that goes back thousands of years.
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Zeus posted...

and my brother who gave me his login

ILLEGAL!

~reports you~
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hypnox posted...

Lots of boardgames nowadays bank on you having a lot of friends.

Board games have always assumed that to some degree. There were never really a ton of 2-player games unless they were specifically designed for parents to play with younger kids. Most assume you're starting at 4 and going up from there, which is what most modern games assume as well.



hypnox posted...

Where do these companies base themselves where they thing people can get together with 8 or more people for a few hours at a time?

Most gaming companies literally game at work. It's a job where all of your co-workers are also gamers. You can write games off as playtesting, and thus, part of the job.

Though it's also worth noting that they wouldn't keep making more complex "European-style" games if people didn't keep asking for them and buying them.
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Zeus posted...

The only thing I have to say about Tempest is fuck phasing.

Conceptually, it's a cool idea. Mechanically, it kind of sucks, because it takes too much coordination and pre-planning to make it worthwhile, otherwise it basically just turns into "You can't use half your cards half the time".



Zeus posted...

Kek. Yeah, the running storyline -- particulary the super-long one that ran between blocks -- was pretty garbo. But that's kind of the issue these games tend to run into, because sooner or later there's the temptation to eschew lore in favor of an actual story.

Zeus posted...

WhiskeyDisk posted...

As a non-player, PO...I understood some of those words from context clues, but if we're being honest you could have literally made half of that post up out of thin air and I'd have had the same reaction to it. I doubt you're screwing with me, but for all intents and purposes, the best I can do is smile and nod and say...ok.

The important takeaway is that a game like MtG rather uniquely facilitates all kinds of play styles, which you don't necessarily see in other CCGs. And, because the way MtG is structured, it also has more play options than other CCGs when it comes to things like group play (which is difficult to do at all with some CCGs).

In a way, it's like the people who play Fairy Chess. Adding new pieces that do different things changes the dynamic of play, and the fact that everyone at the table has a different deck means that you've got asynchronous play.
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WhiskeyDisk posted...

I've got to be honest. I've...never understood the entire TCG thing. I can deal with luck based factors, I have no issues with dice or gambling. I also have no problem with known boards with known pieces and known rules.

All that being said, TCGs always seemed to me like playing chess, except pulling the pieces out of a bag like Scrabble, but everyone gets to bring their own bag, which itself is a PTW/gacha in building the bag you bring.

Kind of. But that's the appeal - different players get to play in different ways. Someone who wants to play with a massive army of giant creatures (sort of in the Yu-Gi-Oh! mold) and someone who mostly wants to play fast burn/hand denial (the way I used to play) can both enjoy the game. Without that flexibility, I probably never would have gotten into it - I definitely never got into any of the other games that came out around that same period where they came with two pre-made decks, one for each player (ie, I have a Star Wars box set where one player played as the Rebels/Light Side and the other player played Imperials/Dark Side, and you just took both decks out of the same box and played without buying any extra cards).

Personally, I started out with a deck that was mostly smaller creatures, healing, and some minor direct damage (white/black), but eventually gravitated to an extremely creature-light, powerful damage spell-heavy deck that only healed by stealing life from the opponent and mostly just tried to murder them as quickly as possible (red/black). I also had a blue/black Millstone deck that existed solely to make the opponent discard all their cards, preventing them from actually doing anything until they lose by running out of cards (I called it my "No Fun" deck). At the moment, my main decks are a white/red deck that balances healing with spell attacks (still almost no creatures, only spells), and a white/black vampire deck I made that is built around a combo that causes infinite damage to everyone at the table who isn't me.

It also depends on who you play with, and how you play. I almost always play in games with 4-6 players, who are playing casually, using the old rules from the 90s (when we all learned how to play), and none of us play in tournaments (where everyone is way too serious and there's a huge pay-to-win factor involved in getting competitive decks). If I was playing in hardcore 1-on-1 professional circuit circles, I'd be playing very different decks (and not actually having any fun).

In my group, you could easily buy a single pre-made deck for $20-30 or so and be somewhat competitive (and a few boosters/individual card purchases would make you very competitive). There isn't a huge financial investment unless you want it to be. Conversely, there are people who probably spend hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars every year to get new cards, as the tournament scene only allows cards from the last block or two (ie, the last couple years).

Though my personal favorite CCG of all time was Legend of the Five Rings. Because that was a game where they would literally take the results of various tournaments and RPG sessions at conventions, and would integrate those results into the overarching plot of the story. So if Lion decks were beating Dragon decks in tournaments, then in the story the Lion would start to press into Dragon territory. If players were playing a lot of tainted cards in Crane decks, then in the plot the Crane were being corrupted by the Shadowlands. And so on. To the point where some players would literally play non-competitive decks or sub-optimal builds solely to attempt to influence the overall metaplot.

L5R actually built to a final tournament, where the deck the winner was playing would determine who became Emperor in-universe. The developers actually wrote an ending to the story for every clan, and put them in envelopes, which they then tore up when the last player with a deck from that clan was eliminated from the tournament (at GenCon). It was an incredibly huge deal, with an incredibly invested player-base, at a time when that sort of thing was almost completely unheard of:

http://www.alderac.com/2019/12/16/the-day-of-thunder-part-1-the-history-of-aeg-11
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I_Abibde posted...

On that, I agree. Ice Age was a great expansion. Certainly good enough to kick the crap out of my Fallen Empires decks, heh. It was also a nice change after Tempest, which was the 'in' thing when I started trying to play.

I feel like your timing is off there...? Tempest was part of the Weatherlight/Rath Cycle. Which came after the Mirage Cycle, which came after Ice Age.

The early set order was the base set, then Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends, The Dark, Fallen Empires, Ice Age, Homelands.

Homelands got such a negative reaction that they panicked and decided to do Ice Age again, which is what led to Alliances, which is when they started playing with the idea of releasing sets as part of cycles. After that was Mirage/Visions, which was a cycle of its own.

Then they did Weatherlight, which led to an endless series of sets, cycles, and blocks that were basically all just one long running story, which is the point where I tuned out because it just didn't interest me at all, and my friend group had kind of stopped playing Magic by that point (actually, I kind of started faltering because Mirage wasn't that appealing to me, and only got a couple Visions boosters before dropping off).

When I first started playing it was during the tail-end of Revised/3rd Edition, right before the release of 4th Edition. It was the point where Fallen Empires was the "current" booster set, The Dark was still in circulation (but like I mentioned, some store owners had already started raising prices on them), and there were still packs and boxes from all the earlier sets still available if you looked hard enough (I remember seeing a full Arabian Nights box for $400). My group sort of peaked during Ice Age and Homelands, then tapered off after.

My friends sort of started getting back into it again around Time Spiral (just after they did Coldsnap, which was their third Ice Age set, a decade late), though most of us don't buy boosters any more, or pay attention to set metaplot or flavor text like we used to. Now we just occasionally buy a pre-constructed deck or individual cards off Amazon. Though I did buy a box of Unhinged at one point.





EDIT: Actually, on reflection, you might be thinking of Coldsnap - that was an Ice Age-related set that came out at some point after Tempest.
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I've golfed a few times, but was bad at it because I didn't actually care and was mostly just fucking around while playing with rented clubs with some friends.

I've played a lot of mini-golf, and used to be really good at it.
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blu posted...

Saw this in a movie review.

Was it one by Lindsay Ellis?

I remember her doing a video somewhat along those lines. Something like how Disney tries to pretend to be "woke", but only so far as they think it will make them more money.
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Nah, I WAS a mostly broke teen in '95, and I knew it was shit then. I actually paid more per pack to a local guy who was gouging people for leftover Dark boosters, and then eventually Ice Age happened and it was awesome.
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I_Abibde posted...

all I had to do was figure out how to make the most of my cheap-o Fallen Empires cards.

No one could ever make the most of those cards. It's pretty much the worst set they've ever released, possibly barring Homelands. And Homelands, for all its suck, actually had a few awesome cards hidden away in there.
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Far-Queue posted...

Also big ups for Magic of Scheherazade. That's a hidden gem

I had an RPG character in a game of Vampire: the Masquerade who was a hacker, and their handle was "Scheherazade", specifically because of that game.
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Zeus posted...

The Throne of Eldraine

It's their set like Arabian Nights was waaay back in the day. Arabian Nights was mostly based on stories out of A Thousand and One Arabian Nights, whereas The Throne of Eldraine is deliberately based on Grimm's Fairy Tales and Arthurian myth.



Zeus posted...

At any rate, I can't see every getting back into MtG, partly just on the basis of cost. (Not that I probably couldn't build a perfunctory inexpensive deck from newer stuff, but more because I kinda like the collectible aspect as well between the artwork and lore.)

Preconstructed decks are actually pretty competitive these days, so you could easily buy one for relatively cheap and play friendly games and not lose 100% of the time. You'd be worse off in the competitive scene, but I feel like the competitive scene is pretty much entirely unfun and no one should ever aspire to play it anyway.



Zeus posted...

And just googling it (because I wanted to make sure I got the name right) geekbaited me even harder with the new card design.

...granted, it seems to be tied into some mechanic for the set. Was pretty disappointed to learn that *all* of the card designs weren't like that.

They do unique card types every set or so. Like, for instance:

http://media.wizards.com/2018/dom/en_4c13RzPQap.png
http://cdn.pucatrade.com/cards/fulls/sm/38618.jpg

Those are "Saga" cards. The idea being that they symbolize a story taking place over time, with the card doing something different each turn, before ending after a short time (unlike most Enchantments, which stay until dispelled).

They've also had two-sided cards you flip during play (which is kind of shit, because you can't actually use them in your deck because they don't have backs, meaning you have to use proxy cards to represent them):

http://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51GfBc6NabL._SX300_.jpg
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/mtg/images/b/b5/Magic-The-Gathering-Innistrad-Daybreak-Ranger.jpg

Though that mechanic inspired this fan art, so I approve:

http://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/61a715c4-0d39-483e-be12-ec6348ccb957/d5fgrts-f96be3e0-9547-4164-972c-d69869e6916b.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpc3MiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwic3ViIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTpmaWxlLmRvd25sb2FkIl0sIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiIvZi82MWE3MTVjNC0wZDM5LTQ4M2UtYmUxMi1lYzYzNDhjY2I5NTcvZDVmZ3J0cy1mOTZiZTNlMC05NTQ3LTQxNjQtOTcyYy1kNjk4NjllNjkxNmIuanBnIn1dXX0.8UKarD_Z_-lJBvaYBAelT0He2nIJaqKKi9ds5umETJ0
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Astyanax

Battle of Olympus

Magic of Scheherazade
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wwinterj25 posted...

I don't use mouthwash all that much. I probably should.

Or you might be better off not. There've been suggestions that alcohol-based mouthwash can dry out your mouth and actually make things worse in the long run.
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$25 feels like they're still overcharging you.
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Entity13 posted...

It starts sort of OK, gets preachy and on-the-nose with one or two political matters

The impression that I get is that the full-on headlong rush into SJW pandering isn't really what makes the new stuff terrible, as much as they combine the preachiness with god-awful writing. So the end result feels like a Tumblrite hitting you in the face with a sledgehammer while screaming about privilege.

Politics or ideology you disagree with can still make for a good story if it's done well, but minimal effort and/or arrogance strawmanning tends to result in people turning off.

But again, I stopped watching about five years ago, so I have no first-hand experience to really judge from. Only comments from people whose opinions I tend to trust, and the occasional video or article I see talking about how a given episode is terrible (the one that apparently existed solely to shit on a Trump analogue character being a major one there).
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